Right-wingers are worse for being anti-vaxx. We may not need masks if everyone is vaxxed-up.
The left has spread doubt and mistrust about the vaccine...they decided to make it political in 2020...and there are sadly consequeces of that
How anti-vax are the Democrats?
"In a series of interventions, senior Democrats have cast doubt on the reliability of any vaccine available soon. Let’s start at the very top with
Joe Biden, the presidential candidate. “Let me be clear: I trust vaccines,” Mr. Biden said. “I trust scientists. But I don’t trust Donald Trump, and at this moment, the American people can’t either.”
....
Kamala Harris, his choice for vice-president, went further. When CNN’s Dana Bash asked whether Harris would trust a vaccine released by the end of the year, or sooner, the candidate responded, “I think that we have learned since this pandemic started, but really before that, that there’s very little that we can trust that comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth.”
Which was not exactly no, but not exactly yes. She received backing from another hugely well-known and respected Democratic politician, the Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo, who announced that his state would carry out independent tests on any vaccine: “Frankly, I’m not going to trust the federal government’s opinion and I wouldn’t recommend to New Yorkers based on the federal government’s opinion.”
And just in case Donald Trump were to find a way of importing a vaccine from Britain, that base was covered off too by
Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, just last week, with a suggestion that British medical regulation was suspect: “My concern is that the UK’s system for that kind of judgment is not on a par with ours in the United States. So if Boris Johnson decides he is going to approve a drug and this president embraces that, that is a concern that I have.”
....
But this is (relatively) subtle politics. What if most people just don’t concentrate that hard on the detail? The risk is that the message they get is less “Donald Trump is dodgy when he promises a vaccine” but more: “the vaccine is dodgy.”
It’s the dodginess, stupid.
One of Americas most prominent anti-vax campaigners isn’t complaining. For Robert F Kennedy, JFK’s nephew, the Democrats’ attitude has been helpful to his cause: “
There is undeniably a lot more scepticism about vaccines,” Kennedy said. “It’s gone from maybe 5 to 10 percent to up to 50 percent range.”
He seems to have got that about right. In a national poll conducted for
CNBC/Change Research at the end of last month only 42% said they would definitely or probably receive the inoculation when it first became available. That figure has fallen from 58% in July.
And who, politically, has had the biggest change of heart?
An extraordinary collapse in support from registered Democrats contributed to the overall change: only 30% said they would definitely get a vaccine, down from 57% in July.
...
The politics of vaccination is a high-risk area, with a danger of unintended consequences. The Democratic party has done what it felt it had to do, but American doctors have been given yet another reason to furrow their brows.