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Vaccinated America is fed up with the unvaccinated, and the mainstream media is finally starting to pay attention.
“As cases of the virus increase, another contagion spreads among those vaccinated: anger,” said a New York Times headline on Tuesday morning. “‘Patience is dull’: frustration mounts over vaccines,” read a similar headline in the Washington Post on Friday.
This anger is quite understandable. While some people who are not vaccinated are genuinely afraid or misled by misinformation, people both notice the geography showing that the hot spots are in areas of high Republican concentration and polls showing the marked partisan divide over inoculation. Vaccinated Americans have lived through the past year, including Donald Trump’s failed coup and the outbreak of the pandemic due to Republican misinformation. They know very well that it is the Republicans who refuse the vaccines and that they do it out of sheer spite. Of course, vaccinated Americans are angry. They should be angry.
Yet even as Republicans act out of spite so pure that they risk our own health just to “own the liberals,” the rest of us are berated for being endlessly gentle, soothing, and understanding towards them, most recently in one. The Washington Post’s widely exhausted column by Gary Abernathy. So, with the increase in COVID-19 cases and Republicans continuing to interfere for Trump after he tried to overthrow our democracy, skepticism is mounting that a little more grip and hairstyles are going. bring these people to their senses.
“[E]enough with the bogus snowflake syndrome stories already, ”wrote the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent in a rebuttal of calls for more pampering.
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The problem is, these appeals for sympathy and accommodation only go one way. The Liberals are expected to make all the sacrifices, on the grounds that they have the capacity for empathy, and nothing is being asked of the Conservatives.
This deep and persistent injustice is now starting to show up in public health responses to the increase in COVID-19 cases. Los Angeles has reimposed a mask warrant, even though science guiding the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) shows that vaccinated people can safely do without them. (As President Joe Biden’s senior health adviser, Dr Anthony Fauci, said in May, science shows that vaccinated people are “becoming a dead end for the virus.”) Now the CDC is backing down a bit. , recommending that all people wear masks indoors in parts of the country, as the delta variant spreads. Other cities are considering similar mandates or are already offering “mask recommendations.”
These new mask mandates and recommendations are less about threats from vaccinated people and more about unvaccinated people being stowaways running around without a mask. Unfortunately, the result is that vaccinated people have to experience a minor but very real inconvenience in order to protect the unvaccinated from their own bad decisions. Helaine Olen of the Washington Post rightly criticized Los Angeles County, pointing out that “instead of punishing people who did it right, give them positive reinforcement, while pointing out to wrongdoers that their actions have consequences. consequences – for themselves “.
In other words: Forget the mask warrants. It is rather time for vaccination mandates.
For starters, vaccines simply work better than masks. Masks are working, but inadequately, as evidenced by the more than 200,000 cases per day in January, when mask warrants were the norm. Vaccines, however, are working very well, which is why case rates began to plummet in the spring as vaccine rates increased. As CDC director Rochelle Walensky said earlier this month, this is an “unvaccinated pandemic.” Equally important, vaccination mandates work, which is why, prior to COVID-19, they were widespread and, apart from complaints from a minority of anti-vaccination people, widely popular. Diseases like measles, whooping cough and polio that were once common are now incredibly rare due to vaccination warrants.
It’s a peculiar trick of human psychology, but often small, but there are some frustrations that motivate people better to make better decisions than the threat of illness and death. For example, indoor smoking bans led to lower smoking rates, suggesting that at least some people who weren’t moved by fear of lung cancer were stopped by the inconvenience of having to go out to smoke. The threat of horrifically dying in a car crash didn’t convince many people to wear their seat belts, but the threat of getting a ticket caused them to buckle up, saving lives.
Many people are able to convince themselves that they are safe from the worst consequences of bad choices. Consider podcast host Joe Rogan telling his audience that a “healthy person” is safe from COVID-19. This is the kind of logic that anti-vaccine right-wingers use to justify their choice to jump the blow to the detriment of the left. But what if they couldn’t get on a plane or go to their favorite bar or attend a child’s wedding or if they had to get a cotton swab poked every day to go to work? Well, that downside might be enough to convince them that this particular Trumpist crisis isn’t worth it.
Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster who has focused heavily on researching anti-vaccine Republicans in recent months, recently reaffirmed that vaccine mandates, not pampering, are what refusers need to get vaccinated.
Americans hesitant about vaccines hate vaccination mandates.
But many would reluctantly respect them and get vaccinated if their condition required it to go to watch live sports, concerts, eat out, or catch a flight. pic.twitter.com/CGyESYU4FD
– Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) July 23, 2021
There has been reluctance on the part of the White House Biden to push more aggressively for warrants, for fear of seeing a repeat of some of last year’s protests, when right-wingers have turned against lockdowns and warrants. mask. There is no doubt that such protests would occur, just as they did in France after French President Emmanuel Macron announced plans for vaccination warrants for travel, dining and other uses of public spaces. But while 160,000 people protested against the warrants in France, many more – over 4 million people – eventually succumbed and got dates.
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The policy is different in the United States, where the refusal of vaccination has become an identity marker for the Conservatives. Still, there is good reason to believe that there would be an equally high ratio of people getting vaccinated quietly compared to people protesting. After all, the vaccine warrants would give Republicans a face-saving tool. There is no doubt that many of them harbor secret concerns about getting COVID-19, but they continue to refuse to be vaccinated, believing it would be unfair to the conservative cause. But if they were “forced” to do so, they could go both ways. They could both gain protection while claiming to oppose the vaccine in the abstract. It is a win-win for most Conservatives, even if they would complain publicly about it. (And, in fact, having something to complain about is a bonus for them!) It’s the same dynamic we see with taxes – the Conservatives pay them off and then have the pleasure of complaining.
There are of course legal complications to warrants, as Biden does not have the official powers to impose a nationwide warrant. But as the Washington Post’s Max Boot pointed out, “Biden can lead by example in using his authority to impose vaccinations for air travel and on Amtrak and for federal employees or those entering federal buildings,” as well as “to issue a decree imposing military vaccinations as a national security priority.” This would help standardize mandates, which would make it easier for state and local governments, as well as businesses, to require vaccines so that people can work, be clients, or just enter public spaces.
This week there have been small steps in the right direction.
On Monday, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced that frontline workers would be required to be vaccinated. The states of New York and California have similar mandates on employees, as does the Mayo Clinic. And the mounting anger of those vaccinated begins to be heard. It’s time for political and business leaders to start rewarding people who did the right thing, instead of bending over backwards to welcome people who refuse basic medical care to upset us. The good news is that a decentralized approach to vaccine mandates would be much more difficult for conservatives to fight because the targets would be diffuse. Right now, too many places are operating in photonegative space out of common sense, forcing those who did the right thing while pampering those who refuse to do the bare minimum. It’s time to change gears and start embracing the basic principle of rewards for good behavior, frustrations and consequences for bad behavior. It’s time for the vaccine warrants.
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