One of William Shakespeare’s most famous phrases comes from his 1623 play Julius Caesar, which contains the famous line: “Of all the wonders I yet have heard, it seems to me most strange….”
Caesar was discussing the inevitability of death, but in the current Covid condition the reluctance to get vaccinated, a reluctance that in some cases has turned into hostility, is something that truly “seems to me most strange.”
When I was a child my parents, along with the vast majority of their contemporaries, were terrified about the spread of polio. Thousands of children were crippled annually by this terrible disease, some permanently. But the vaccines developed by Dr. Jonas Salk and later Dr. Albert Sabin protected millions — me included. When the Salk vaccine was available my parents rushed me to get it. Were there some unfortunate circumstances experienced by those getting the vaccine? There were. But statistically they were small, and the overall societal benefits dwarfed the risks.
Because of these legendary vaccines, polio has virtually been eliminated from the planet. In 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported thirty-three cases world-wide and has declared five of its six global regions free of the polio virus. Was this victory realized because the virus just went away, fatigued and discouraged by its unpopularity? Of course not. It went away because the Salk and Sabin vaccines, along with subsequent enhancements, made it virtually extinct.
The medical advances since I was a child have been staggering, and the abilities of medical researchers to share, debate, and evaluate treatments and preventatives have expanded exponentially. So, in the midst of a global pandemic driven by a potentially deadly virus, why are so many not only refusing proven vaccines, but actively opposing their distribution?
In short — I have no idea, but logic and reason are not among them. And this absence of logic and reason is concentrated in states whose political leadership (if one can call it leadership) is seriously infected with contemporary conservative cynicism.
I recently drove across the United States from South Carolina to Oregon. The chance to experience first-hand the breadth and geographical diversity of our country is always inspiring. Spending one evening at a hotel on the banks of the Missouri River, and watching its rather strong current flowing southward towards its confluence with the mighty Mississippi, one wondered how Lewis and Clark and their men ever overcame such natural resistance while heading to a then unlocated west coast. Of course, a major reason for their success was that they were all rowing in the same direction — an interesting concept that.
But something else was catching my attention on this journey. Of the twelve states I passed through, stopping for meals, fuel, and lodging, the masks recommended to fight the spread of the Covid virus were rarely seen. In a restaurant in Tennessee the serving staff wore masks, but no one else did. At a hotel in Wyoming that was hosting an array of Saturday night entertainment, once again — few masks and little social distancing. Yet in Washington State, even though mandatory wearing of masks while inside public places has been lifted, many still mask-up despite the fact that Washington has become one of the first states to achieve a 70% vaccination rate, the place where the difficult to define “herd immunity” can be achieved.
There was a clear pattern here: if one lives in a state with Republican political leadership (a Republican governor) the likelihood of making the decision to be vaccinated drops remarkably. Of the states I transited through in the south, the great plains, and the west coast, those with a Republican governor were 14% below the national vaccination rate for the full dosage (two shots), and 15% below for having had one shot. Meanwhile, those states with a Democratic governor were a much more modest 2% and 4% below the national averages.
Recent data regarding when states will reach “herd immunity,” with 70% of the eligible population having at least one shot, is even more disturbing. Currently, twenty-one states have reached this level with all but four (Maryland, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Vermont) having a Democratic governor. Of the four having Republican governors, none are strong supporters of Donald Trump and his inconsistent and incoherent rhetoric regarding vaccinations. This gubernatorial “gang of four” includes Governor Larry Hogan of Maryland — who has considered challenging Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, and Governor Phil Scott of Vermont — who supported Trump’s removal from office after the January 6th insurrection. In addition, each of these four states has two serving Democratic US senators, suggesting that their electorates are not strongly attached to current Republican political and social inclinations.
This same data also shows that at current vaccination rates eleven states will not reach the 70% level until sometime in 2022, the better part of a year from now. Of these eleven states all but two have Republican governors and eight have two Republican senators. The only state that is surprising in this group is Michigan that has a Democratic Governor and two Democratic senators. But Michigan has a Republican-dominated state legislature that has been involved with post-2020 election efforts to change electoral rules and challenge the presidential results.
This clearly raises the perpetual “chicken and egg” question: since this political leadership certainly reflects popular opinion, why would one expect governors to encourage vaccinations when their voters are vaccine averse? It’s a fair question. But given the potentially deadly consequences of going unvaccinated — for oneself and others, why would Republican governors not be eager to lower the health risks of their own voters?
Some are, of course. Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson has been advocating vaccinations as has North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, who has decried the politicization of wearing masks and being vaccinated. But others have supported anti-vaccine sentiments and added to vaccine hesitancy, such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster, and South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem — whose state has had one of the highest Covid infection rates in the country. Indeed, South Dakota may achieve herd immunity because the majority of its one million residents have been infected by Covid, a condition Noem seems to think makes her eligible for serious presidential consideration.
Can a state’s governor make a difference? Kentucky and Tennessee offer an interesting comparison. I’m from Kentucky but attended high school in Tennessee. I’m quite familiar with both states. In many ways they are geographic, geologic, and cultural twins. Both have US senators who, in recent times, have moved far-right into Trump territory. Yet, oddly enough, Kentucky has a Democratic governor, Andy Beshear (whose father was once governor), while Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, has aligned himself closely with the Trump political base. Kentucky has been about 7% below the national vaccination rate while Tennessee has lagged behind by a whopping 22%. Recently, Tennessee fired its top vaccine official for providing guidance (allowed by Tennessee state law) on the conditions under which teen-agers could receive vaccinations without parental consent. Tennessee subsequently ordered its state Department of Health to stop providing vaccination guidance on all vaccines. Some Tennessee state legislators even advocated closing the Department of Public Health to prevent it from disseminating vaccine information.
Clearly, this could not have happened without the approval of Governor Lee. Meanwhile, next door in Kentucky, Governor Beshear’s health commissioner has strongly encouraged Covid vaccinations calling them “a modern miracle.” Evidently people do listen to leaders elected state-wide regardless of their political identity.
One of the most significant voices in the medical community regarding Covid and the vaccinations has been Dr. Ashish Jha, Dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health. He has encouraged wearing masks, social distancing, and getting vaccinated. But in a recently published opinion, comparing the Covid situations in South Dakota and Vermont, he stated that declaring differing Covid responses suggest a “partisan phenomenon” was “simplistic.”
I would like to agree with Dr. Jha, as I do on so many other things regarding Covid, but his conclusion in this regard is itself “simplistic.” True, governors Noem and Scott are both Republicans, but despite the common party identity their political and philosophical distinctions far outweigh their similarities. South Dakota and Vermont have had totally dissimilar Covid experiences because their state leaders have handled it in completely different ways despite having a common political label.
Allow me to offer two additional related yet distinct comments. First, when I was a child my family mostly lived overseas, commonly in places that were quite distant and desolate. When we travelled, we were required to carry a yellow vaccination card before entering both developed and undeveloped countries. Most places beyond the United States had lower standards of public health, often crude medical facilities, and sometimes widely spread and potentially deadly diseases. One did not want to become infected in such places, a sentiment shared by both the US and host governments.
The yellow “vaccine passport” (if one wants to use the inappropriate modern description) assured me and my family, as well as customs and passport officials, that we were both protected from any local scourge and unlikely to require expensive treatment or medical evacuation if exposed. None of us ever considered carrying and presenting this card to be an inconvenience or an infringement on our privacy rights. Such contemporary complaints about Covid vaccinations cards are — bluntly stated — absurd.
Second, when the unit I commanded in Operation Desert Storm was deploying to the Middle East there came a day where we went to a nearby aircraft hangar to receive a slew of inoculations. There were shots in both arms and both “cheeks.” There was even one shot of an experimental drug that the Army believed would enhance and accelerate the action of the nerve agent antidote each soldier carried with his gas mask.
Historically, western armies deployed to the Middle East — from Napoleon in Egypt, to George Gordon in Sudan, to Erwin Rommel in North Africa — had suffered from the heat, bad water, and local disease. The one concern we commanders shared in the first desert war was the possibility the Iraqis might deploy their nerve agents. Thankfully they did not — arguably the one wise decision Saddam Hussein made, but we welcomed the nerve agent shot as an additional precaution and protection. And in my unit, no soldier was evacuated because of disease — not one. In his World War II north African campaign, Rommel himself was evacuated because of illness on two occasions. Disease was a significant contributor to his defeat at the Battle of El Alamein. One of his officers once told me that “on any given day a third of the Afrika Corps was sick.” The vaccinations administered to me and my unit prevented any such debilitating losses. Why? Because modern vaccines are indeed “modern miracles.”
There is only one good reason not to take one of the Covid vaccines, and that would be that a doctor has concluded that some existing individual medical condition means that the risks outweigh the benefits of protection. Beyond that, no explanation for vaccine refusal or hesitancy holds up to objective scrutiny, either for individuals or society. In the case of Tennessee, there seems to be more understanding of this calculus among its teenagers than their parents, who seem to have succumbed to partisan paranoia.
And even that paranoia is unreasonable. Donald Trump went out of office stating that one of his major achievements was that “Operation Warp Speed” produced a vaccine in near record time. Trump at one point wanted the vaccine named for him — suggesting the name “Trumpcine.” He himself has been vaccinated, despite having caught Covid because of his foolish dismissal of masks and disregard for social distancing.
Yet now, Trump and his followers only see vaccination in a partisan dimension. They don’t focus on the fact that it was developed in the Trump administration, that it has an almost unprecedented efficacy, that it greatly benefits society, or that it moves us to the herd immunity Trump himself once strongly advocated. Seemingly, their only focus is that controlling or eliminating Covid might politically benefit President Joe Biden — who has unequivocally advocated vaccine use.
Americans can foolishly make vaccination a partisan issue and craft their personal decisions accordingly. But as we now see, with over 99% of deaths being suffered by the unvaccinated, the virus doesn’t care about political leanings. If those leanings make you vulnerable, the virus will be looking for you. And as Utah Senator Mitt Romney has observed, “The politicization of vaccination is an outrage and frankly moronic.” Enough said.
