The COVID-19 vaccines, Trump, and anti-vaxxers

Politics & Elections
1

Let’s debate the trust people have in the various COVID-19 vaccines that are soon to be available. In particular, I’m wondering about the lack of trust from Trump supporters. Here’s a 538 article on some polls about the vaccines and who will be willing to take one.

Republicans are less likely to trust the vaccines than Democrats. Normally I wouldn’t be surprised by that. What is interesting is that Trump himself has pushed the vaccines with his Operation Warp Speed. Trump even went so far as to threaten the FDA to approve the Pfizer vaccine. Given all that, I would expect the MAGAs to be lining up around the block to get their Trump vaccine. Yet it seems they are among the groups least likely to trust the vaccines. What’s going on with that?

I put this in GD because it’s a little COVID related and a little politics related, but definitely up for debate. Please move to a different forum if appropriate.

2

I’m curious also. Is Trump going to go all out to encourage people to ge the vaccine once he gets done trying to disenfranchise millions? And if he does, will anti-Vaxxer Trumpists head explode? I’ve seen the usual garbage about the vaccine containing nanobots and the like. Are these people going to think Trump is in on the conspiracy?
I’m not good at predicting the actions of the irrational, so I don’t have a guess.

3

As soon as he’s not President, his goals shift to making sure Biden does not succeed in containing the pandemic either.

Continuing to push for “freedom not masks”, and “freedom not dem vaccines” and “freedom not Gates mind control chips” will go down very nicely with his supporters.

4

At work, we had a video meeting this week, and we discussed the vaccine.

Some people thought the vaccine could sterilize women, so they say women of childbearing age shouldn’t take it. Sigh I have a biology degree but that is outweighed by their fear.

Making matters worse, this was a very quickly-developed vaccine. Two of my family members don’t think it’s safe, and will not be early adopters. One is in her seventies.

5

I’m going to be interested to see the amount of overlap between (a) the maskholes and covidiots who have been refusing to follow common-sense public-health protocols in the pandemic because they claim they “aren’t willing to live in fear”, and (b) people who refuse to get an approved COVID vaccine because they’re terrified of either some silly conspiracy-theory rumor about it or else the possibility of an individual bad vaccine reaction (the prospect of which, of course, is much less serious in both likelihood and severity of effects than getting the virus itself).

6

Trump and his supporters have never had any problem with cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, Trump is personally responsible for delivering the best vaccine in record time to save us all. On the other hand, the entire pandemic is fake news, fabricated to discredit Trump.

In the early stages of the vaccination rollout, any effect at the population level on herd immunity is not yet so significant, we’re inoculating high risk groups to give them individual protection. So people in high risk groups who refuse early vaccination are predominantly harming only themselves.

Later in the process, of course, the people who really get screwed over by widespread refusal and failure to achieve herd immunity are the people who for medical reasons cannot be vaccinated, plus the few percent of people who do get vaccinated but are unfortunate enough to catch it anyway.

7

Moved to P&E from GD. It seems like the best fit.

8

Personally, the majority of the anti-vaxxers I know are on the liberal side of the spectrum, but that’s largely who I associate with, so no surprise there. The liberal anti-vaxxers are the ones that tend (generalities of course) to feel that GMO / Non-organic / Processed materials are automatically bad for you, and object on the grounds of safety.

The few anti-vaxxers I know (at least by remove, such as at work) of the conservative sort, hate vaccinations because ‘the government’ requires them. It’s a patriotic duty to reject them, plus assorted conspiracy theories normally involving embedded tracking chips and the like.

Both groups are wary, and I’m not even including the people like myself who are pro-vaccine but worried about potentially over-rushed production with insufficiently large test groups. As a (just) sub-50 with no underlying health conditions, I am of multiple minds about getting it ASAP once it become available widely, or waiting although I’d say I’d be 80/20 for/against getting it ASAP.

About how Trump is going to use the vaccine politically, I’m going to bet hard on taking 100% of the credit for getting it out there, and then slamming Biden for the problem not being fixed the moment Biden takes office. After all, in the Trumpy world, he "gave* everyone the fix, and if the US is still having problems with COVID 6 months from now, well, who else could be responsible?

:roll_eyes:

And despite how Trump decided to lowball orders of vaccine, of course any shortages will be Biden’s fault as well. So Trump will treat it as win-win. Meanwhile his supporters will likely under-vaccinate due to the reasons I posted above, as well as general COVID denial, and they will be instrumental in keeping the numbers of transmissions, hospitalizations, and deaths at terrifying highs even with the vaccine.

So, yeah, on this, figure it’s going to be 2020 still for a long, loooong time.

9

I don’t think it’s this bad. I’m going to completely discount anti-vaxxers who get sick and die themselves through their own choices. I’m only concerned with the effect on the (say) 60% who do get vaccinated if 40% of the population refuses vaccination. Well, first of all, 60% immunization might be enough for herd immunity. What if it’s not, and there is still community spread?

Estimates for the infection fatality rate are (very roughly):
40-yr-old = 0.1%
60-yr-old = 1%
80-yr-old = 10%
So if the vaccine is 90% effective, you can reduce those numbers by a factor of 10 for people who do get vaccinated. That’s the benefit without factoring in any benefit from reduced transmission or full herd immunity, or improved treatment outcomes with less pressure on hospitals.

I guess the big outlier would be if it turns out that there are subtle long-term harmful effects in a much large proportion of apparently asymptomatic people that we haven’t yet picked up on. Then a failure to achieve herd immunity through immunization would be a disaster.

10

I bet the overlap is large. Yugely large. Deliberately manipulatedly yugely large.

If one believes the disease is fake and therefore the pandemic is fake, then clearly the vaccine is completely unnecessary for its stated purpose. So it has to be for some other purpose. Cue eerie music and headlines ending in question marks.

Similarly, but still different, if one is into freedom from coercive masks, then one is highly likely to to be into freedom from coercive vaccination.

Your specific “becauses” may be a small(er) overlap, but as others have already said, the Force of cognitive dissonance is strong in these people.

11

Although I regard this as highly implausible, the vaccine hasn’t been studied nearly long enough to know for sure. That’s one of the problems with warp speed.

Added: As an 83 YO, I will be first in line as soon as it is available for my cohort. Too bad Trump has already had it. Would he have taken the vaccine?

12

Well, I’m already sterilized by old age. So no worries there. ;). (But young enough to be pretty far down the line. So I guess I will be waiting for a while whether I want to or not.)

That’s an interesting claim. We obviously don’t have any data about that, yet, but I see no reason to suspect that would be an issue. It was a good rumor to spread if you want to scare people off of the vaccine, because it will take so long to have good data.

13

Only if he is making money from people getting the vaccine. This is really the only consideration for him. No money for Trump = No vaccine promotion.

I am pretty sure that he has already asked the vaccine companies for a kickback and was refused, so I think we can all see where this is going; Trump will soon be heading the Anti-vaxxer conspiracy theory laden campaigns.

Plus, added bonus; more dead people to blame on Biden.

Don’t be surprised when Republicans blame Biden for all the Covid deaths in 2020.

14

[GOP] Well, he was elected in 2020, right? There you go. [/GOP]

15

Some good news: the percentage of Americans who say they’re willing to be vaccinated against Covid-19 has been increasing:

After being almost as bad as Republicans in September regarding suspicion of/unwillingness to get vaccinated, Democrats now have considerably more favorable views about a Covid-19 vaccine (69% saying they’d accept it, compared to 49% of Republicans and 49% of independents).*

Still a lot of work to do, but if the clinical trial results regarding safety and effectiveness translate well to society in general (and as people see that 1) they aren’t transformed in newts, and 2) getting back to relatively normal lives will be aided by vaccination), expect pro-vax views to keep gaining traction.

*note that the question about willingness to be vaccinated specifies getting it right now. A lot of people who ultimately are very likely to accept the shot are somewhat leery about being first adopters of brand-new vaccine technology.
**Trumpians have an uncanny ability to hold multiple contradictory beliefs simultaneously, so they can overlook their Leader’s bewildering Covid-19 vaccine support.

16

The one Trumpster I have contact with, although he admits that the virus is real, thinks that it only affects old people with health problems who were about to die anyway, that we are on the edge of achieving herd immunity even without the vaccine, and would have been there sooer without the pesky mask mandates. So he doesn’t feel inclined to take it since it hasn’t been fully tested.

But he may no represent the average Trumpster.

As far as the official Trump line (lie), suspect that the Trump vaccine which is a miracle beyond belief that nobody ever would have considered if Trump handn’t been in office and which will wipe away the virus in two weeks, will ,on January 20th, suddenly transform into the Biden/Sorros vaccine which is satan in a syringe, infects you with Covid and make will make you gay.

17

Of course. Trump couldn’t do anything about Covid because the Democrats were mean to him.
The reason I think Trump personally might not be anti Covid vax is because it is about the only thing he can point to as an accomplishment. Because of course a Clinton presidency would do everything possible to slow down vaccine development all over the world.
I don’t think he was looking for money from them, he was looking for them to rush the vaccine before election day.

18

My own hypothesis on the lowball of the orders is that he was (a) counting on that a lot of people would not want it, (b) not wanting to let a possible new administration have them, counting on that if he won AND it turned out more were needed, then he’d renegotiate while tweeting “the vaccine is the fruit of our Warp Speed! Pharma companies MUST redirect all their orders to AMERICA FIRST!!!”

19

Every single one of the rabid anti-vaxxers I know are rabid Trumpists as well. My brother, sister, sister-in-law and a co-worker.

Not to mention random people who are “friends of friends” on Facebook. I know of exactly one liberal who is anti-vax. A health food nut who believes that all manner of foods and health & beauty products are toxic (“chemical toothpaste!”). She’s a very antigovernment type though.

I’m pretty sure we have discussed this before and found that Democrats are much more likely to be in favor of vaccination in general and of mandatory vaccination in particular.

20

Actually, we’ve discussed it and the general consensus is that antivaxx is one of the few CTs that’s pretty much equal on both sides. The reasonings are different, of course.