When did vaccination become another thing to fight about?
A year ago, the former president, promised his Project Warp Speed vaccines were coming to the rescue. Trump lost the election, but three vaccines were approved by the FDA and rolled out last winter. Since then, 180 million of us have been fully vaccinated. For months, free vaccines have been available at your local Kroger or CVS.
Yet about 80 million eligible Americans remain unvaccinated, letting millions of doses go to waste. Now COVID continues to infect hundreds of thousands of vaccine resisters daily, killing more than 1,900 of them each day. The New York Times reports local risk of infection is “extreme” for the unvaccinated, who clog local ICUs.
So what’s with those vaccine avoiders?
Whether to get the “jab” has become yet another culture war front. Vaccination rates diverge along the region’s red/blue fault lines. In blue Hamilton County, about 56% of those eligible (12 and above) have received at least one shot, close to the national average of 64%, but still too low. But vaccination rates plummet in adjoining Trump-leaning ex-urban and rural counties, like Butler (52%), Clermont (52%) and Brown (38%). This mirrors the low vaccination rates in deep red states like Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee, where COVID infections and hospitalizations have exploded thanks to the more infectious Delta variant.
Many of us rolled up our sleeves at the first opportunity, relying on the advice of FDA, the CDC, Dr. Anthony Fauci and our own physicians, who vouched for the vaccines’ safety. We understood it would take a collective commitment of 80% or more to us to free us from COVID, just as vaccines had freed prior generations from polio, mumps, measles and smallpox.
Vaccine deniers offer a variety of excuses. A small percentage have legitimate medical concerns, like allergies. But too many of the resisters seem to rely on disinformation. Resisters purchase horse de-wormers at feed stores instead of walking into Walmart for a free vaccine.
While it’s tempting to let resisters play COVID roulette with their own lives, their continued resistance means COVID is not ending anytime soon, giving more infectious variants time to emerge. That’s an ongoing threat to those who can’t get vaccinated, like kids under 12.
The burden the non-vaccinated place on health care workers has become overwhelming. A friend who serves as a pediatric critical care nurse recently described her anguish caring for the premature babies of unvaccinated women who died of COVID.
“So we now have motherless premature babies in the unit. We are full, short staffed every day with no relief in sight,” she says. She and her colleagues are fed up with having to help those “who won’t trust the science when it comes to getting a shot in the arm, but have no problem trusting the same science to save them, all the while overwhelming the ICU beyond capacity.”
In response, many employers, including local hospitals, the city of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS) now require either vaccines or weekly testing for all employees. Polls show a majority of Americans back such mandates. I’m happy my grandkids’ CPS teachers will be vaccinated or tested weekly. Most of us feel the same way about the cook or waitress at Skyline.
“Freedom” is the latest mantra of Republicans like Hamilton County GOP Chair AlexTriantafilou, who recently tweeted that he opposed employer mandates, saying, “Freedom used to unite us.” For most of us, “freedom” means our ability to safely go mask-less to schools, offices and restaurants without fearing we will bring COVID home to our families.
Ohio and most states—red and blue—have long required vaccines for a variety of diseases, including polio, mumps and measles, which no longer pose a threat to our kids. Let’s hope employer mandates can help bring about an end to COVID and more avoidable deaths.
