The Polls Are In: Vaccine Hesitancy Higher Among White Republicans Than Any Other Group

Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on Apr 21, 2021

More than one-third of Republican voters, for example, said that people without COVID-19 symptoms could not spread the virus and that COVID-19 was killing fewer people than the seasonal flu. Those beliefs are as wrong today as they were when then-President Donald Trump stated them more than a year ago.

But when Democrats were asked how often COVID-19 patients had to be hospitalized, almost 70% said — or guessed — 20% or more when the actual hospitalization rate is less than 5%. We all have a lot to learn.

The gap between science and whatever world politicians live in was illustrated quite loudly in a House hearing last week to discuss the nation’s mitigation measures. Ohio Republican Jim Jordan’s passions were blazing as he pressed immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci, a Biden chief medical adviser, for a pandemic exit date.

“What measure, what standard, what objective outcome, do we have to reach before Americans get their liberty and freedoms back?” he declared in his characteristic rapid-fire, made-for-TV fashion. “... First Amendment rights,” and rights to attend church, petition one’s government, freedom of the press and freedom of speech have “all been assaulted.”

He might as well have said, “Give me back my right to get sick.”

“I don’t look at this as a liberty thing,” Fauci replied as Jordan interjected, “That’s obvious.”

Committee chair Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, finally blew the whistle.

“You need to respect the chair,” she said, “and shut your mouth.”

The moment went viral on late-night talk shows and the web, and played well, I’m sure, with the side of Jordan’s conservative base that sees the federal guardians of public health as some sort of deep state conspiracy to rob us of our freedoms.

Instead we need the best, up-to-date information we can get regarding a disease about which science professionals are learning more every day.

Many of those lessons come to us from what has often been called the “laboratory of the states,” where, despite Jordan’s rant about dictatorial powers, some Republican governors, in particular, have been pushing the envelope by lifting restrictions on their own.

For example, in Texas, where more than a month has passed since Gov. Greg Abbott ended virtually all statewide pandemic restrictions, the worst predictions of a new surge in cases have not come true — so far.

Experts are divided on why that happened and warned that it might not last. But let’s keep our fingers crossed — and focus our fight on the coronavirus, not each other.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)