America seems to have a magic way of counting numbers. At the Olympic arena, it deploys a unique algorithm to place Team USA atop the medal tally; in a COVID-19 resilience list, it manages to crown itself as one of the safest places to be in the world. But by any counting methodology, the country is slipping into a fourth wave of COVID-19 and has gotten stuck in a losing streak during its dreadful battle against the virus.
And this time, it has no more excuses. It can’t blame the latest setbacks on a lack of information, PPE, or vaccines, which the nation has an enviable supply to lavish. It can’t pass the buck onto another political party, as the two back-to-back administrations have made mistakes all alike—although one by inaction and the other through failed attempts. Nor should the unbudging public take the blame, because the nation’s politicians and health officials, together with the media, have continued to spew forth confusing and conflicting messages mixed up with conspiracy theories.
Unlike previous outbreaks, the recent resurgence isn’t simply a repeated defeat or an offset of hard-won gains in fighting the virus, it also signals a much more worrisome trend—a whole-society in disarray amid long-haul public health emergencies and all-level government malfunction in guiding and aiding the public out of the woods in accordance with science. It shows that, even with an abundant stockpile of vaccines and better knowledge about the virus, the US government has still failed to convince its own people to guard against the much more transmissible and deadly Delta variant, meanwhile being unable to contain the spread of the anti-science “viruses” that surround mask-wearing, vaccination and SARS-CoV-2 itself.
Us vs. them
The rift between the vaxxers and the unvaccinated pretty much exemplifies and magnifies the long-standing “us vs. them” mentality in American society, and the division over vaccines has come with two facets.
On the one hand, the “haves-and-have-nots dilemma” has been manifested in the drive for vaccine distribution. According to a study published on August 4 by the Kaiser Family Foundation, an NGO, Black and Hispanic people in the country “remain less likely than their White counterparts to have received a vaccine.” In the 40 states surveyed, the percent of White people who have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose (49%) was “roughly 1.3 times higher than the rate for Black people (38%) and 1.1 times higher than the rate for Hispanic people (43%) as of August 2, 2021,” the research has found.
But the root cause of the problem isn’t really the uneven vaccination distribution but the mass resistance to getting the jab in the first place, as a majority of the unvaccinated are anti-vaxxers.
“I don’t want to put something unauthorized by the FDA into my body.” “I’m doing perfectly well without vaccines. No, thanks.” “Those fully vaccinated can still get infected with the Delta variant. Why bother?” … The anti-vaxxers may have a thousand reasons to say no, but they are often categorized into the same basket by media: adamant anti-science Trump supporters.
The classification isn’t entirely misplaced, given that since the very beginning of the pandemic the Trump administration did nothing but promote absurdity and propagate hatred: retailing disinfectant and hydroxychloroquine, slamming the pandemic as a democratic hoax, and calling the SARS-CoV-2 the “China virus”, etc. Even after his falling from grace, his legacy has been carried forward by his allies and loyalists in the country’s red states.
An ongoing research study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation has found that anti-vaccine sentiments are especially popular among Republicans: among unvaccinated adults, 51% are Republicans while 23% are Democrats. The study has also concluded that over half (58%) of those who fall under the category of ‘definitely not getting the vaccine’ are self-identified as Republican or Republican-leaning.
Political leaders in the red states aren’t being helpful either, if they haven’t stood completely in the way of the vaccination drive altogther. Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, is trying his best to make his state “plagued” again. Under his watch, Florida registered a record of 23,903 daily cases on August 6, one day after the governor objected to vaccine mandates at Florida hospitals.
The most dangerous part of this cul-de-sac isn’t the counterproductive efforts made by Republican politicians, but the fact that neither Republicans nor Democrats are willing to budge a bit: the anti-vaxxers are still going to resist and their liberal compatriots will continue to curse. By pointing fingers at each other ceaselessly, they risk reducing the nation into a state of public health “anarchy”, at a time when unity and togetherness are needed the most.
Instead of encouraging the anti-vaxxers to get their shots by addressing their concerns, many of which are a result of misinformation, some of the vaccinated are stepping onto a moral high ground to denounce their counterparts as unscientific, unreasonable and even abhorrent, regardless of whether the unvaccinated, and not only the anti-vaxxers but also marginalized groups, are also a part of the same society and who breathe the same air as them.
That’s why anti-vaccination sentiment has evolved into a whole-of-society issue and a nationwide headache, because no one could possibly stay immune. And the intensified and incessant partisan quarrels over vaccines can never encourage the public to get vaccinated, pretty much like all-day-long fights between parents won’t persuade their child into eating healthy. When anti-vaxxers are unwilling to change their minds and unable to change their tunes, the rest of the divided nation is bound to suffer.
