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Hemmingway Destroys Dem Narrative on Vaccines: 61% of Vaccine Hesitant People are NOT Republicans
Steve Straub By Steve Straub
Published July 19, 2021 at 6:04amDemocrats and their media allies like to claim that the vast majority of vaccine hesitant people are Republicans who get bad information from Fox News or Facebook.
The truth is the exact opposite as Mollie Hemmingway explains to Maura Liasson:
Rather than editorialize further, here’s the transcript of this exchange, it stands by itself:
LIASSON: “Well, you know, what we’ve heard from public health officials who has studied the way to communicate about the vaccine is that people need to hear from medical experts and get their questions answered.
In other words, the vaccine problem is not going to be solved by people calling Fauci a hack or people calling right-wing talk show hosts some kind of — I don’t know what they were calling them, but attacking them for raising questions about the vaccine.
You have to go to people where they are. What I also think is interesting about this whole controversy, it’s a big debate happening without Donald Trump. Donald Trump is proud of what he did to get the vaccines online fast.
A lot of his supporters don’t want to take them. He’s had the vaccine. He’s talked in favor of it. So I think this is kind of interesting. This is a big polarized debate and a it’s missing an element that has been present in almost every polarized debate in the last five years.”
HEMINGWAY: “If I can just point — just really quickly, this is one of the examples that you see, people make it out like it’s the Republicans that don’t want to take the vaccine. In fact, 61% of the people who are hesitant about the vaccines are not Republican. And the more the media make it out that it’s something that’s partisan, that will also going to contribute to the problems.
The more that they fail to remind people that it was President Biden and Vice President Harris, when they were running for office, who said that they didn’t have trust in the vaccine, that also makes people not trust what the media are saying.
So I think we need to be very careful and not have forgetfulness about what was happening during the campaign when the vaccine messaging was very different.”
Mollie Hemmingway really nailed that.
I agree with Mollie Hemmingway that the Biden / Harris team made a major contribution to vaccine hesitancy during the campaign by putting it down if it resulted from a Trump effort.
The administration also continues to contribute via their constant flip-flops, lack of consistency on the benefits of being vaccinated and lately, constant talk of being okay with local mandates.
After all, what ever happened to “my body, my choice?”
The Biden administration would be wise to look inward in trying to figure out why so many are hesitant to take the vaccine instead of blaming Fox News, Facebook and others.
Sadly, we all know by now that the likelihood of that happening is almost zero.
https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/hemmingway-destroys-dem-narrative-vaccines-61-vaccine-hesitant-people-not-republicans
further reading:
https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/americas-vaccine-hesitant-demographics/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-vaccine-hesitancy-presidential-encouragement/
https://www.aei.org/op-eds/if-biden-wants-to-convince-the-vaccine-hesitant-give-trump-credit-for-the-vaccines/
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/democrats-have-become-the-party-of-anti-vaxxers
https://www.wfae.org/politics/2021-04-17/are-covid-19-vaccination-rates-as-simple-as-republicans-vs-democrats
The AP story notes that polls have shown Republicans to be more vaccine-hesitant than Democrats. It doesn’t mention that some African Americans are wary about being vaccinated, although recent polls show vaccine hesitancy is declining among Black Americans.
The five worst-performing states per the AP analysis are also some of the states with the highest percentage of Black residents. Mississippi is the worst-performing state in terms of vaccine performance; it also has the highest percentage of African American residents. Louisiana has the second-highest percentage of Black residents, and it’s in the bottom five in terms of vaccine performance.
And New Hampshire? It’s one of the whitest states in the Union, where less than 1% of residents are Black.
That is not to say that African Americans are the main reason some states are lagging in vaccines. But it could be a factor.
Louisiana residents could be grouped two ways: Black Democrats and white conservatives. There is no significant constituency of white Democrats – the group that’s most enthusiastic about getting jabbed.
If you buy into simplistic CNN and Democrat explanations for vax hesitancy, you are a fool.
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Thursday July 22 2021, @03:52PM
Again, do you not understand the most basic component here? Risk, in a vacuum, is irrelevant. All that matters is risk:reward. Climbing Mt. Everest is definitely on my bucket list. And for about 1% of folks, that's a one way trip. But because it's something that I would personally value and enjoy, I believe that is a very good risk:reward ratio. Does that mean I'd be willing to engage in other activities with a 1% risk of mortality on a whim? No, it would depend on what I get out of the activity. So my risk:reward for the vaccination stuff here is: Last year, terrible mitigation measures taken, mass gatherings, only ~10% people infected. I engage in much better than average precautions. My chances of being infected? Probably somewhere in the ballpark of 0.1%, if not lower.
Odds of a bad outcome if I do get it? Excellent health, relatively young. From the CDC data last year, fewer than 10,000 people under 45 died of COVID and a huge chunk of the deaths involved people in extremely poor health including large frequencies of cancer, diabetes, obesity, etc. And we also know that at least tens of millions of people in this group were infected and probably vastly more since most people with COVID experience no symptoms = no diagnosis. For instance way back in April of last year, random tests in New York showed an overall 13.9% infection rate, including 21.2% in NYC. Today, more than a year later, their official overall infected percent is 11.2%, so obviously there is huge undercounting. So my exact odds? Impossible to really determine but something like 99.999% is reasonable.
Combine those together and my chances of facing a bad outcome are headed into the 1 in a millions territory, comparable if not better than my chances of a bad outcome from the vaccine. And so I'm opting into something that I see negligible benefit from, who continues to see ever new side effects, is providing ever lower reported protection against variants, that you will undoubtedly need ever more boosters and derivatives of, and doesn't even really provide any degree of comfort. Fewer than 60 democrats, most if not all fully vaccinated, travel to DC. They act like idiots including flying and bussing with no masks or distancing. Now 10% of them have COVID. What an amazing vaccine.