America's Vaccine Paranoia
Sonali Kolhatkar
The end is in sight,
we are told. The cavalry has arrived in the form of safe and effective vaccines
for COVID-19 on the verge of approval and being manufactured for widespread
distribution. The stock market has surged in response to
every pharmaceutical company’s press release of its latest successful clinical
trial. Americans are expecting an end to this traumatic chapter of our history
and are ready to turn the page on the year 2020.
Except that if the United
States has led the world in per capita infections and deaths because of deep
skepticism from an intransigent population toward even the mildest of safety
precautions, do we expect the same people refusing to wear a face mask to take
not one, but two doses of a brand-new vaccine? We may
have safe and effective vaccines soon enough, but through a cruelly ironic
twist of our nation’s perverted political climate, society may simply refuse to
save itself.
Several key segments
of the American population have varied reasons for vaccine skepticism. Among
Black and brown communities, there is a deep-seated and justifiable mistrust
due to historical government-sanctioned medical abuse that is reflected in new polls about the
COVID-19 vaccine. On the American left, mistrust of large pharmaceutical
companies putting profits above the public health—again justifiable—is
driving cynicism about the motives of private corporations that have had
piles of taxpayer cash thrown at them.
Among liberal elites,
the growing popularity of “clean eating,” “wellness,” and taking personal responsibility for one’s
health through expensive diets and rigorous exercise regimes has seeded an
insidious movement that strives for purity as a pathway to well-being and
health. Part of that movement includes prizing natural remedies over chemical
ones, including for such life-threatening diseases as cancer. It has also
fueled the idea that medications including vaccines are “dangerous” contaminants to our bodies. Quack
doctors like Andrew Wakefield, celebrities like Jenny McCarthy, and political figures like Robert Kennedy Jr. have caused serious damage to
trust in vaccine safety. Before the pandemic, one of the biggest fears among
public health experts was the resurgence of measles fueled by falling vaccination rates.
On the right, a
similar vaccine skepticism has emerged as anti-vaccination activists court conservatives as allies, creating an unlikely coalition. Republican Senator Ron Johnson went
as far as inviting an anti-vaccine doctor to testify
before a Senate committee recently. Also prevalent is the notion that “herd
immunity”—which is a term used to describe the threshold of safety that
vaccines achieve if enough people take them—can be achieved simply by enough people catching the disease. President Donald
Trump has been one of the chief proponents of this thoroughly debunked idea.
Scientists have
estimated that at least two-thirds of the population need to be
vaccinated in order to stop the spread of COVID-19. In August, less than half of the population was willing to
take a vaccine—an unsurprising number considering the widespread mistrust of
vaccines in general. Republicans are more skeptical than Democrats, which is also not
surprising given that a majority of GOP voters still support
Trump—a president whose relentless lies and science skepticism form the basis
of his leadership. A nation so steeped in misinformation that it ushered in a
charlatan to take power for four long years is naturally susceptible to
suspicion of vaccines.
Some of the fear
stems from disbelief that an effective vaccine could be produced in such a
short period of time. Indeed, past efforts at developing effective vaccines
have taken many years. In that context, the federal
government’s “Operation Warp Speed” vaccine project has
sparked fear. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases, explained, “People don’t understand that, because when
they hear ‘Operation Warp Speed,’ they think, ‘Oh, my God, they’re jumping over
all these steps and they’re going to put us at risk.’” But in fact, decades
of critical medical research formed the
foundation upon which companies like Pfizer and Moderna have developed the mRNA
type of vaccines that have thus far exceeded scientists’ expectations in
clinical trials. Fauci explained, “The speed is a reflection of years of work
that went before.”
There is another
insidious obstacle to a vaccination program. We live in a nation enamored by
libertarian ideals. The concept of collective action to protect the common good
flies in the face of “individual liberty” and the Ayn-Rand-inspired notions that each
American is solely responsible for their own happiness and well-being. This
idea forms the basis of our health care system—or lack thereof. The coronavirus
pandemic hit the United States at a time when we have no publicly funded
universal health care system to speak of. The U.S. government’s message to
Americans is essentially that, unless you fall below the poverty line, have a
disability, or are over the age of 65, you are on your own to seek health
insurance and health care wherever you can find it. Once the novel coronavirus
entered the picture, the frailties of this disjointed, disorganized,
profit-based, and frankly cruel system were exposed like never before in recent
memory.
Now, this same flawed
system is expected to undertake a mass vaccination program to a skeptical public
while at the same time struggling to treat ever-growing numbers of COVID-19
patients needing hospitalization.
True herd immunity can only be achieved when enough
of the population has been inoculated that vulnerable populations (infants,
adults with vaccine allergies and elderly people) are protected. Vaccines don’t
just protect the individuals who take them; they offer collective safeguards
for society as a whole. A population that has been conditioned to think about
health as a solely individual concern has been hard-pressed to swallow such an
idea. Think about the obstinate mask-refusers among us.
As a journalist,
every time I address vaccine skepticism on my broadcast program, I receive
vitriolic hate mail claiming that I am a shill for “big pharma” or simply too
stupid to see the light. But we cannot let misinformation, fear, and
individualistic thinking discourage reporting on this issue. In some ways,
vaccines have become a victim of their own success. Because we have lived (until
this year) in a world relatively free of preventable but horrific diseases like
smallpox and rubella—achieved through mass vaccination—many Americans have
taken for granted the quality of life made possible through inoculation
efforts.
The good news is that
new polls show growing support for vaccination amidst an unfathomable rate of COVID-19 infections and deaths. According to one
new survey, 63 percent of Americans are now willing
to get vaccinated—close to the minimum threshold that could curb the spread of
the disease. Outreach and education efforts on accepting vaccinations in Black and Latino communities that have been
hardest hit by the disease are underway. Unfortunately, the vaccine refusers
among us will likely continue to benefit from living in a largely vaccinated
community, mooching off of the herd immunity they refuse to contribute to.
Sonali Kolhatkar is
the founder, host and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show that
airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations.
This article was
produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.