Vaccinated Anger & Medical Bias
It’s official: we’re into the fourth wave of the pandemic.
All 50 states saw new coronavirus cases rise for the fourth day in a row on a rolling seven-day average ending on Sunday, an ominous run not seen since the spring 2020 surge.
Deaths are up 25% from two weeks ago.
COVID surges around the country are leading health officials to say we need to get serious about masking up again. Roughly 5,500 fully vaccinated people have been hospitalized or died from COVID-19, among the more than 160 million people who have been fully vaccinated, the CDC reports. (For reference, that’s about a .000034375 rate of infection, so just slap on a mask to be safe.)
"Instead of vax it OR mask it, the emerging data suggests CDC should be advising to vax it and mask it in areas with (rising) cases and positivity until we see numbers going back down again," former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams said on Twitter.
The cause for all this concern is the increased ability of the Delta variant to spread. Yale Medicine reports that public health experts estimate that the average person who gets infected with Delta spreads it to three or four other people, as compared with one or two other people through the original coronavirus strain.
Of course, this wave wouldn’t be such a problem were it not for legions of the unvaccinated. They now account for the vast majority of COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths in the U.S., according to available data.
Headed into the weekend, the President and members of the administration made their disgust with the purveyors of misinformation front and center.
https://twitter.com/FBoversight/status/1416114496679157762?s=20
Facebook’s role in disseminating misinformation has been called out as an example. The social media giant called on the administration to stop “finger pointing,” and highlighted its own efforts to clamp down on lies about the vaccines.
That’s wonderful to hear, but it ignores the fact that it’s too little, too late. And a slowness to react to misinformation and inflammatory commentary have been the hallmark of how all the various platforms have responded. This isn’t about free speech (which is only guaranteed as far as what the government says you can say), it’s about using controversy as a tool for keeping and expanding market share.
From Politico:
The pushback is a change of tone and approach from earlier this year, when the White House often chose to ignore its most vocal conservative critics out of a desire not to elevate them. It is a tacit acknowledgment that the July 4 goal of 70 percent vaccination nationwide was overly optimistic, if not naive. And it underscores that two realities are setting in: It’s becoming more difficult to convince vaccine-skeptics to get their shots (of the 10 least vaccinated states, all were won by Donald Trump in 2020) and the anti-vaccine voices, already vocal in the country, are becoming more mainstreamed by Republicans eager to oppose Biden-led initiatives.
https://twitter.com/LisPower1/status/1416043805233537027?s=20
Right wingers took this criticism and ran with it, spinning yet another round of falsehoods designed to keep people afraid (and give money).
Via the Salt Lake City Tribune:
Recently, Newsmax host Rob Schmitt said vaccines go “against nature” and that some diseases are “supposed to wipe out a certain number of people.” The Biden administration’s plan for vaccine outreach, possibly going door to door in some areas of the country with lower vaccination rates, has also sparked outrage on the right, especially among Fox News hosts who have railed against the idea.
“We have these talking heads who have gotten the vaccine and are telling other people not to get it. That kind of stuff is dangerous, it’s damaging, and it’s killing people,``said Utah Gov. Spencer Cox.
Recent polling shows a deep political divide over whether Americans will get vaccinated against the coronavirus. Overall, just 20% of Americans say they would not get vaccinated, but among Republicans only, that number jumps to more than a third.
There can be no doubt about the politicization of what should be a simple preventative health measure. Republican-leaning media figures may be getting all the publicity for ginning up fear among their followers, but there is a less publicized reaction on the other side of the aisle.
Those who are vaccinated are also angry; furious might be a better word. People who believe in science, understand we’re all in this together, and realize that personal responsibility means having some consideration for those around us also want to be heard.
Trust me on this point; a return to lockdowns and other restrictions will have a political impact, and not in the way the Tucker Carlsons of the world think it will.
What we need to understand in expressing that anger is that the media coverage of testosterone-driven vaxxers hides the reality of the nuances driving individual decisions to not get vaccinated.
Yes, it’s mostly Republicans who are refusing the jab. But it might surprise you to learn that it’s Republican women who are more resistant to the idea.
Some of the more widespread falsehoods about the vaccine concern infertility, how mRNA vaccines could lead to “mutations” or “birth defects,” and how even associating with vaccinated people could cause potential harm to pregnant women.
Google searches for a connection between infertility and COVID-19 vaccines “increased by 34,900%” following publication of a repeatedly debunked online petition signed by a former vice president of Pfizer.
As Mark Sumner at Daily Kos observes, these falsehoods feed off long-simmering frustration many women have about how they are (not) treated by the medical profession.
And when it comes to “why women?” there’s not just the way in which concerns over COVID-19 vaccines have been attached to pregnancy and children. There’s also a longstanding issue—in fact, a semi-eternal issue—in which women don’t feel like doctors or other medical experts are looking out for their concerns. As The New York Times reported back in 2018, “Health care providers may have implicit biases that affect the way women are heard, understood and treated.”
To give a personal example, my wife went to her doctor repeatedly complaining of pains in her back and shoulders, exhaustion, difficulty sleeping, and an inability to keep up her level of exercise. Her doctor chuckled at her and said, “You sound like a woman who’s upset about turning 50.” He recommended she see a therapist to decrease her anxiety. What she had was not anxiety. It was a two-liter tumor in her chest that had collapsed her left lung, was crushing her heart, and which within days of that visit came very close to killing her. That experience may be extreme, but it’s sadly not all that unfamiliar to way too many women.
Fixing the longstanding and well-earned distrust that many women have for medical experts may be too much to ask as a step in getting us to where we need to be when it comes to COVID-19 vaccinations. But shooting down the disinformation that is generating enough concern to generate a 10-point gap among Republican women and men is something that deserves more attention, and a better approach.
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...And then here are the legions of self-appointed experts out there, who don’t need social media to express their ignorance.
https://twitter.com/gaylechoo/status/1416033018918080513?s=20
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Lead image by Alvaro Tapia / Flickr