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Vaccine refusal has not become a major partisan political issue in any other country. It happened here because of the shameless cynicism of the Republican Party

Vaccine refusal has not become a major partisan political issue in any other country. It happened here because of the shameless cynicism of the Republican Party and aligned media apparatus.

Wohlf 5y ago
The US isn't even the most anti-vaccine country in the developed world, that goes to France.
- hadlock 5y ago
  Do you have a link to the most recent data? I recall The Netherlands having some severe resistance to masks etc, but I haven't seen a breakdown of vaccine uptake by country in recent months.
- ithkuil 5y ago
  You can have a strong and vocal anti-vaccine population and yet not have a strong divide on party lines. One factor is that not all countries have such a strong two party system that polarizes every single thing.
- xadhominemx 5y ago
  No, their single dose rate is already 10% higher than the US and increasing at a faster rate.
laurent92 5y ago
Same in France: Macron, the entire government and their health advisors said the following: - Everyone should go to the opera/cinema to fight Covid (7th March 2020) - Lockdown for everybody (20th March) (I guess people caught it in the theaters…) - Masks are useless, absolutely useless for the general public (June 2020), - Masks are mandatory (September), - Blocking borders is useless, Covid will be here, - Borders blocked during Lockdown II and III, if I remember the dates, because it’s useful (so maybe we should have stopped the direct flights between WUHAN and Lyon earlier than September 2020?), - The idea of Passe Sanitaire (a generalized QR code suspending entrance in public buildings) is a conspiration theory (10th May 2021) - Passe Sanitaire mandatory on August 1st, live and enforced in all public places except offices, including outdoor restaurants and public transport. - Trust us this time, the vaccine is the right thing, - But both research companies and ministers are exempt from legal responsibility on these vaccines, - Given they injected 10,000 patients with AIDS in 1989, and took 6 years to admit it, and press wasn’t under État d’Urgence Sanitaire at the time, (and also, they didn’t know that Benalla had kept and used 6 diplomatic passports after being fired, just to show how they work). If anything, they have taught us to doubt everything they say: They clearly didn’t know what they were doing, and did governance-by-lying.
- phh 5y ago
  Overall I agree, however: > But both research companies and ministers are exempt from legal responsibility on these vaccines, What does that even mean? You're in France, you'll be treated no matter whether someone is responsible or not. I don't think you can be liable of something going wrong if you did everything properly (which is the case). Everyone, governement and research companies, followed all the laws. Legal responsability exist only if you didn't respect the laws. If they didn't follow the laws, they won't be exempt from lawsuits. So. What does "But both research companies and ministers are exempt from legal responsibility on these vaccines," mean?
  - aiilns 5y ago
    It means that no one wants to take responsibility for any side effects. And it obviously creates mistrust. If the state is practically mandating you to be vaccinated for covid they (or the companies that make the vaccine) should be held responsible for anything that happens to you. You can't have it both ways; either there are no distinctions between vaccinated and unvaccinated people (no measures that only affect unvaccinated people) or someone can be held responsible for any resulting disability or death.
    - lutorm 5y ago
      It seems to me that the state can mandate vaccination if they determine that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, full well knowing that there may be (probably will be, in fact) some rare side effects. How is this different than the state drafting people into the military, knowing that some of them will die? In both cases, the state is obviously responsible for the outcomes. But that doesn't mean that there is a liability on the behalf of the state, or that you can hold an individual functionary working for the state responsible.
      - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
        There were many, many protests against many drafts, so yeah, people don't want to be forcefully drafted either.
paul_f 5y ago
I think the issue of vaccine hesitancy is much more nuanced than this. For example, according to the CDC, the population least vaccinated in the US are black. https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/latest-data-on-covid-19-vaccinations-race-ethnicity/ https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/latest-...
- xadhominemx 5y ago
  Black people have their own idiosyncratic reasons for vaccine skepticism, unrelated to partisan politics. But anyway, Trump support is still a stronger correlation: https://mobile.twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/1420745331868844032 https://mobile.twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/14207453318...
  - paul_f 5y ago
    We should stop with the "it's just the Trump supporters" thinking. Yes them, but various other groups including PhDs. A Carnegie Mellon study identified the groups with the most vaccine hesitancy. "independent hesitancy risk factors included younger age, non-Asian race, having a PhD or ≤high school education, living in a rural county, living in a county with higher 2020 Trump support, lack of worry about COVID-19, working outside the home, never intentionally avoiding contact with others, and no past-year flu vaccine. " https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.20.21260795v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.20.21260795v...
    - acdha 5y ago
      It’s definitely not just Republicans but note that they’re the only one of those groups with bullion-dollar companies pushing a constant stream of messages downplaying they risk of COVID and hyping any plausible concern about vaccination or masks. If Rubert Murdoch gave the word, the amount of energy pushing antivax messages would go down by an order of magnitude overnight.
      - rootusrootus 5y ago
lisper 5y ago
That's not true. The same thing has happened in France and Brazil. Possibly other places too, I haven't really been keeping up.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jokethrowaway 5y ago
It happened in tons of countries People are not that different
partiallypro 5y ago
You must be joking? As bad as (some) Republicans are let's not forget Biden, Harris, Schumer, etc saying they wouldn't take the "Trump Vaccine." Not only did that put distrust into the hearts of people on the left, it also gave ammunition for the people on the right. It should have never been a political issue. Unfortunately this is a bipartisan problem (though right now it's more prevalent on the right, I suspect if Trump had won the number on the left would balloon,) a lot of people on the West Coast you'd otherwise call "liberal" are anti-vaxxers and have been for decades. It's a weird coalition of people on the left and right. Now outside of the US, anti-vaxxers are in every country including Germany, Australia, the UK. It's a global problem. It's actually the "third world" that seems to have less vaccine hesitance. Probably because they've seen the recent benefits of vaccines and they have less access to misinformation.
- btilly 5y ago
  No, definitely not joking. As https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/lockdown-effectiveness-much-more https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/lockdown-effectiveness... notes, there is essentially zero correlation between any European government's policy at one time or another. They all adjusted to what was happening with COVID, no matter what other political alignments those in power had. (Yes, even Sweden.) By contrast in the USA, and ONLY in the USA, COVID became a partisan issue so state policies didn't change much.
  - dmdmmdmdmd 5y ago
    lol another user gave an example of how this is a partisan issue in France
- TenJack 5y ago
  As far as I can tell Biden and Harris said they distrusted the Trump rollout of the vaccine but not the vaccine itself. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jul/23/tiktok-posts/biden-harris-doubted-trump-covid-19-vaccines-not-v/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jul/23/tiktok-pos...
  - 5y ago
lobocinza 5y ago
Vaccine refusal is a major partisan political issue on Brazil. Current president didn't want to take proper action and pushed for "herd immunity". And created, shared and supported the craziest conspiracy stories with his alienated supporters. Like Trump but worse.
- rafaelero 5y ago
  And still, 95% of the population intends to take the shot anyways. What's happening in the US is really curious and can't be attributed solely to politics. I would love to hear a more comprehensive explanation for why antivax ideas could proliferate to such a large extent in the US.
  - bmeski 5y ago
    1. Big pharma + medical community shoving opioids down our throats for decades leading to a nationwide heroin issue, all so doctors could keep driving their 7 series. 2. Fauci lied about masks. How can we believe him moving forward? Simply swap him out for the greater good and get better with messaging. Why the need to keep this one fucker’s name clear at the expense of millions of Americans faith in government? 3. We were lied to about WMDs, spent 20 years in the Middle East fighting for nothing. Many who fought and died were republicans and might be skeptical of our responses to large scale events. 4. Our political leaders knew about the Virus as early as November 2019, traded stocks and did quite well before, during, and after the crash in April 2020. 5. Local news is a joke so most people get their news and hear things via Facebook, Twitter, Big News...etc which create partisan knowledge bubbles.
    - dang 5y ago
      Please stop posting flamewar comments.
    - xadhominemx 5y ago
      Oh come on man. None of this explains why vaccine refusal is sharply partisan.
jacoblambda 5y ago
Vaccine refusal has gotten pretty close in Japan. The LDP has been capitalising on this to justify their incredibly poor COVID response and their "nothing could be done and nothing can be done" mentality.
- bmeski 5y ago
  Honestly, they might be the most realistic about this whole thing. You can’t stop a tsunami.
  - account42 5y ago
    You don't wait out on the beach if you know a tsunami is coming.
    - bmeski 5y ago
      That’s true. But this one had already hit.
onetimeusename 5y ago
I think making a comment like yours is exactly how things become politicized or at the very least contributes to it being so. It creates a climate of mutual distrust which in turn can feed paranoia on both sides and create a hostile environment where propagandizing and skepticism fuel a downward spiral in discourse.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

Vaccine refusal has not become a major partisan political issue in any other country. It happened here because of the shameless cynicism of the Republican Party and aligned media apparatus.

Wohlf 5y ago

The US isn't even the most anti-vaccine country in the developed world, that goes to France.

hadlock 5y ago
Do you have a link to the most recent data? I recall The Netherlands having some severe resistance to masks etc, but I haven't seen a breakdown of vaccine uptake by country in recent months.
ithkuil 5y ago
You can have a strong and vocal anti-vaccine population and yet not have a strong divide on party lines. One factor is that not all countries have such a strong two party system that polarizes every single thing.
xadhominemx 5y ago
No, their single dose rate is already 10% higher than the US and increasing at a faster rate.

laurent92 5y ago

Same in France: Macron, the entire government and their health advisors said the following: - Everyone should go to the opera/cinema to fight Covid (7th March 2020) - Lockdown for everybody (20th March) (I guess people caught it in the theaters…) - Masks are useless, absolutely useless for the general public (June 2020), - Masks are mandatory (September), - Blocking borders is useless, Covid will be here, - Borders blocked during Lockdown II and III, if I remember the dates, because it’s useful (so maybe we should have stopped the direct flights between WUHAN and Lyon earlier than September 2020?), - The idea of Passe Sanitaire (a generalized QR code suspending entrance in public buildings) is a conspiration theory (10th May 2021) - Passe Sanitaire mandatory on August 1st, live and enforced in all public places except offices, including outdoor restaurants and public transport. - Trust us this time, the vaccine is the right thing, - But both research companies and ministers are exempt from legal responsibility on these vaccines, - Given they injected 10,000 patients with AIDS in 1989, and took 6 years to admit it, and press wasn’t under État d’Urgence Sanitaire at the time, (and also, they didn’t know that Benalla had kept and used 6 diplomatic passports after being fired, just to show how they work). If anything, they have taught us to doubt everything they say: They clearly didn’t know what they were doing, and did governance-by-lying.

phh 5y ago
Overall I agree, however: > But both research companies and ministers are exempt from legal responsibility on these vaccines, What does that even mean? You're in France, you'll be treated no matter whether someone is responsible or not. I don't think you can be liable of something going wrong if you did everything properly (which is the case). Everyone, governement and research companies, followed all the laws. Legal responsability exist only if you didn't respect the laws. If they didn't follow the laws, they won't be exempt from lawsuits. So. What does "But both research companies and ministers are exempt from legal responsibility on these vaccines," mean?
- aiilns 5y ago
  It means that no one wants to take responsibility for any side effects. And it obviously creates mistrust. If the state is practically mandating you to be vaccinated for covid they (or the companies that make the vaccine) should be held responsible for anything that happens to you. You can't have it both ways; either there are no distinctions between vaccinated and unvaccinated people (no measures that only affect unvaccinated people) or someone can be held responsible for any resulting disability or death.
  - lutorm 5y ago
    It seems to me that the state can mandate vaccination if they determine that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, full well knowing that there may be (probably will be, in fact) some rare side effects. How is this different than the state drafting people into the military, knowing that some of them will die? In both cases, the state is obviously responsible for the outcomes. But that doesn't mean that there is a liability on the behalf of the state, or that you can hold an individual functionary working for the state responsible.
    - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
      There were many, many protests against many drafts, so yeah, people don't want to be forcefully drafted either.

paul_f 5y ago

I think the issue of vaccine hesitancy is much more nuanced than this. For example, according to the CDC, the population least vaccinated in the US are black. https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/latest-data-on-covid-19-vaccinations-race-ethnicity/ https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/latest-...

xadhominemx 5y ago
Black people have their own idiosyncratic reasons for vaccine skepticism, unrelated to partisan politics. But anyway, Trump support is still a stronger correlation: https://mobile.twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/1420745331868844032 https://mobile.twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/14207453318...
- paul_f 5y ago
  We should stop with the "it's just the Trump supporters" thinking. Yes them, but various other groups including PhDs. A Carnegie Mellon study identified the groups with the most vaccine hesitancy. "independent hesitancy risk factors included younger age, non-Asian race, having a PhD or ≤high school education, living in a rural county, living in a county with higher 2020 Trump support, lack of worry about COVID-19, working outside the home, never intentionally avoiding contact with others, and no past-year flu vaccine. " https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.20.21260795v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.20.21260795v...
  - acdha 5y ago
    It’s definitely not just Republicans but note that they’re the only one of those groups with bullion-dollar companies pushing a constant stream of messages downplaying they risk of COVID and hyping any plausible concern about vaccination or masks. If Rubert Murdoch gave the word, the amount of energy pushing antivax messages would go down by an order of magnitude overnight.
    - rootusrootus 5y ago

lisper 5y ago

That's not true. The same thing has happened in France and Brazil. Possibly other places too, I haven't really been keeping up.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jokethrowaway 5y ago

It happened in tons of countries People are not that different

partiallypro 5y ago

You must be joking? As bad as (some) Republicans are let's not forget Biden, Harris, Schumer, etc saying they wouldn't take the "Trump Vaccine." Not only did that put distrust into the hearts of people on the left, it also gave ammunition for the people on the right. It should have never been a political issue. Unfortunately this is a bipartisan problem (though right now it's more prevalent on the right, I suspect if Trump had won the number on the left would balloon,) a lot of people on the West Coast you'd otherwise call "liberal" are anti-vaxxers and have been for decades. It's a weird coalition of people on the left and right. Now outside of the US, anti-vaxxers are in every country including Germany, Australia, the UK. It's a global problem. It's actually the "third world" that seems to have less vaccine hesitance. Probably because they've seen the recent benefits of vaccines and they have less access to misinformation.

btilly 5y ago
No, definitely not joking. As https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/lockdown-effectiveness-much-more https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/lockdown-effectiveness... notes, there is essentially zero correlation between any European government's policy at one time or another. They all adjusted to what was happening with COVID, no matter what other political alignments those in power had. (Yes, even Sweden.) By contrast in the USA, and ONLY in the USA, COVID became a partisan issue so state policies didn't change much.
- dmdmmdmdmd 5y ago
  lol another user gave an example of how this is a partisan issue in France
TenJack 5y ago
As far as I can tell Biden and Harris said they distrusted the Trump rollout of the vaccine but not the vaccine itself. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jul/23/tiktok-posts/biden-harris-doubted-trump-covid-19-vaccines-not-v/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jul/23/tiktok-pos...
- 5y ago

lobocinza 5y ago

Vaccine refusal is a major partisan political issue on Brazil. Current president didn't want to take proper action and pushed for "herd immunity". And created, shared and supported the craziest conspiracy stories with his alienated supporters. Like Trump but worse.

rafaelero 5y ago
And still, 95% of the population intends to take the shot anyways. What's happening in the US is really curious and can't be attributed solely to politics. I would love to hear a more comprehensive explanation for why antivax ideas could proliferate to such a large extent in the US.
- bmeski 5y ago
  1. Big pharma + medical community shoving opioids down our throats for decades leading to a nationwide heroin issue, all so doctors could keep driving their 7 series. 2. Fauci lied about masks. How can we believe him moving forward? Simply swap him out for the greater good and get better with messaging. Why the need to keep this one fucker’s name clear at the expense of millions of Americans faith in government? 3. We were lied to about WMDs, spent 20 years in the Middle East fighting for nothing. Many who fought and died were republicans and might be skeptical of our responses to large scale events. 4. Our political leaders knew about the Virus as early as November 2019, traded stocks and did quite well before, during, and after the crash in April 2020. 5. Local news is a joke so most people get their news and hear things via Facebook, Twitter, Big News...etc which create partisan knowledge bubbles.
  - dang 5y ago
    Please stop posting flamewar comments.
  - xadhominemx 5y ago
    Oh come on man. None of this explains why vaccine refusal is sharply partisan.

jacoblambda 5y ago

Vaccine refusal has gotten pretty close in Japan. The LDP has been capitalising on this to justify their incredibly poor COVID response and their "nothing could be done and nothing can be done" mentality.

bmeski 5y ago
Honestly, they might be the most realistic about this whole thing. You can’t stop a tsunami.
- account42 5y ago
  You don't wait out on the beach if you know a tsunami is coming.
  - bmeski 5y ago
    That’s true. But this one had already hit.

onetimeusename 5y ago

I think making a comment like yours is exactly how things become politicized or at the very least contributes to it being so. It creates a climate of mutual distrust which in turn can feed paranoia on both sides and create a hostile environment where propagandizing and skepticism fuel a downward spiral in discourse.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]