WASHINGTON – While President Biden is pushing to vaccinate as many Americans as possible, he faces deep skepticism among many Republicans, an especially challenging group for him to persuade.
While there are degrees of opposition to coronavirus vaccination among various groups, including African-Americans and anti-vaccine activists, the research suggests that opinions, in this case, are breaking up substantially along party lines.
A third of Republicans said in a CBS News poll that they would not be vaccinated – compared to 10% of Democrats – and another 20% of Republicans said they were not sure. Other research has found similar trends.
With the Biden government preparing television and internet advertising and other efforts to promote vaccination, the challenge for the White House is complicated by the perception of former President Donald J. Trump’s position on the matter. Although Trump was vaccinated before leaving office and urged conservatives last month to get vaccinated, many of his supporters seem reluctant to do so, and he played no prominent role in promoting vaccination.
Asked about the issue on Monday at the White House, Biden said that Trump’s help in promoting vaccination was less important than getting trusted people from the community to participate.
“I discussed this with my team, and they say that what has more impact than anything Trump would say to the MAGA people is what the local doctor, what the local preachers, what the local people in the community say,” Mr Biden said, referring to Trump supporters and the campaign slogan “Make America Great Again”. Until everyone is vaccinated, Biden added, Americans should continue to wear masks.
Widespread opposition to vaccination, if not overcome, could delay the United States from reaching the point where the virus can no longer spread easily, slowing down efforts to make the economy work again and people back to a more normal life. . While the problem so far has been access to relatively tight supplies of the vaccine, government officials hope to soon face the possibility that supply will exceed demand if many Americans remain reluctant.
But many conservative and rural voters continue to point to a variety of concerns. Some conservatives harbor religious concerns about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which uses fetal cell lines derived from abortion.
Republicans often cite distrust of the government as a reason for not being vaccinated, the CBS survey found. They fear that vaccines have been produced too quickly. And in some communities, so many people have had the coronavirus that they think they have developed collective immunity and do not need vaccines.
Other Trump supporters believe that Democrats have exaggerated the number of victims of the pandemic to harm the former president.
This represents a major challenge for a Democratic government, whose success depends on persuading Americans who did not vote for Biden to trust that vaccines are safe, effective and necessary.
“We are not always the best messengers,” said Jen Psaki, press secretary of the White House, last week.
This meant outsourcing a crucial part of the government’s response to coronavirus.
“It is not an easy task,” said John Bridgeland, founder and chief executive of Covid Collaborative, a bipartisan group of political and scientific leaders working on vaccine education, who hold regular meetings with the White House on the issue of vaccine hesitation.
“The good news is that the White House is on top of all these populations, including recognizing that they are not very well positioned to reach conservatives,” he said. “That’s why they are reaching out to us and other people.”
Governors lobbied the Biden government about the need for clear communication about vaccines.
White House officials said their research showed that making vaccines more accessible and gaining local adherence from doctors and pharmacists was the best way to convince skeptical conservatives to apply. They are planning an advertising campaign on television, radio and the Internet to target problem areas: young people, people of color and conservatives, said a government official.
Even while they are working to increase vaccine availability across the country, government officials are also working with groups like NTCA – the Rural Broadband Association and the National Farmers Union to reach rural communities on their behalf.
Shirley Bloomfield, the association’s chief executive, has been working with the White House to share what she is hearing from members in the field who have installed broadband lines in rural areas.
“We worked to ensure that they were designated as essential workers at the federal level,” she said. “I didn’t realize that we had this problem until people came back and said that less than 30% of my team would try.”
Ms. Bloomfield said that the second gentleman’s office, Doug Emhoff, approached her directly to ask about their members and their attitudes toward vaccines.
Mr. Trump took his vaccine in secret before leaving office. He was notably absent from a public service announcement featuring all the other living ex-presidents – Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter – being vaccinated and encouraging others to do the same.
Mr. Trump was not invited to participate, like the others, because at the time of filming, during Mr. Biden’s inauguration, he had not yet disclosed that he had been vaccinated.
But behind the scenes, there has been a quiet effort to persuade Trump to get involved. Joe Grogan, the former director of the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, under Trump’s command, has worked with Covid Collaborative to address vaccine hesitation among conservatives.
Mr. Grogan received calls about what would be the best message for Mr. Trump to persuade him to get involved – one that would inevitably underscore his desire for credit for the development of vaccines in Operation Warp Speed.
“As soon as we found out he was vaccinated, I looked for Joe Grogan,” said Bridgeland, who helped organize the commercial with the former presidents. “We are thrilled that he has been vaccinated and we very much want him to encourage his supporters to get the vaccine.”
A Trump adviser said the former president had not yet been formally approached to speak directly to his supporters.
“Having President Trump make a public service announcement would be very helpful,” said Grogan. The Biden White House, however, seems divided over the effectiveness of Trump’s involvement.
Although Biden on Monday seemed indifferent to the need for Trump’s help, his chief medical advisor, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, said on Sunday on Fox News that he “would make all the difference in the world” if the former president would encourage his supporters to be vaccinated. And Andy Slavitt, a senior White House pandemic advisor, said on Sunday that “this is an effort, Republicans must know, it started before we got here, and we are doing it.”
Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist, said the best way for the White House would be to take politics away from the issue.
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“This means that Joe Biden must recognize what Donald Trump did to speed up the production of the vaccine,” said Luntz. He has worked with the Beaumont Foundation, an organization focused on improving public health through policies, to help encourage conservatives to get vaccinated.
“I don’t believe the Trump administration understood the role of communication,” said Luntz, “and I don’t think the Biden government understands what it means to communicate to Trump voters.”
On Saturday, Luntz hosted a discussion group of about 20 conservatives to hear Tom Frieden, the former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey; and several Republican members of Congress.
Some of the conservatives in the call initially described the vaccines as “rushed” and “experimental” and the coronavirus as “opportunistic” and “government manipulation”. More than half of the people on the call said their fear of being vaccinated was greater than their fear of the virus.
But almost everyone on the call said they had a more positive view of vaccines after Frieden gave them five facts about the virus, including: “The more we vaccinate, the faster we can grow the economy and get jobs.”
Mr. Christie emphasized how random the virus can be in how it affects different people, including young adults. Not only did he and Trump become seriously ill, but he also reminded the group that Hope Hicks, the 32-year-old former Trump adviser, was also very sick.
“She was gone for a good 10 days and never had to be hospitalized, but she called me and said this is the worst illness she has ever been in,” said Christie.
For now, the White House is counting on the work of political opponents like Christie to sell the message to them. The only replacement within the Biden government that they see as effective among conservatives is Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, who is a scientist and evangelical Christian with a position in both religious and scientific communities.
In recent weeks, Dr. Collins has appeared on the Christian Broadcasting Network’s “Club 700”, a program popular with evangelical Christians that has been hosted by Pat Robertson for decades. Dr. Collins is also planning to speak to the National Association of Evangelicals, according to someone familiar with the plan.
Joshua DuBois, former head of the White House’s Religious and Neighborhood Partnership Office under the Obama administration, said he was impressed by the Biden administration’s efforts to reduce vaccine hesitation.
He said Biden’s top advisers, like Marcella Nunez-Smith and Cameron Webb, had called for the religious community to answer questions about vaccines. The calls included black and Hispanic and white evangelical organizations.
Mr. DuBois acknowledged that hesitation in minority communities was rooted in history. When coronavirus vaccines were introduced last year, the researchers followed an increase in social media posts about the infamous Tuskegee study, in which health officials followed syphilis-infected African-American men and did not treat them.
“There is a history of distrust, but a current devastation taking place around us,” said DuBois, “and in response to this devastation, people are choosing to be vaccinated.”