The Daily Beast
Trump would rather you die than help with the implementation of the Biden vaccine
Photo illustration: Sarah Rogers / The Daily Beast / Photos GettyThe White House has just launched a $ 250 million advertising campaign to convince those who are hesitant to get vaccinated. President Joe Biden could save money and enlist political influencers to do it for him. On the same street are members of Congress – about 25% of them, most of them Republicans – who still don’t understand. If our elected leaders cannot lead us to collective immunity, who can? Each member, according to the continuity of government rules, has the right to shoot. Without waiting for an appointment, without traveling far to get it, without queues. The doctor, in the form of an attending physician, is literally in the house. As the implantation continues, it is not the minorities who reject the vaccine, although they have reason to doubt their government’s intentions towards them and have a harder time getting one right. It is white Republicans who are resisting – like former President Donald Trump, who treated COVID as something of a hoax and a personal affront. Hydroxychloroquine or bleach? It might be. Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine? No way. Senator Ron “Anon” Johnson said that having COVID-19 is superior to the vaccine against it. Last week, a survey by Monmouth University found that 56% of Republicans are unlikely to ever get the vaccine or want to wait and see. For how long, they don’t say. The NPR / PBS / Marist found that 47% of Trump voters, one in two Republicans and 41% of Republicans will not receive the vaccine. A screening survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that Republicans continue to refuse to receive the vaccine at twice the rate of any other group. It is a free country, Republicans like to say, and it is their private choice to refuse a vaccine, just as it was crowding the White House lawn for its over-the-top convention and the celebration of confirmation by a new Supreme Court judge. But your choices end where our public health begins. The immunity of the herd, which will take us out of our homes and ignite the economy, will lead up to 85% of the population to be vaccinated. Wouldn’t Red America like to go to a barbecue without anxiety on the 4th of July? I know the answer. They’ll pop a Bud and grill a hamburger, no matter what. Which brings us to Republican governors. New research by Johns Hopkins found that, as of the beginning of last summer, states with Republican governors had more cases and higher death rates than those led by Democrats. With two notable exceptions – Larry Hogan of Maryland and Charlie Baker of Massachusetts – the governors embraced Trump’s attitude of taking two aspirins and calling me in the morning, instead of risking his ire. “What, do I worry about some old flu?” is such a significant political signifier that South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem is a likely presidential candidate with a record of welcoming motorcyclists to demonstrations in her state and allowing refrigerators to become deadly traps. Texas Governor Gregg Abbott, unimpressed by having to park COVID patients in garages and corpses on ice trucks, rashly reopened again this month – adding an unmasked mandate to the sport. If Trump’s archenemy, Dr. Tony Fauci, says do not spike the ball too soon or all of our sacrifices will be in vain, count on hundreds of Republican Party officials to empty the ball and throw it on the floor. There are other reasons for the vaccine – resistance – the usual antivaxxers, concern about the speed with which the vaccines were developed and the CDC telling us what the vaccine does not mean we can do. Not being released to party like it’s 2019 is a depressing thing, to be sure. But nothing is more decisive as to whether or not you will receive the vaccine than political persuasion. And then Biden has to spend money to convince a group of people to do what is good for them to make up for Republicans who won’t. If only he had his predecessor and social influencer from Mar-a-Lago to help him in the Republican States of America. Instead, instead of appearing in a public service ad getting a chance like other former presidents did, Trump got his in secret. The assumption that he did this to preserve the illusion that he has the arms of a 70-year-old man is ridiculous. Did you see him in golf attire? In his first major speech, President Biden spoke as chief physician. He promised that everyone who wants the vaccine will be eligible from May 1 and that relief for those who suffer the most economically is on the way. But most importantly, like previous presidents, Ronald Reagan after the Challenger exploded and George Bush atop the rubble of Ground Zero, he assured us that there is life after the loss and joy after the pain. If we give up our usual divisions and each sacrifice for the whole, we can survive together. If only the man in Mar-a-Lago is thinking, when he hears about the man whose name he does not say. Trump’s approval rating near the end of his term was 34 percent, and his average approval rating of 41 percent over his term was the lowest any president has ever achieved, according to Gallup. The man now sitting at his desk and sleeping in his room (cleaned for COVID reasons) is well over 5 percent and his relief account over 60. On the back of his daily schedule is COVID’s death toll, though he doesn’t need reminders. The mistakes that haunt us are the unforced ones. Trump could have commanded the government to beat the virus instead of denying it, as if it were some great injustice that had hit him. Biden talked about the personal and collective loss that we suffered, but also about how “finding light in the dark is something very American”. No wonder Trump got the vaccine in the dark. The only choice Trump never considered making was doing the right thing. At night, in the silence, Trump knows this. That is why Biden is president and he is not. Read more at The Daily Beast. Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Subscribe now! Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper into the stories that matter to you. To know more.