The writer is a contributing columnist for FT
For the first time: an issue that does not follow stupid political lines.
Coronavirus vaccination is a highly personal matter in the United States, where vaccine skeptics crowd at both ends of the political spectrum. Some of the craziest antivaxx motives seem to be shared by both sides of the division: I heard as many Democrats as Republicans insist that the injection implements a microchip that will allow Big Brother to track vaccinees.
But there are many on the left and right who seem to have healthier reasons to reject the jab. I am not one of them. When I took my first picture of Moderna, I started to cry. As a diabetic, asthmatic, 65 years old, I was quarantined for almost a year: that first shot raised the prospect of a death row escape card.
Ironically, I only got my chance because many nervous nurses and questionable doctors in my city refused to take theirs, so extra doses were available. This gave me an exact pause that those who looked Covid-19 in the face every day still feared less than they feared the vaccine.
But doctors’ reluctance influenced Barbara VanSyckel, 70, a supporter of former President Donald Trump. “When medical personnel don’t understand, it influences me. What do they know that I don’t know? ”She told the Financial Times. VanSyckel is not alone: a recent survey found that one in three Americans definitely or probably will not receive the Covid vaccine. Of those who are undecided or who are not going to have an injection, 60 percent are concerned about possible side effects, 48 percent plan to wait and see if it is safe, 22 percent do not trust the government and 21 percent think they don’t need it.
VanSyckel says he is “more afraid of the vaccine than I am of contracting Covid”, adding: “The chances of contracting [Covid-19] they are tiny and there is a high incidence of recovery. I think people are operating with old information. When it was released, I was as scared as anyone else ”, but now I think that as a“ very healthy 70 year old lady ”, she is not at high risk.
Stephen Caporosso, 42, is a Michigan auto worker who voted for President Barack Obama in 2008, but switched to Trump in 2016 and last year. He believes he does not need an injection because “the numbers I saw and the average age of people who died from the virus” mean that “it is not a virus that I personally need to worry about”. He fears the side effects. “Is this going to cause problems in 10 years in the cell structure or cell reproduction of people and can it be carried over to the next generation?” he asks. Caporosso is not opposed to all vaccines: when a new daughter was born during the pandemic, she was vaccinated.
Lincoln Ware, 70, an African-American talk show host in Ohio, hosted a radio show on the subject before receiving his first dose. Vernon, an African American, complained that a sister-in-law was trying to persuade her mother, a cancer survivor, not to get the injection because “this is how they are going to track you, they are trying to kill us all.”
Ware referred in the program to the fact that many African Americans are suspicious of the United States’ medical system because of historical abuse, including the infamous Tuskegee experiment, in which black syphilis patients were left untreated for research purposes. But he countered: “Many people use this as a crutch, they don’t want to take [the vaccine] so they say, ‘Tuskegee, you know what they did to us at that time’. ”Listeners fought back on Facebook live. One wrote: “Just NOT getting it. It is not about the past, but about the fact that it is still considered experimental. ”Another posted:“ Vaccines are all about money ”and said the authorities were profiting from them. But one listener replied: “The rich are being vaccinated while we voluntarily make antivirus: how stupid is that?”
None of this stopped me from taking my second dose last week. Even after breaking my wrist on the way to the vaccine clinic, I insisted on receiving my injection before going to the victim. But the strength of such opposition makes me wonder if it was useless. If one in three Americans refuses the vaccine, new variants may make my injection less effective. It is difficult to see the end of the pandemic anytime soon.