The Sinister Reason(s) Why Republicans Now Want Their Voters Vaccinated

[Celerity]

Fox News and Republicans have suddenly changed their mind on the Covid-19 vaccine. Why?

https://thebanter.substack.com/p/the-sinister-reasons-why-republicans



Just weeks into the pandemic in 2020, Lieutenant Governor of Texas Dan Patrick went on Tucker Carlson’s show and suggested America sacrifice its elderly population for the sake of the economy. “Those of us who are 70 plus, we’ll take care of ourselves,” Patrick told Carlson. “But don’t sacrifice the country.” Patrick was also convinced that Democrats did not know what they were doing and were instead attempting to destroy the country for their own nefarious purposes. “If the Democrats ever had total control, they would put people like you and me in jail and throw away the key,” he went on. “And that’s what they’re doing because they now have total control Tucker, they have total control. And everywhere you see this draconian rules of locking down people and keeping businesses shut and destroying our country. It’s mostly Democratic governors, Democrat county judges, Democrat mayors, almost everywhere.” Patrick was widely mocked for his stance given the terror most of the population felt during the early days of Covid-19. But much to Patrick’s delight, the Trump administration did almost exactly what he suggested. Fast forward 16 months and over 600,000 Americans have died — an estimated 40% of whom passed due to the Trump administration’s severe mishandling of the crisis. Furthermore, most of those deaths happened in states with Republican governors. Republican voters were largely unconcerned by any of this. 74 million of them still voted for Trump, despite him almost wiping out his own administration and killing off thousands of fellow Americans.

There were, it seemed, enough Republicans unaffected by the virus for them to think it wasn’t such a big deal. Republican governors refused to enforce mask mandates, waged war on Dr. Anthony Fauci, and did not listen to advice from public health officials. When the vaccines came out, most prominent Republicans, including Trump, refused to take them publicly. Fox News engaged in a vaccine misinformation war, encouraging viewers to ignore the science and listen to conspiracy theorists like Alex Berenson. As Aaron Rupar at Vox noted: A major theme of Fox’s Covid-19 coverage in the winter months was trying to reframe the pandemic not as a humanitarian disaster that at the time was killing more than 2,000 Americans daily, but as an economic problem created by Democrats that predominately hurt business owners and workers. More recently, Fox’s approach has been to highlight rare negative reactions to the Covid-19 vaccine, ignoring the broader context that getting vaccinated is far safer than actually contracting the disease. The Food and Drug Administration, for example, recently reiterated that even after a new rare side effect of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was found, “the known and potential benefits clearly outweigh the known and potential risks.” Fox has also misleadingly suggested those who have had Covid-19 don’t need to get vaccinated.

As new, far more contagious and potentially deadly variants of the Covid virus spread rapidly through the population, Republicans and Fox News hosts are now suddenly changing their tune. Vaccines are apparently now safe, and everyone needs to get one as soon as possible. This remarkable about turn has not gone unnoticed. As Susan B. Glasser wrote in the New Yorker this week: The Louisiana congressman Steve Scalise, the House’s No. 2 Republican, posed for a photo of himself getting a vaccine shot, many months after he was eligible, and urged others to do the same. “Get the vaccine,” Scalise said, at a press conference on Thursday. “I have high confidence in it. I got it myself.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a polio survivor who was never on board with his party’s vaccine denialists and anti-maskers, warned, during his own press conference: either get vaccinated or get ready for more lockdowns. “This is not complicated,” McConnell said. Fox News, which, along with Facebook, has been among the country’s premier platforms for vaccine disinformation in recent months, started promoting a new get-vaccinated public-service announcement. Its prime-time star, the Trump confidant Sean Hannity, stared straight into the camera on Monday night and said, “It absolutely makes sense for many Americans to get vaccinated.”

David A. Graham at The Atlantic also reported on the trend: Steve Doocy, one of the anchors of the network’s popular morning show Fox & Friends, has been advocating for vaccines, and tangling with co-hosts over it. “If you have the chance, get the shot,” he said yesterday. “It will save your life.”…. Ben Shapiro of The Daily Wire, who has been a vocal proponent of vaccination all along, also told his followers today on Twitter, “Get vaxxed. I did. My wife did. My parents did.” Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy, a confidant of Donald Trump, today published a column praising the current president: “Six months into his administration, President Joe Biden should be applauded for making a huge dent in the COVID pandemic.” What exactly is going on? Glasser believes the answer is quite simple: Republicans are dying, and vaccinated Democrats are not: At the end of June, the Kaiser Family Foundation reported that eighty-six per cent of Democrats had at least one shot, versus fifty-two per cent of Republicans—and the gap in vaccination rates is not closing but widening. As of July, thirty-five per cent of the population in counties that voted for Trump had been vaccinated, compared with nearly forty-seven per cent in counties that voted for Biden. By this week, new daily cases nationally were at their highest level since April. Deaths are increasing, too, while the number of new vaccinations is down to January levels.

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