Vaccine Shunners Are Botching Biden’s COVID Target
All Northeast states have already hit the president’s July 4 goal as the South lags, reflecting how the country’s political divide has led to a disparity in vaccination rates.
By Charlotte Klein
June 23, 2021
Dr. Anthony Fauci director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases on May 26 2021 in Washington DC.
“Every death from COVID-19 is avoidable and it is a tragedy when it happens,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said Tuesday, the same day that the White House acknowledged the country would likely fall short of meeting President Joe Biden’s goal of having 70 percent of U.S. adults with at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine by July 4.
The country will need “a few extra weeks” to hit that target, White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients conceded, noting that 70 percent of people ages 30 and older have already gotten at least one shot. The administration is now concentrating on persuading younger Americans between ages 18 and 26 to get inoculated at a similar rate, he said at Tuesday’s briefing, while announcing a new July 4 goal: at least one shot to 70 percent of Americans ages 27 and up.
https://twitter.com/ddiamond/status/1407399670096216066
Administration officials appeared to downplay the shortcoming in their language, with Zients reframing Biden’s original goal as “aspirational” and Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, telling reporters it was a “bold, ambitious” expectation, CNN reports.
“The ultimate goal has been to get America back to normal,” Psaki added. Fauci, too, said the July 4 target is “not the goal line or the endgame” at the briefing but later pushed back on CNN anchor Jake Tapper’s observation that the White House was seemingly back-peddling their messaging amid the failure to meet the deadline.
The country, Fauci estimated, would hit Biden’s goal around the second or third week of July, which is why he doesn’t “see any big deal” if the U.S. narrowly misses the original target date.
https://twitter.com/TheLeadCNN/status/1407449562592288773
The struggle to contain the pandemic “goes beyond young people in some states and some regions,” Fauci said, noting that “in some states, when you look at the totality of the population, they’re well below where we need them to be.”
Six of the 10 states with the lowest vaccination rates are located in the South, ABC News reports; among them are Kansas, Missouri, and Alabama, where multiple cases of the new, highly infectious delta variant have already been identified. Missouri, along with Arkansas and Utah, is also among the states with the lowest vaccination rates where COVID-19 transmission is rebounding and hospitalizations are rising, according to Bloomberg.
“The wide variation in states’ vaccination rates means that stark disparities in case rates could be America’s norm for awhile,” Axios reports, noting that some parts of the country are struggling to combat new outbreaks while others “saw an average of seven or fewer new cases per 100,000 people over the last week.” Missouri logged 76 new cases per 100,000 people over the last week, compared to four per capita in South Dakota and five in Vermont.
The Biden administration has had to grapple for months with vaccine reluctance in red states, as Republican supporters of Donald Trump have proven more likely to shun the shot.
With the threat of new variants and a national average of more than 200 deaths every day, combatting vaccine hesitancy has taken on new urgency. Those dying from COVID-19 are “overwhelmingly” unvaccinated people, Fauci told Tapper, noting that “for those who don’t want to get vaccinated because they need more information, it’s on us.”
But an overflow of misinformation is also a crucial part of the holdout, according to CNN’s Brian Stelter, who notes that “vaccine hesitancy isn’t occurring in a vacuum” but is, at least in part, a product of right-wing media’s coverage of the rollout.
“What if the forces in right-wing media would have enthusiastically encouraged their audiences to get vaccinated?” Stelter writes, pondering the impact of an outlet like Fox News taking the virus seriously from the start.
“Where would we be as a country if folks like Tucker Carlson accurately explained the science behind the shots to their viewers? … How many lives might have been saved?”
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/vacci...ktail_Hour
All Northeast states have already hit the president’s July 4 goal as the South lags, reflecting how the country’s political divide has led to a disparity in vaccination rates.
By Charlotte Klein
June 23, 2021
Dr. Anthony Fauci director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases on May 26 2021 in Washington DC.
“Every death from COVID-19 is avoidable and it is a tragedy when it happens,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said Tuesday, the same day that the White House acknowledged the country would likely fall short of meeting President Joe Biden’s goal of having 70 percent of U.S. adults with at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine by July 4.
The country will need “a few extra weeks” to hit that target, White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients conceded, noting that 70 percent of people ages 30 and older have already gotten at least one shot. The administration is now concentrating on persuading younger Americans between ages 18 and 26 to get inoculated at a similar rate, he said at Tuesday’s briefing, while announcing a new July 4 goal: at least one shot to 70 percent of Americans ages 27 and up.
https://twitter.com/ddiamond/status/1407399670096216066
Administration officials appeared to downplay the shortcoming in their language, with Zients reframing Biden’s original goal as “aspirational” and Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, telling reporters it was a “bold, ambitious” expectation, CNN reports.
“The ultimate goal has been to get America back to normal,” Psaki added. Fauci, too, said the July 4 target is “not the goal line or the endgame” at the briefing but later pushed back on CNN anchor Jake Tapper’s observation that the White House was seemingly back-peddling their messaging amid the failure to meet the deadline.
The country, Fauci estimated, would hit Biden’s goal around the second or third week of July, which is why he doesn’t “see any big deal” if the U.S. narrowly misses the original target date.
https://twitter.com/TheLeadCNN/status/1407449562592288773
The struggle to contain the pandemic “goes beyond young people in some states and some regions,” Fauci said, noting that “in some states, when you look at the totality of the population, they’re well below where we need them to be.”
Six of the 10 states with the lowest vaccination rates are located in the South, ABC News reports; among them are Kansas, Missouri, and Alabama, where multiple cases of the new, highly infectious delta variant have already been identified. Missouri, along with Arkansas and Utah, is also among the states with the lowest vaccination rates where COVID-19 transmission is rebounding and hospitalizations are rising, according to Bloomberg.
“The wide variation in states’ vaccination rates means that stark disparities in case rates could be America’s norm for awhile,” Axios reports, noting that some parts of the country are struggling to combat new outbreaks while others “saw an average of seven or fewer new cases per 100,000 people over the last week.” Missouri logged 76 new cases per 100,000 people over the last week, compared to four per capita in South Dakota and five in Vermont.
The Biden administration has had to grapple for months with vaccine reluctance in red states, as Republican supporters of Donald Trump have proven more likely to shun the shot.
With the threat of new variants and a national average of more than 200 deaths every day, combatting vaccine hesitancy has taken on new urgency. Those dying from COVID-19 are “overwhelmingly” unvaccinated people, Fauci told Tapper, noting that “for those who don’t want to get vaccinated because they need more information, it’s on us.”
But an overflow of misinformation is also a crucial part of the holdout, according to CNN’s Brian Stelter, who notes that “vaccine hesitancy isn’t occurring in a vacuum” but is, at least in part, a product of right-wing media’s coverage of the rollout.
“What if the forces in right-wing media would have enthusiastically encouraged their audiences to get vaccinated?” Stelter writes, pondering the impact of an outlet like Fox News taking the virus seriously from the start.
“Where would we be as a country if folks like Tucker Carlson accurately explained the science behind the shots to their viewers? … How many lives might have been saved?”
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/vacci...ktail_Hour
