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Why Are Republicans Hesitant About the COVID-19 Vaccine? The Answer May Surprise You.

I'm reposting this since a lot of people might not have seen it over the weekend.


Not everyone wants to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Hesitance is highest among young people, the Black community, and, of course—Republicans.

This is nothing new. Here is the historical reaction of Americans to getting vaccines¹:

Overall response to the COVID-19 vaccine is right in line with historical averages. What's more, Republicans have always been more hesitant about vaccines than Democrats—though with a twist:

As you can see, Republicans have always been more wary of vaccines. That wariness has increased over time, but it's been stable since 2000 and obviously has nothing to do with Donald Trump. In fact, the especially big difference in the uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine isn't due to Republicans becoming more hesitant at all. It's due to Democrats becoming less hesitant. Democrats are about 20 points more enthusiastic about the COVID-19 vaccine than they have been about other vaccines.

There's an important point here: People are hesitant about vaccines for different reasons, and conservatives have historically been more hesitant than average about them. This means that loud snarking about Republicans being idiot zealots willing to kill themselves just for partisan satisfaction misses the point: their hesitance has little to do with Donald Trump or Tucker Carlson or the polarization of modern politics. Vaccine yahooism may have made things worse at the margins, but that's about it. Conservatives have always been this way.

I don't know why this is. Maybe it's due to natural conservative suspicion of the federal government. Jonathan Haidt might say it's due to conservative belief in the sanctity of the human body. Or, since a big part of the difference is due to rural residents, it might have something to do with longtime rural suspicion of new technology.

In any case, those are the sorts of things we should be looking at if we really and truly want to increase vaccination rates.² It's more fun to go after Tucker Carlson—and I encourage everyone to continue doing this—but the evidence says that's not really the primary underlying issue here. Something else unrelated to the present day is at fault. We should try to figure this out with the same empathy and understanding that we feel toward young people and Black doubters.

¹Historical data from Gallup. Annual flu data from the CDC. Current COVID-19 data from the Kaiser tracking poll.

²I do.

88 thoughts on “Why Are Republicans Hesitant About the COVID-19 Vaccine? The Answer May Surprise You.

  1. FirstThirtyMinutes

    Among religious people, resistance to logic and reason is considered a positive trait. And in the US, religious people lean conservative.

    1. Maynard Handley

      And since Woke has become a religion...
      I'll leave it to you to fill in the rest of the syllogism.

      1. illilillili

        Um, yeah, now I remember all those Woke people gathering together every weekend down at the Hall of Woke. Where we profess our belief to each other of an invisible pink unicorn in the sky that controls every aspect of our life except our reaction to it. And we remark as to how his son rose from the dead. And we discuss how three and one are the same thing except when they are different.

        1. Mitchell Young

          Anyone who watched the George Floyd riots and destruction and demonstrations saw religious fervor at its US peak post 2000. The Negro is the new Christ.

      2. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

        I see somebody mainlines Erick Erickson.

        Are the Wokes any relation to Rick Santorum's friends the Blacks?

    2. JonF311

      I see I missed the broad tar brush sale at Home Depot. Hint: replace "religious" with "fundamentalist" and you'll have a much more accurate statement.

  2. Justin

    I think just about everyone in the US who wants to be vaccinated already has. We'll pick up the young folks over the next few months with the Pfizer vaccine and then that's it. And I'm fine with that. I see no reason to endlessly obsess about the silly reasons people don't go to the doctor, or the dentist, or get a vaccine. I'm sure there are plenty of people in other parts of the world who will be happy to get it. Let's move on to them.

    1. azumbrunn

      Vaccination is not primarily about protecting the individual; it is about controlling the pathogen. Even excellent vaccines like the Covid vaccines do not protect 100%. Even if vaccinated, some people will still get sick.

      But if a sufficient number of people are immune life becomes too tough for the virus. It recedes and eventually disappears. Everybody is now protected, evens those who are not vaccinated. This is called somewhat tastelessly "herd immunity" and it is the primary goal of vaccination.

      This is why we worry about people refusing to accept the vaccine. They don't just put themselves at risk, they put society at risk, especially those who can't be vaccinated for medical reasons. Refusing the vaccine is a refusal to cooperate in society, in military terms it is desertion.

      1. Justin

        What you call "worry about people refusing" is what I'm calling "endlessly obsessing." And I'm simply encouraging us all to end this obsession. Of course they put people at risk. It is all the things you say, but there is no point in pretending that the US is capable of such collective action.

  3. skeptonomist

    The comparison with flu vaccine is a bad one. There is some justification for being lackadaisical or hesitant about flu vaccine - it is not very effective and for that reason and because of low transmissability not very important for national health. The usual flu season does not rise to the level of a pandemic. But some of the covid vaccines are very effective and all may protect against death and transmission, so this case is very different. Those who understand these things are being rational in wanting to get vaccinated. It seems reasonable to say that Republicans don't get this and are resistant to vaccination in the extraordinary emergency case of a pandemic for partisan reasons, specifically because Trump chose to minimize the danger of the pandemic and because Republicans will seize on almost anything to increase partisanship. Always remember that people will do literally anything, including committing suicide, if others in their primary group are doing it. Adherence to the group is far more important than you would suppose from what's in the media, or recognized by pundits and bloggers.

  4. bharshaw

    " it might have something to do with longtime rural suspicion of new technology."

    Not sure that's right. Farmers, big farmers at least, got and get big by adopting new technology--robotic milkers, self-driving tractors, "precision agriculture". As big farmers are a small proportion of farmers it may be true that the rest do distrust technology. Or it might be that rural populations tend to be older, and thus they're more suspicious of technology. Or it might be that modern technology is slower to reach rural areas simply because of population density--think electrification, think broadband.

    1. golack

      That's very true. That is also why farm towns are dying--they do not need nearly as many workers, especially permanent ones, now. Kids leave. "Family" farms have to sell out to big ones. And their way of life is lost.

      To keep the area alive, meat packing plants and immigrant workers.

      Not sure if wind farms and technology hubs will ever catch on. Gateway, Novell, etc....
      see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Prairie

        1. UrbanLegend

          It's not Dayton, it's Middletown, and as he explains carefully and extensively, he's not "from" Middletown, where he was moved as a pre-teen, but "from" Jackson County, KY. Many from Appalachia had moved to places like Middletown for jobs, such as Armco steel there.

          1. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

            All the same, Peter Thiel's Buckeye Sleeper Cell is phonier than fellow Daytonian Greg Dulli.

      1. Jerry O'Brien

        Joe Biden wants farmers to get paid for planting cover crops that take up carbon dioxide. I'm not sure what they do with the crops then, to keep the carbon locked up. Anyway, you're right about the decline of family operations in rural areas, so I'd like to think a massive federal program for conservation and carbon capturing could put people to work in the country.

        1. azumbrunn

          The point of cover crops is that they get plowed under or otherwise stay on the field. This leads to higher levels of organic matter (aka compost) which is good for the soil, saves fertilizer and retains moisture (thereby saving irrigation water). Plus the soil organic matter contains carbon that otherwise would be CO2 in the air.

          It is really a no-brainer but generations of farmers have ignored it and don't like to change their ways (in that way the farmers are all conservative, have been for centuries).

          1. Mitchell Young

            Remember, farmers are only right when they complain about not getting enough cheap, off the books immigrant labor to pick the crops that would otherwise be 'rotting in the fields (tm)'

            All other times, from pesticide regulation to 'wetlands' policy governing the puddles in the paddocks, they are wrong wrong wrong!

  5. Steve_OH

    An attitude that is prevalent in rural communities is that their isolation means that they're insulated there from the Bad Stuff™ that happens in cities.

    1. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

      In this rural Indiana diner, HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is still 4H -- Haitians, Hemophiliacs, Heroin Addicts, & Homosexuals.

      BIG UPS RYAN WHITE. MOURN YE TIL I JOIN YE.

      1. Mitchell Young

        Anal sex really is a good way to get aids, and syphilis, and the clap, and just about any other STD out there. Just go to the CDC site and look up MSM -- that's Men having Sex with Men, not Main Stream Media.

        1. Crissa

          If you always use satire, maybe you'd have a point, but...

          Instead you drop the homophobia in the middle as if that's how sarcasm works.

          Tip: It doesn't.

    2. ScentOfViolets

      'It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside. '

      -- S. Holmes

      1. Martin Stett

        A contrarian view by Doyle/Holmes; for the English, and many Americans, the country is a bucolic Eden. Not so for the French, and that helps to understand a lot of French culture, especially Robert Bresson's films.
        It's in farm country out here that you'll see the Trump banners still waving.

        1. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

          I still remember driving thru Southern Illinois a month before the 2004 election & seeing barns emblazoned with Keyes for Senate.

      2. Mitchell Young

        To counterbalance that, the traditional urban liberal view of the countryside is expressed in such classics as 'The Hills Have Eyes', 'Southern Comfort', and of course 'Deliverance'.

  6. iamr4man

    Whether or not you are interested in getting vaccinated is a matter of how scared you are of getting the disease. The people most scared fought to be first in line. Republicans are less scared of the disease because they are constantly told not to be and that if they are they are silly. They are told the disease is no big deal, that it’s just like the flu, and that the number of cases and deaths is exaggerated by the MSM. In fact, for many Republicans, they are more scared of getting the shot than the disease. This is due to the lies they have been told by the likes of Tucker Carlson.
    This disease is nothing like the previous ones in the charts. In none of the other cases were there economic shut downs like this one. And in none of the other cases did the POTUS underplay the risks of the disease. I note that the difference in vaccine hesitancy is pretty small for Polio. That’s the disease I would most compare with Covid. Everyone was scared of it and it it was all around.

    1. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

      Also, minus herd immunity, El Pepe Maximo cannot see the economy is fully opened, thus prolonging the Plandemic Recession.

      & that's good for GQP turnout in 2022.

    2. ProgressOne

      I think you are right. The visibility and threat of covid is unique. And the Polio analogy is a good one.

      The people I know who dismiss covid and covid vaccines are die hard Trump supporters.

  7. clawback

    Democrats are unusually enthusiastic about the covid vaccines because those are much better than flu vaccines and others. It is correct and rational to be more enthusiastic about them. This has nothing to do with Democrats being "more partisan."

    And yes, the reason conservatives are unusually hesitant about these vaccines -- which they in fact are, when you adjust for the vaccines' effectiveness -- is indeed because of Trump and Tucker Carlson and the rest.

  8. wvmcl2

    "Nothing to do with Donald Trump?" Now that's stretch. Comparisons with earlier vaccines don't really fully apply - the Covid pandemic is a qualitatively different situation.

    Trump chose to actively politicize pretty much every public health aspect of the pandemic because he thought is would help him get re-elected. And in fact, I think it probably got him closer to re-election than he otherwise would have been.

    But there is no question that the revanchist attitude of so many Trump supporters to public health measures, including vaccines, is nearly 100 percent the fault of Donald Trump.

    1. Mitchell Young

      He politicized it by hoping against hope. The Dems politicized is...think that spaghetti bender in New York.

  9. dmhindle

    I don't follow the logic here.

    Let's accept the claims 1) that Republicans have traditionally been somewhat more resistant to vaccination than Democrats (the evidence is suggestive); 2) Republicans appear now to be even more resistant to COVID vaccination than before; and 3) the fact of increased uptake by Democrats could explain this bigger difference.

    I guess Kevin doesn't accept my point #2. He claims that the GOP/Dem difference in swine flu in 2009 (15%) and in smallpox in 2002 (11%) (Kevin's summary chart doesn't supply the dates) is the same as the COVID difference in 2020 (34%, according to Gallup, though Kevin's chart shows 25%). It looks like a change to me. So the question is whether the change is due to increased uptake by Democrats or decreased uptake by Republicans.

    I would think that the default assumption would be that COVID vaccination would be expected to have a higher uptake than previous vaccination programs across the population, and that we should expect the increase in uptake to apply to Democrats and Republicans equally (leaving Republicans again a bit behind). The bigger difference in uptake is what needs to be explained. Trump and Fox -- since they are an obvious change in the system -- seem like a good place to start.

  10. lawnorder

    Conservatives are, by definition, suspicious of new things; that's the essence of conservatism. It's therefore to be expected that conservatives will be slow to adopt anything new, including covid vaccines. Some vaccine refusal may be out of a childish desire to "own the libs" or other similarly foolish political reasons, but I expect much of it is just conservatives being conservative.

    On the flip side, I don't think it's reasonable to describe "liberal" enthusiasm as partisan. I don't think people are getting vaccinated to show their liberal bona fides or to "own the cons"; people are getting vaccinated for their own safety and well-being, a completely non-political motivation. Certainly when I got my first shot, I did NOT think "I bet this will really annoy the cons"; I thought "now I am at least partially protected against this horrible disease that could kill me".

        1. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

          WM. F. Buckley's definition of a conservative as an individual standing athwart history yelling "stop".

  11. illilillili

    > it's Democrats who have treated the vaccine in a more partisan manner than usual

    You don't have any evidence for that. Covid is both more deadly and more transmissible than "regular" flu, and the uptake in vaccination rates is a response to that.

    Anecdotally, my brother mentions that he thinks the vaccine is not well tested and is being pushed on the population. Which suggests a distrust of general social leadership. "We're not sheep! You can't stop us from walking over this cliff if we want to!"

    1. ScentOfViolets

      Your brother is right, the covid vaccine(s) have not been well-tested. But by definition, 'well-tested' means (among other things) years-long observations. Not feasible in this case, obviously.

      1. Joel

        Actually, it was well-tested for short-term protection. As an enrollee in the Moderna Phase III trial, I was part of the 30,000 in that test. There were 45,000 tested in the Pfizer phase III trial. Thousands more were tested in the Phase I and Phase II trials for these vaccines.

        Obviously, not tested for long-term protection, but nobody claims that and it doesn't matter from the standpoint of achieving herd immunity.

        Long-term protection will not only mean a durable protection from the virus the vaccines were designed against, but for the variants emerging from infected populations globally. That's not a problem of the vaccine.

        1. ScentOfViolets

          Well, uh, no: That's why the FDA gave 'emergency' approval rather than simply approval. TL;DR: You can argue about what well-tested means, but you can't claim that someone who thinks the vaccine(s) have not been well-tested is ipso facto being disingenuous.

        2. lawnorder

          The long-term issue is not about protection but about undesirable side effects; if the protection wears off, booster shots can be given. I console myself with the thought that almost all vaccine side effects manifest within at most a few months of administration; that's why the EUAs are being issued on the basis of short-term tests. There are, very rarely, vaccine side effects that don't manifest for years; that's why the FDA probably won't move from EUAs to normal course approval for a few years.

  12. cld

    There's a core element of social conservatives where they're highly sensitive to issues of bodily purity and things that may be physically transgressive and it may be that vaccines fall into this, where the vaccine is adding the disease to your body to create an altered physiology and they can't overcome their revulsion and they'd rather take their chances.

  13. cld

    The first chart is 'percent saying they would get the vaccine'.

    Is this the same as 'percent who actually did get the vaccine after all'?

    1. LostPorch

      This. The line at the pharmacy I got my first shot at had 8 people in front of me. 4 were wearing MAGA caps. Second shot: 2 out of 5.

  14. cld

    And I really think it's wrong to characterize Democrats being more likely to be vaccinated as an expression of partisanship. No one gets vaccinated thinking about how it's going to mess with Mitch McConnell.

    It's entirely about self-preservation and civic mindedness.

    1. ddoubleday

      Yeah, nobody got it to "own" Trump. That's nonsense.

      I don't see the raw data but one thing stood out to me "Democrats are about 20 points more enthusiastic about the COVID-19 vaccine than they have been about other vaccines."

      Is that really true about POLIO? I doubt it....that one was almost universally seen as a godsend.

  15. arghasnarg

    "their hesitance has nothing to do with Donald Trump or Tucker Carlson or the polarization of modern politics. It's always been this way."

    This doesn't work. I agree that small-c-conservatives have likely always been a bit more hesitant. I do not agree that the situation today is the same as always.

    Vaccine denialism is explicitly being used variously as a tribal shibboleth, recruiting lever, and weapon by Republicans. They are hardly hiding this.

    Vaccine denialism is another one of those odd points of congruence between Republicans and Russian propagandists - a lot of the denialism noise ca. 2010-2014 was the Internet Research Agency. Co-incidence? Dupes? Who knows. But as The Onion famously did not ask, why do all these Russians keep working for the same goals? And where do they get those fantastic boots?

    1. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

      theONION, of course, purposefully elides that their hero, El Santo Socialista de Monteverde, is as much a creation of the Savushkina Street operations team as El Jefe Maximo de Maralago.

      Fuck theONION. All my homies hate theONION.

    2. Midgard

      Poppycock. That isn't tribalism, but politics. Again, understanding the disease helps you understand the con. Sadly, Democrats still don't get.

  16. erick

    When in doubt trying to figure out why Conservatives are doing something remember this was figured out nearly 200 years ago:

    Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.

    John Stuart Mill

  17. Midgard

    Sorry, but more Republicans are vaccinating at a higher rate than Democrats. Another silly Drum post that missed the point: 25% of people 65- either died of, or more likely were hospitalized. This tends to move people. If this was Spanish Flu bad like, you better believe younger people would be vaxxing at a greater rate.

    1. colbatguano

      "Sorry, but more Republicans are vaccinating at a higher rate than Democrats."

      Way to pull a "fact" out of your a$$.

  18. Leo1008

    “It's always been this way. I don't know why this is. Maybe it's due to natural conservative suspicion of the federal government. Jonathan Haidt might say it's due to conservative belief in the sanctity of the human body.”

    There is no mystery - at all - regarding the hesitancy towards vaccines among conservatives. Here’s the incredibly simple answer: the conservatives are right about this one. And that’s really all there is to it. Their hesitancy is completely understandable and should be viewed and understood as such.

    Yes: modern science and medicine have done a lot to fight disease and extend human life. But those accomplishments haven’t been without terrible misfires along the way. It’s only in the last few years that we’ve begun to better understand some (just some) of the unintended consequences of our decades of antibiotic use (in humans as well as animals). Our doctors regularly prescribe medications with an eye popping list of potentially harmful if not deadly side effects, and everyone knows about those side effects because we see countless commercials filled with those grisly details. The opioid epidemic is still in the headlines: and it’s a problem that doctors contributed to mightily by spending years prescribing dangerously addictive drug to thousands if not millions of people.

    What person wouldn’t be skeptical about a brand new vaccine that hasn’t even existed long enough to undergo long term testing before getting injected into hundreds of millions of people??? That skepticism is a 100% rational response. And, speaking for myself, it’s a skepticism that I heartily share.

    In fact, I would turn this entire topic on its head. The conservative skepticism is so obvious that I wouldn’t even bring it up at all. The real question here is this: why are so many liberals free of this perfectly understandable vaccine hesitancy?

    I don’t know the answer to that. I seem to occupy some kind of middle ground. I share the conservative vaccine skepticism, but I consider myself a liberal. Also, I’m now fully vaccinated. I decided to get vaccinated because my own risk analysis led me to believe that in the middle of a deadly pandemic the vaccine was the least of the possible evils. But I’m still quite unhappy about having been injected with barely tested chemicals. Nevertheless, those are the times we live in.

    1. Midgard

      Liberals are the real vaccine skeptics, not conservatives. Understand Drum's con polling method, understand why this poll is DOA.

      1. ScentOfViolets

        IIIIIIIII'm so ooooo ... druuuuuuuunk ... Really, Shootie, could you do us the courtesy of posting -- just once is all I ask! -- while you are sober?

    2. tdbach

      Your last paragraph sort of blows up everything you said before it. Oh well.

      Vaccine skepticism isn't a conservative thing, any more than running out to get the vaccine is a liberal thing. I know plenty of liberals who aren't getting the vaccine, and a lot more conservatives who are now fully vaccinated (I live in a pretty conservative rural area). The decision is pretty much based on that cost/risk/benefit analysis you mentioned. Except for those MAGA fabulists, who DO see this as a political issue, who have completely discounted the reality of the threat to make the C/R/B analysis moot.

  19. Special Newb

    "In other words, it's Democrats who have treated the vaccine in a more partisan manner than usual."

    This seems to be a touch dishonest. Recent flus have not been especially dire even the Swine flu. SARS2 is much more deadly. Who is to say absent Trump and Q it wouldn't be more like the 11% of a truly deadly illness like small pox? Could it not simply be democrats recognizing how serious this is while republican media downplayed it so gop doesn't?

  20. azumbrunn

    The fact that Republicans refused vaccines even prior to Tucker Carlson does not prove that he has no responsibility for this; it proves that he has had precursors throughout the modern history of the GOP. Right now he is just one of the most visible agitators in the same old false cause.

  21. Mitchell Young

    Maybe rural people are less likely to get vaccines because, you know, disease doesn't spread as rapidly or effectively in rural areas. What's the first thing all the liberal NYC residents with means did when this thing hit...head out the Hamptons.

    1. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

      The "Spanish" flu originated in Kansas.

      & not in some negro jazz club in Kansas City, KS, either.

      1. Mitchell Young

        Yeah, I saw that 'American Experience' too. It may have originated on an Army base in Kansas (even within a sparsely populated state there will be areas of density like, oh, military installations) but then it was incubated among the doughboys (as they were called). Again, density played a role.

        I'm sure plenty of virus mutations occur in East Cackalacky, by they have no hosts and so die out.

  22. todwest

    Democrats stepping up and getting vaccines for the good of themselves and the country = partisanship. Got it.

  23. samgamgee

    During a conversation with a couple conservative neighbors at a cookout, the vaccination came up and they were of course reluctant. No real reason given just vague wariness.

    When the topic turned to shingles and the horror stories we all had regarding relatives, I mentioned that there was a vaccine for it. At least to limit it. There was no hesitation on their part. They cheered the idea of taking that one.

    So a vague illness that kills folks, but only a few and may be like the flu. No vaccine.

    A painful ugly and obvious one. Get a vaccine.

  24. Loxley

    Comparing the COVID vaccination effort to Polio or anything other than Spanish Flu (where they threw you in jail for not wearing a mask), is like comparing WWII to the Spanish American War.... in that the former has killed over a half million Americans and the latter not even, whatever, LOL.

    The increase in Democrats being inoculated shows the difference clearly. The fact that conservative rates stay the same show that The Stupid is always The Stupid.

    And that, perhaps, thinking that there was EVER a time when conservatives displayed a sense of Civic Duty is pure fantasy.

  25. LostPorch

    None of Kevin's comparisons are useful.
    - approximately 7k cases of Polio between 1950-1953, just before the vaccine. (CDC data)
    - 116k deaths in the US from Asian flu (CDC data)
    - maybe 10k deaths in the 10 years prior to Smallpox vaccine.

    The threat from those pandemics was MUCH smaller than for Covid, even for Asian Flu. If you were going to make meaningful comparisons, you'd capture the levels of resistance to an equivalently perceived threat.

    Additionally, the self identification switch of Democratic/Republican in the South happened after those 3 vaccines became available.

    The thesis (conservatives/religious are resistant to vaccinations) intuitively makes sense, but using the Dem/Rep as a proxy for this is forcing it.

  26. Midgard

    The problem is, the raw numbers vaccinated don't support your analogy. I think pollsters are trying to tell a story and not really look for real beliefs.
    1.65- whites are 92% vaccinated. That means just about everybody has had it. More Republicans are older, this have more people vaccinated.
    2.Educated Republicans are more likely than educated Democrats to get vaccinated. Pure and simple, your polling methods completely ignore. Many educated Democrats are "Natropathic elitists". Fossil Fuels are making men whiny weaklings because it flooding our bodies with Estrogen man!!!! Every heard that?? How about "people in West Virginia" are sick man, they need chelation and estrogen inhibitors man!!!!! I think "moderate liberals" in general are a annoying sounding board. Its the same things over and over again, even though we know they are full of it: CRT, we believe in Science(even though last summers restrictions were definitely in the face against science), Donald Trump had a restrictive immigration system(lolz, nope, illegals flooded into the US and Russian backed trafficking exploded, boy that coincidence is shocking!!!!). Same ole same ole sheet from the talking heads.
    3.More noneducated white Democrats are getting vaccinated than noneducated white Republicans. How about that???
    4.Black and Browns simply won't take the vaccine. You can't blame the white man why the south is in a dangerous shape for this fall. Blacks in the south are the least vaccinated of all groups. I mean, they are making white's look bad with their lack of civic responsibility.
    5.Educated blacks are vaccinating at the rates of educated whites. Boy, look at that.

    Instead of trying dialects Kevin, break down the demographics.

  27. Pingback: Are Trump Voters Vaccine Skeptics? Yes, But Be Careful . . . – Kevin Drum

  28. Bruce

    The discrepancy by party (GOP getting worse with time) would indicate that the GOP radicalization from Newt onwards has real world effects. The whole anti-GOP science mantra. Fox Noise!

  29. dmhindle

    Kevin's argument here depends on two claims. 

    Claim #1: by default we should have expected that the vaccination rate for COVID in 2020-2021 would be the same as for Swine Flu (2009) and Smallpox (2002).

    Claim #2: the differentially lower rate of vaccination in Republicans has been consistent over time. 

    Claim #2 seems simply wrong. In the data Kevin presents, the Republican vaccine hesitancy has increased from a 2% difference in 1954 to a 11-15% difference in 2002-2009 to a 25% difference for COVID in 2020 (Kevin didn't provide the dates on his chart, which is odd for a chart about change over time.) That pattern of change doesn't seem like consistency to me, it looks like a trend. But wait, it turns out that Kevin substituted the Kaiser estimate of the Republican difference for COVID for the Gallup estimate. All the other numbers in chart 2 come from Gallup. Looking at Gallup for a fairer comparison, it turns out that the difference for COVID is 34%, not 25%. So no, in fact Republicans are obviously more hesitant relative to Democrats to take the COVID vaccine than in earlier vaccinations.

    Claim #1 is a matter of judgment, but here I think Kevin needs to make a better case for why we would have expected the general population acceptance of the COVID vaccine to be the same as earlier ones. COVID has had a much more severe societal effect than the other events: shut down of commerce, high death counts. And the COVID vaccine has a much higher efficiency (95%) than earlier vaccines. So it seems unreasonable to guess that across the population the acceptance rate for the COVID vaccine would be the same as earlier vaccines. And yet chart 1 shows that it is. The question is whether we need to explain a change in Republicans or a change in Democrats. Kevin chooses the latter, but a reasonable hypothesis is that Republican resistance has increased. The problem is not that Democratic acceptance has increased more than would be expected given the different circumstances and difference in vaccine efficacy. Accepting this, we still would need to explain why Republican resistance has increased and assigning it all to Trump is so far unwarranted -- it could be partly geographic (density) issues in addition to Trumpism, and other factors. But I don't see any reason to think that we don't need to explain the increased Republican resistance.

  30. Pingback: Vaccine Hesitancy Is as Old as Vaccines Themselves – Kevin Drum

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