The vaccine isn’t needed because everything is fine

I downloaded the Michigan coronavirus data today. The number of new cases per day topped 8100 earlier this week. The numbers for the previous two weeks have been revised upward. The peak reached in early November is only 1600 cases per day higher. In the last two weeks the number of deaths per day has been higher than 30 for eight days, higher than 35 for three of those. This is up compared to early March though less than half of what it was at the same point in the October rise. One reason is the people ending up in the hospital tend up be younger, who have a higher chance of surviving the disease. In a post dated last Wednesday Mark Sumner of Daily Kos discussed about the state of the panedmic. And since Michigan is leading in the rise of cases, he focused here. Sumner included a map from the CDC that is colored by county showing the new cases per 100,000 population. The colors range from white through pale green into medium and dark blue. Nearly all of Michigan is medium blue with several counties in the Thumb the dark blue. (It’s called the Thumb because the lower peninsula of Michigan looks somewhat like a mitten. It’s the area north of I-69 and east of Bay City.) This has prompted Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to, well, ask nicely that we behave. Laina Stebbins of Michigan Advance reported Whitmer called for a voluntary suspension of youth sports, for schools to voluntarily going remote, and for the rest of us to voluntarily stay out of restaurants and keep our masks on. This request is for two weeks. Whitmer asked the CDC for more doses of the vaccine, though I heard that request was turned down. At the press conference where she announced the voluntary measures she said:

We cannot afford a strikeout, miss the shot or fumble the ball now.

A voluntary request instead of a mandate feels like Whitmer has fumbled the ball. Rick Pluta of Michigan Radio reported on Whitmer’s strategy. An excerpt of the written version of Pluta’s on-air report:

“For people who are reactant, restrictions can make it worse,” says Ken Resnicow, a PhD and an expert in public health messaging at the University of Michigan. He says some in the African American community are vaccine hesitant. Then there’s a core group that’s in the “hard no” camp. That group, he says, is largely made of white evangelical men who are ready to defy government health orders. “And if you say 'you must, you should, you have to,' they almost biologically want to go in the opposite direction,” Resnicow says. “We have to be very careful as to respect their independence. That is the number one issue, is that this is an attempt to control me and, therefore, a threat my independence, which these people value very highly.”

Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, one of those people who see mandates as a threat to his independence, said:

They’re just waiting to be informed, inspired, encouraged and then trusted, and right now we’re still under an environment where this governor does not trust the citizens of Michigan to do the right thing.

Interesting thing for Shirkey to say. Has there been a time in this pandemic in which the citizens have shown they can be trusted? It seems in spite of the news being full of the virus and its death toll, as soon as the mandates are lifted citizens go back to doing stupid things and the case count rises again. That happened in October and happened again in February. Put another way, from March a year ago through September and again in December and January mandates worked. Lifting the mandates didn’t. Brett Dahlberg of Michigan Radio reported that the more contagious British variant of the virus, also known as B.1.1.7, is circulating widely in Michigan. In a post dated today Sumner provided a virus update. The B.1.1.7 version of the virus has been infecting more children and young adults and more of them are becoming seriously ill. That means youth sports are becoming a big way for the virus to spread. And because Whitmer suggested, but did not mandate, closing youth sports, Mark Uyl, executive director of Michigan High School Athletic Association announced he has no plans to pause any schedules. Though the federal government refused Whitmer’s request for more vaccine doses, perhaps she could ask for doses not getting used in Missouri, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and even Ohio and Oklahoma. There are many cases where doses are taken into rural areas and they’re not getting put into arms because of the high refusal rate. Sumner wrote:

Urban areas in St. Louis and Kansas City were getting less doses per population than rural areas, in part because state officials made assumptions that Black populations in those cities would be reluctant to accept the vaccine. Similar assumptions were made in Atlanta, where officials deliberately reduced allocations on the assumption that Black communities would reject the vaccine. Nationwide, Black and Latinx communities are still being shortchanged when it comes to doses of COVID-19 vaccine.

It sounds like another part of those decisions is racism.

However, actual polling data—along with on the ground experience—shows that Black acceptance of the vaccine is actually much higher than in white communities. ... There has been some assumption that Republicans, while saying they didn’t want the vaccine, would quietly take it anyway. That’s not happening. Instead, actions being taken by Republican governors to completely reopen states like Mississippi, Florida, Texas, and Georgia is sending a highly visible signal that the vaccine simply isn’t needed. Because everything is fine. Meanwhile, when Republican governors like Florida’s Ron DeSantis have gotten vaccinated, they done so quietly. Almost secretly. Out of the public eye and without a single announcement.

This isn’t just general anti-vax sentiments. Republicans are ten times more likely to say no to the vaccine.

Overall, 21% of Americans say they won’t get the vaccine, while another 8% are unsure. If everyone else gets vaccinated—adults and children—that should be just enough to get the nation to something approaching herd immunity. But it will be close, especially considering the increased contagiousness of recent variants. Republicans aren’t done threatening the nation’s health when it comes to COVID-19.