Anti-vax as identity politics

The Former Guy tried to fit some pro-vax rhetoric into his standup act last night, and it predictably bombed:

Former President Donald Trump was booed at a rally on Saturday in Alabama after telling supporters they should get vaccinated.

“And you know what? I believe totally in your freedoms. I do. You’ve got to do what you have to do,” Trump said. “But, I recommend: take the vaccines. I did it. It’s good. Take the vaccines.”

Some boos rang out from the rally crowd, who were largely maskless.

“No, that’s okay. That’s all right. You got your freedoms,” Trump said, echoing rhetoric from opponents of mask and vaccine mandates. “But I happen to take the vaccine. If it doesn’t work, you’ll be the first to know. Okay? I’ll call up Alabama, I’ll say, hey, you know what? But [the vaccine] is working. But you do have your freedoms you have to keep. You have to maintain that.”

Large swaths of the South is experiencing a surge in Covid cases and hospitalizations because of the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus. Cullman, where the rally was hosted, is experiencing a rise in cases that has matched its previous peak from late December. The city declared a Covid state of emergency on Thursday to provide extra emergency support for the rally.

Alabama has the lowest vaccinated rate in the U.S., with just more than 36 percent of its population fully inoculated, according to an NBC News tracker. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, has said “the unvaccinated folks” are to blame for Covid’s resurgence in the state.

The way Trump operates is that he tries various new potential applause lines in his act, and the ones that don’t work don’t get repeated, so don’t expect this one to get any more play. (Watching the video drives home what a complete sociopath this guy is — he’s obviously totally indifferent to the fact that his nonsensical rhetoric about “freedom” is causing hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths).

The good news is that the Pfizer vaccine is going to get full approval tomorrow, with Moderna to follow shortly afterwards. This is going to help in several ways:

(1) There are actually some unvaccinated people who sincerely care about whether the vaccines are no longer based on an emergency authorization. This is probably a small number of the unvaxxed, but every percentage increase helps.

(2) Full authorization will allow a lot of institutions to mandate vaccination, based on their pre-existing rules in regard to mandatory vaccines. This is going to make a much bigger difference. It turns out that lots of people who said they would quit their jobs. drop out of school etc. rather than get vaccinated were just blustering about that: when crunch time comes, it appears the vast majority of people who face this choice aren’t actually willing to stick to their purported principles.

(3) Most interestingly, there seems to be a subset of people who want to get vaccinated, but are embedded in social milieus in which getting vaccinated is actually a difficult thing to do in terms of maintaining status within their community. (This has led to a certain amount of covert acquisition of vaccinations). In the dark heart of the ungovernable tribal regions, it’s going to extremely useful for these people to point to (2) as a face-saving excuse for them to do what they’ve wanted to do anyway. (I realize how nuts this sounds if you’re not part of the tribe, but again every little bit helps).

Along with all the ongoing media coverage of anti-vax politicians and other activists dying of COVID, these factors may well combine to bump the total percentage of the adult population that’s been vaccinated from its current 73% level well into the eighties. Of course a whole lot of people are going to die needlessly between now and then, but freedom isn’t free, or something.