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NY Post photo composite<\/p><\/div>\n
By Eric Spitznage
\nNew York Post<\/p>\n
Tara Granger, 36, has worked as a nurse for two decades in Suffolk County, NY, and she and her two children have been vaccinated every year.<\/p>\n
\u201cDrugs are my life,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s what I learned in school.\u201d<\/p>\n
But she\u2019s been questioning the promised upcoming vaccine for COVID-19, in large part because of what she\u2019s witnessed firsthand about the financial incentives for vaccines.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt scares me that I got so many free lunches and free dinners because I pushed the flu vaccine,\u201d Granger says. \u201cWhat am I going to get when I push a COVID vaccine?\u201d<\/p>\n
Granger got sick from the coronavirus earlier this summer and said she did \u201cthe opposite of what people said to do. I took my supplements and vitamins, and didn\u2019t go to the hospital to be put on a ventilator and die. I was smart enough to say, \u2018My immune system can fight this, I just have to find the right way to do it.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n
Her job will require her to recommend the COVID vaccine when it\u2019s available, but Granger said she won\u2019t personally be getting it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe vaccine isn\u2019t something we need, even if it is safe,\u201d she says. \u201cPeople want an easy solution and they think this is it. But it isn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
She\u2019s not the only one with misgivings. A\u00a0Pew Research poll<\/a>\u00a0from late September showed that about half of US adults (51 percent) wouldn\u2019t get a COVID-19 vaccine if it was available today \u2014 a big drop from the 72 percent who said they\u2019d get one back in May.<\/p>\n Complicating things even more: This past week, two major drug manufacturers halted their vaccine trials because of safety concerns.<\/p>\n It\u2019s made matters all the more confusing for Rob Holmes, 50, of Marina del Rey, Calif., who said he gets an annual flu shot despite his wife\u2019s reluctance. \u201cI\u2019m starting to think I\u2019m the crazy one,\u201d he tells The Post.<\/p>\n For the first time, he hasn\u2019t gotten a flu shot, and he said he\u2019s \u201cstill on the fence\u201d about whether he\u2019ll get a COVID vaccine when it becomes available.<\/p>\n Claudia Torres, a 28-year-old stay-at-home mom and blogger from Miami, feels the same. She said all of her kids are up-to-date on recommended vaccines. \u201cI\u2019m not an anti-vaxxer or think COVID-19 is a hoax,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I just don\u2019t want the COVID-19 vaccine.\u201d<\/p>\n Even the rich and powerful are expressing doubt. Elon Musk\u00a0said in a podcast interview<\/a>\u00a0in late September that he won\u2019t be getting a vaccine because he\u2019s \u201cnot at risk for COVID, nor are my kids.\u201d<\/p>\n The anti-vax movement is nothing new \u2014 in 2019, the World Health Organization listed \u201cvaccine hesitancy\u201d as one of the\u00a0top-ten threats to global health<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 but the growing distrust of a vaccine that, at this point, is only hypothetical is a rare cultural phenomenon.<\/p>\n Scott Ratzan, a physician and medical misinformation expert at the City University of New York and Columbia University, says anti-COVID vaccine sentiment is the result of \u201ca massive assault on trust in government, in science and in public-health authorities.\u201d<\/p>\n The misinformation has mostly been spread online, thanks to social media and the controversial documentary \u201cPlandemic,\u201d in which\u00a0discredited virologist Judy Mikovits<\/a>\u00a0claims a hypothetical COVID vaccine would \u201ckill millions.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThrow in QAnon and people\u2019s increasing impatience with the effect of the disease on their lives and livelihoods, and you have fertile ground to sow anti-science propaganda,\u201d says Ratzan. \u201cIt\u2019s been like manna from heaven for hardcore anti-vaxxers.\u201d<\/p>\n The usual anti-vax tropes \u2014 religious objections, concerns that vaccines cause autism \u2014 aren\u2019t behind most COVID-19 vaccine concerns. According to an\u00a0August survey<\/a>\u00a0from STAT and the Harris Poll, 78 percent of Americans are worried that a COVID-19 vaccine is being influenced more by politics than science.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a largely bipartisan opinion: 72\u2009percent of Republicans and 82 percent of Democrats don\u2019t trust a vaccine pushed by politicians, regardless of their party affiliation.<\/p>\n Politicians giving public-health advice during the COVID-19 crisis has \u201cled to public confusion both about what is truth and what is fiction,\u201d says Nancy Kass, a professor of Bioethics and Public Health at Johns Hopkins. \u201cIt\u2019s turned COVID into a political disease rather than a public-health problem.\u201d<\/p>\n If Donald Trump tells us we should take [a COVID-19 vaccine], I\u2019m not taking it.<\/p>\n \u00a0–\u00a0Sen. Kamala Harris at the Oct. 7 vice-presidential debate<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Trump administration\u2019s \u201cOperation Warp Speed,\u201d a $10 billion initiative that the president has compared to the Manhattan Project, calls for a streamlined process to develop a coronavirus vaccine, with the end goal of distributing 300 million doses by January 2021.<\/p>\n It\u2019s an ambitious project that has alarmed instead of reassured many Americans.<\/p>\n \u201cPolitics has clearly been inserted into scientific discovery these past few months,\u201d says Rohan Arora, 19, an environmental health activist based in Washington, DC. \u201cI\u2019m really skeptical about whether these vaccines are being streamlined by credible researchers. Considering that this is an election year, it\u2019s clear politicians have a vested interest in coming up with any solution to end this pandemic, even if the solution is just an ineffective PR facade.\u201d<\/p>\n Although the White House approved new FDA guidelines that would extend the time frame for a vaccine\u2019s clinical trials, Trump\u00a0railed against the FDA<\/a>\u00a0on Twitter on Oct. 6, calling the updated guidelines \u201canother political hit job!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTrump\u2019s blatant disregard for doing the right thing once again is affecting the health of Americans,\u201d says Crystal Hawkins, 34, a labor and birth RN in Philadelphia, who describes herself as a \u201cpro-vaxxer.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s clear that a safe and efficacious vaccine is not as important to the president as having bragging rights for developing a vaccine during his presidency,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n Much of the anti-Trump, anti-vaccine backlash has been stirred by members of the Democratic Party. \u201cIf Dr. [Anthony] Fauci, if the doctors, tell us that we should take it, then I\u2019ll be first in line to take it,\u201d Sen. Kamala Harris declared at the Oct. 7 vice-presidential debate when asked whether or not she would get a COVID-19 vaccine. \u201cBut if Donald Trump tells us that we should take it \u2014 then I\u2019m not taking it.\u201d<\/p>\n Comments like these delight Rita Palma, founder of the anti-vax group My Kids, My Choice.<\/p>\n \u201cCOVID is God\u2019s gift to the vaccine-choice movement,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s woken up so many people and put us in a national spotlight. People are finally questioning and having doubt about vaccines.\u201d<\/p>\n Palma, 57, of Blue Point, NY, launched her Facebook group in 2006, after her petition to have her children exempted from vaccinations for religious reasons was denied by her school district. \u201cThat\u2019s when I started doing my research,\u201d she tells The Post. \u201cI looked at the vaccine ingredients. The more I learned, the more objections I had.\u201d<\/p>\n But it wasn\u2019t until the COVID-19 pandemic, and rising questions about when a vaccine would become available \u2014and if it would be compulsory \u2014 that Palma started to hear from people not typically drawn to the anti-vax movement.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been getting so many e-mails and texts from people,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n In just the last month and a half, she\u2019s seen a membership bump of 3,000 people at My Kids, My Choice \u2014 about a 25 percent increase.<\/p>\n \u201cThey don\u2019t want the COVID vaccine,\u201d Palma says. \u201cEven people who vaccinate their families are like, \u2018Oh, no, I\u2019m not taking that one.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n Fears over a fast-tracked inoculation aren\u2019t entirely without historical precedent. In 1976, a new strain of H1N1 virus suspected of being genetically similar to the \u201cSpanish flu\u201d of 1918 sickened hundreds of soldiers at Fort Dix, NJ. Then-President Gerald Ford, looking for good press in an election year, launched an ambitious campaign to, in his words, vaccinate \u201cevery man, woman, and child in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n Though the vaccine was still in early clinical trials, Congress passed a bill authorizing the rushed early rollout, which came with the slogan \u201cRoll Up Your Sleeve, America.\u201d But when 35 elderly people died after getting vaccinated, and hundreds developed a rare neurological disorder, vaccination numbers plummeted and the effort was dubbed a \u201cfiasco\u201d by some journalists.<\/p>\n It isn\u2019t just politicians suspected of using a COVID vaccine for personal gain. Drugmakers have also come under scrutiny. There are hundreds of vaccines in a pre-clinical testing phase, but only four \u2014 those run by Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and AstraZeneca \u2014 are currently in Phase 3 clinical trials.<\/p>\n But there have been problems in recent weeks. AstraZeneca, which is developing its vaccine with the University of Oxford, paused its study in early September after a participant developed severe neurological symptoms consistent with transverse myelitis, a rare inflammation of the spinal cord. And on Monday, Johnson & Johnson halted its trials because of an \u201cunexplained illness\u201d in a participant; Eli Lilly did the same on Tuesday.<\/p>\n Not to mention, the majority of Americans think it\u2019s too much progress too soon. In the\u00a0Pew Research poll<\/a>, 78 percent believe that vaccines are being developed too fast, before their safety and effectiveness are fully understood.<\/p>\n \u201cSome people might assume malicious intent on the part of scientists when they really are just struggling to keep up with a very complex situation,\u201d says David Broniatowski, an associate professor at George Washington University who\u2019s published several studies on vaccine misinformation. \u201cScientists don\u2019t want to say the wrong thing and will often stay silent, or provide facts and statistics without context, leaving vaccine opponents to fill the vacuum.\u201d<\/p>\n Rob Holmes suspects that at least the first round of COVID vaccines won\u2019t be trustworthy.<\/p>\n \u201cMicrosoft ships buggy products all the time, then debugs after the guinea pigs \u2014 the consumers \u2014 make them aware of the flaws,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t believe the pharmaceutical community works much differently.\u201d<\/p>\n The declining number of people willing to get a COVID vaccine is a real concern. According to Johns Hopkins University, between 70 percent and 90 percent of Americans would need to have coronavirus antibodies to reach herd immunity. A vaccine won\u2019t do much good \u201cunless we have a significant number of the population immunized,\u201d says Ratzan.<\/p>\n The urgency has led some researchers to make recommendations that only add fuel to the anti-vax fire. On Oct. 1, the New England Journal of Medicine\u00a0published a paper<\/a>\u00a0suggesting that those in the public unwilling to take a COVID vaccine voluntarily \u201cshould incur a penalty\u201d \u2014 and a \u201crelatively substantial\u201d one, including \u201cemployment suspension or stay-at-home orders.\u201d<\/p>\n Kass, at Johns Hopkins, admits that communication about COVID prevention and vaccination has been \u201cfairly disastrous from a public-health perspective.\u201d The solution, she says, might involve changing not the message but the messenger.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen there was the measles outbreak among an Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn recently, part of the response strategy similarly involved finding trusted messengers from within the community to spread the message that a measles vaccine could save their kids\u2019 lives,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n But for Palma, there is nothing that will change her mind about a COVID vaccine.<\/p>\n \u201cEven if God himself came down from the heavens and said it will do you no harm, I\u2019d say \u2018No thank you,\u2019\u2009\u201d she says. \u201cI believe in a whole different way of taking care of the body. I believe in healthy foods, sunshine, love, Earth connection, exercise. I just don\u2019t believe good health can ever be found in an injection.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Suffolk](\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/10\/tara-granger.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=300)
<\/a>![\"Moderna,](\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/10\/moderna-laboratory-technician.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=300)
<\/a>![\"Rita](\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/10\/rita-palma-family.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=300)
<\/a>![\"Donald](\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/10\/president-trump-mask.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=300)
<\/a>![\"Kamala](\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/10\/kamala-harris-3.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=300)
<\/a>![\"President](\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/10\/gerald-ford-inoculation.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=300)
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