![\"a](\"https:\/\/img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net\/tenant\/amp\/entityid\/AAMN9RC.img?h=525&w=799&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f\")
<\/span>\u00a9 Evelyn Hockstein\/Reuters<\/span>\u00a0President Biden speaks to reporters outside the White House on Friday.<\/span><\/span><\/h4>\nMeanwhile, there\u2019s a top-down push to get reluctant citizens vaccinated: The White House and the Department of Education partnered with colleges and universities on a \u201cCovid-19 College Vaccine Challenge<\/a>.\u201d On Monday, the Department of Veterans Affairs became the first federal agency to\u00a0mandate vaccinations<\/a>\u00a0for more than 100,000 of its employees. On Thursday, Biden\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0that civilian federal workers must be vaccinated or submit to regular coronavirus testing.<\/p>\nBut if this rhetoric and these efforts lead to a de facto national vaccine mandate, it will backfire: Americans from all walks of life resist being told what to put into their bodies, and many will resent any politician or institution that makes them get vaccinated, creating a crisis of legitimacy for any government, university or business that forces constituents, students or employees to get vaccinated. Indeed, the president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association has already\u00a0said<\/a>, \u201cThere will be a lot of pushback\u201d from members of his organization against the federal employee mandate.<\/p>\nThere\u2019s been a lot of hand-wringing about partisan vaccine resistance \u2014 according to a recent Economist\/YouGov\u00a0poll<\/a>, 29 percent of Republicans say they won\u2019t get vaccinated, compared to 4 percent of Democrats \u2014 but that doesn\u2019t tell the whole story. In mid-June,\u00a0according to<\/a>\u00a0the Kaiser Family Foundation, when parents of children ages 12 and older (the youngest group authorized for vaccination) were asked by Kaiser Family if they would get their children vaccinated, 18 percent said they would wait and see, 10 percent said they would if required and 25 percent said \u201cdefinitely not.\u201d As FiveThirtyEight\u2019s Geoffrey Skelley\u00a0explains<\/a>, \u201cUnvaccinated Americans tend to be younger\u201d and \u201cmore likely to be a person of color. The situation we\u2019re in is not just because of politics but also because of access to the vaccine and broader skepticism of the health care system.\u201d<\/p>\nOn Thursday, The Post reported<\/a>\u00a0on an internal document at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that cited concerns about the effectiveness of vaccines in preventing the contraction of the delta variant of the coronavirus. On Friday, The Post\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0on an analysis of CDC data from Massachusetts finding \u201cthat three-quarters of the people who became infected were fully vaccinated.\u201dAs Maya Goldenberg, author of \u201cVaccine Hesitancy: Public Trust, Expertise, and the War on Science\u201d argues in a recent\u00a0blog post<\/a>, many of the vaccine-hesitant are well-educated, work in the health-care industry and have questions about how effective the vaccines are at stopping transmission, whether they\u2019re safe to take during pregnancy or if they impact fertility.<\/p>\nNot only won\u2019t mandates resolve many citizens\u2019 concerns on these issues, they could lead many to feel that their concerns are being overlooked.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, researchers have found that in some cases, vaccine resistance can be an expression of what the New York Times described as an ingrained \u201cmoral preference for liberty and individual rights<\/a>.\u201d Take NFL player Cole Beasley, who defiantly tweeted:<\/p>\nAnd the more that government flexes its political muscles to urge or enforce vaccine compliance, the greater incentive there is for populist politicians to push back, reinforcing the idea that the fight over vaccines is a fight about individual liberty: Earlier this month, not long after Biden floated the idea of a door-to-door vaccination outreach effort, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.)\u00a0rallied the crowd<\/a>\u00a0at the Conservative Political Action Conference, saying: \u201cDon\u2019t come knocking on my door with your \u2018Fauci ouchie.\u2019 You leave us the hell alone\u201d \u2014 referencing Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has become, since last year, the public face of the nation\u2019s vaccine response.<\/p>\nThe debate is also about how much faith individual Americans have in the information they\u2019re given. When Pfizer\u2019s CEO\u00a0announces<\/a>\u00a0that its coronavirus vaccine is 96 percent effective up to two months after a second dose, but only 84 percent effective four to six months after the second dose \u2014 on the heels of\u00a0suggesting<\/a>\u00a0that a third \u201cbooster\u201d shot may be needed \u2014 that raises alarm bells among skeptics. When the CDC goes back and forth on its mask-wearing guidance \u2014 loosening recommendations in May and\u00a0tightening them again now<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 it invites the charge that public health officials are winging it, rather than making evidence-based calculations.<\/p>\nAt a minimum, public health officials have to better educate the public about why the available vaccines are still being distributed with only an emergency-use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, not full FDA approval. For a public accustomed to drug approval taking years, not months, the Trump administration\u2019s fast-tracking of coronavirus vaccines, hailed by many \u2014 including (at least initially) former president Donald Trump \u2014 can raise suspicion\u00a0among others<\/a>.<\/p>\nStudies have found that mandates can provoke\u00a0anger<\/a>\u00a0rather than encourage resisters to get vaccinated. The implementation of European-style\u00a0incentives<\/a>\u00a0that make life more convenient for the vaccinated and less convenient for the unvaccinated could risk fostering greater resistance.<\/p>\nThe administration should go as far in the opposite direction as it can from those who deride vaccine skeptics, such as USA Today columnist Tom Nichols, who referred<\/a>\u00a0to vaccine resisters as \u201ccynical and obstinate children\u201d who should be shunned until they \u201cgrow up.\u201dIn December, Biden\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0he wouldn\u2019t mandate vaccines but that he would \u201cencourage people to do the right thing.\u201d His position reflected an understanding of the nation he was preparing to lead: That persuading Americans \u2014 not dictating to them on how to respond to covid-19 \u2014 was both more politically tenable and would better serve his aim of bringing the pandemic under control. In June, Politico\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that the administration succeeded in increasing the vaccination rate for Hispanic Americans by relying on making vaccinations available through federally-backed community health centers. In April, Time magazine\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that the administration planned efforts to involve faith-based organizations and \u201corganizations with ties to rural communities\u201d in its vaccine outreach. That type of approach, with better messaging and less coercion, ought to be sustained and prioritized rather than slowly driving toward mandates.<\/p>\nBiden\u2019s words have been measured and conciliatory, but his policies have steadily crept in the direction of the crowd that shows intolerance toward legitimate vaccine concerns.<\/p>\n
A democracy must use democratic means \u2014 acknowledging unknowns, continuing outreach and avoiding stigmatization \u2014 even to combat something as serious and urgent as a pandemic. Making people get vaccinated, by contrast, will likely increase mistrust. Instead of \u201cnormalizing\u201d the jab, it risks creating a permanent and hardened segment of our society, primed to oppose government efforts to deal with covid or other public health crises on the horizon.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n
![\"a](\"{"default":{"load":"default","w":"80","h":"52","src":"\/\/img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net\/tenant\/amp\/entityid\/AAMN9RC.img?h=525&w=799&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f"},"size3column":{"load":"default","w":"62","h":"41","src":"\/\/img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net\/tenant\/amp\/entityid\/AAMN9RC.img?h=410&w=624&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f"},"size2column":{"load":"default","w":"62","h":"41","src":"\/\/img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net\/tenant\/amp\/entityid\/AAMN9RC.img?h=410&w=624&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f"}}\")
<\/span>But if this rhetoric and these efforts lead to a de facto national vaccine mandate, it will backfire: Americans from all walks of life resist being told what to put into their bodies, and many will resent any politician or institution that makes them get vaccinated, creating a crisis of legitimacy for any government, university or business that forces constituents, students or employees to get vaccinated. Indeed, the president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association has already\u00a0said<\/a>, \u201cThere will be a lot of pushback\u201d from members of his organization against the federal employee mandate.<\/p>\n There\u2019s been a lot of hand-wringing about partisan vaccine resistance \u2014 according to a recent Economist\/YouGov\u00a0poll<\/a>, 29 percent of Republicans say they won\u2019t get vaccinated, compared to 4 percent of Democrats \u2014 but that doesn\u2019t tell the whole story. In mid-June,\u00a0according to<\/a>\u00a0the Kaiser Family Foundation, when parents of children ages 12 and older (the youngest group authorized for vaccination) were asked by Kaiser Family if they would get their children vaccinated, 18 percent said they would wait and see, 10 percent said they would if required and 25 percent said \u201cdefinitely not.\u201d As FiveThirtyEight\u2019s Geoffrey Skelley\u00a0explains<\/a>, \u201cUnvaccinated Americans tend to be younger\u201d and \u201cmore likely to be a person of color. The situation we\u2019re in is not just because of politics but also because of access to the vaccine and broader skepticism of the health care system.\u201d<\/p>\n On Thursday, The Post reported<\/a>\u00a0on an internal document at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that cited concerns about the effectiveness of vaccines in preventing the contraction of the delta variant of the coronavirus. On Friday, The Post\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0on an analysis of CDC data from Massachusetts finding \u201cthat three-quarters of the people who became infected were fully vaccinated.\u201dAs Maya Goldenberg, author of \u201cVaccine Hesitancy: Public Trust, Expertise, and the War on Science\u201d argues in a recent\u00a0blog post<\/a>, many of the vaccine-hesitant are well-educated, work in the health-care industry and have questions about how effective the vaccines are at stopping transmission, whether they\u2019re safe to take during pregnancy or if they impact fertility.<\/p>\n Not only won\u2019t mandates resolve many citizens\u2019 concerns on these issues, they could lead many to feel that their concerns are being overlooked.<\/p>\n Furthermore, researchers have found that in some cases, vaccine resistance can be an expression of what the New York Times described as an ingrained \u201cmoral preference for liberty and individual rights<\/a>.\u201d Take NFL player Cole Beasley, who defiantly tweeted:<\/p>\n And the more that government flexes its political muscles to urge or enforce vaccine compliance, the greater incentive there is for populist politicians to push back, reinforcing the idea that the fight over vaccines is a fight about individual liberty: Earlier this month, not long after Biden floated the idea of a door-to-door vaccination outreach effort, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.)\u00a0rallied the crowd<\/a>\u00a0at the Conservative Political Action Conference, saying: \u201cDon\u2019t come knocking on my door with your \u2018Fauci ouchie.\u2019 You leave us the hell alone\u201d \u2014 referencing Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has become, since last year, the public face of the nation\u2019s vaccine response.<\/p>\n The debate is also about how much faith individual Americans have in the information they\u2019re given. When Pfizer\u2019s CEO\u00a0announces<\/a>\u00a0that its coronavirus vaccine is 96 percent effective up to two months after a second dose, but only 84 percent effective four to six months after the second dose \u2014 on the heels of\u00a0suggesting<\/a>\u00a0that a third \u201cbooster\u201d shot may be needed \u2014 that raises alarm bells among skeptics. When the CDC goes back and forth on its mask-wearing guidance \u2014 loosening recommendations in May and\u00a0tightening them again now<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 it invites the charge that public health officials are winging it, rather than making evidence-based calculations.<\/p>\n At a minimum, public health officials have to better educate the public about why the available vaccines are still being distributed with only an emergency-use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, not full FDA approval. For a public accustomed to drug approval taking years, not months, the Trump administration\u2019s fast-tracking of coronavirus vaccines, hailed by many \u2014 including (at least initially) former president Donald Trump \u2014 can raise suspicion\u00a0among others<\/a>.<\/p>\n Studies have found that mandates can provoke\u00a0anger<\/a>\u00a0rather than encourage resisters to get vaccinated. The implementation of European-style\u00a0incentives<\/a>\u00a0that make life more convenient for the vaccinated and less convenient for the unvaccinated could risk fostering greater resistance.<\/p>\n The administration should go as far in the opposite direction as it can from those who deride vaccine skeptics, such as USA Today columnist Tom Nichols, who referred<\/a>\u00a0to vaccine resisters as \u201ccynical and obstinate children\u201d who should be shunned until they \u201cgrow up.\u201dIn December, Biden\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0he wouldn\u2019t mandate vaccines but that he would \u201cencourage people to do the right thing.\u201d His position reflected an understanding of the nation he was preparing to lead: That persuading Americans \u2014 not dictating to them on how to respond to covid-19 \u2014 was both more politically tenable and would better serve his aim of bringing the pandemic under control. In June, Politico\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that the administration succeeded in increasing the vaccination rate for Hispanic Americans by relying on making vaccinations available through federally-backed community health centers. In April, Time magazine\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that the administration planned efforts to involve faith-based organizations and \u201corganizations with ties to rural communities\u201d in its vaccine outreach. That type of approach, with better messaging and less coercion, ought to be sustained and prioritized rather than slowly driving toward mandates.<\/p>\n Biden\u2019s words have been measured and conciliatory, but his policies have steadily crept in the direction of the crowd that shows intolerance toward legitimate vaccine concerns.<\/p>\n A democracy must use democratic means \u2014 acknowledging unknowns, continuing outreach and avoiding stigmatization \u2014 even to combat something as serious and urgent as a pandemic. Making people get vaccinated, by contrast, will likely increase mistrust. Instead of \u201cnormalizing\u201d the jab, it risks creating a permanent and hardened segment of our society, primed to oppose government efforts to deal with covid or other public health crises on the horizon.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n