Although the two COVID-19 vaccines — one from Pfizer, one from Moderna — are now literally “around the corner” (to pick up on the claim by Donald Trump that was treated with derision), not all Americans are bullish about getting the shots. A new Gallup poll finds that 6 in ten plan to be vaccinated, that leaves a whopping 40% who are willing to gamble with their health. While some of these are anti-vaxxers, a fair percentage are following the Democrats’ lead, which could spell disaster for the country as a whole.
In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Dr. Moncef Slaoui, Operation Warp Speed’s chief scientific adviser, said that 70% of the population must be vaccinated in order to reach “true herd immunity.” But by politicizing what Fox News Channel contributor Geraldo Rivera has dubbed “Trump’s vaccine,” liberals have compromised our chances of reaching that vital threshold.
During the campaign, both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris cast doubt on the safety and efficacy of a vaccine rolled out under the Trump administration. Harris was adamant that she would not trust a vaccine with Trump’s seal of approval, while Biden was more direct, announcing, “I don’t trust Donald Trump.”
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Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose daily press briefings in the early months of the pandemics earned him an Emmy, decried the news of the vaccines as “bad news” and urged other governors to obstruct any vaccine rollout until Biden has been inaugurated.
Far and away the silliest objection raised was that of Al Sharpton, who invoked the specter of the Tuskegee experiments, which tricked black men with latent syphilis into taking doses of a placebo while falsely promising to treat the infection.
Half of black adults have already made it known that they do not plan on getting the vaccine. There is no need to further fuel the anxieties of the black community.
