The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between February 27th and March 2nd of a nationwide sample of 1,515 adults (including 1,366 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.4 points for adults and 3.2 points for registered voters.
When historians look back to analyze this era's toxic irrationality, they may well focus on the anti-vaccine movement.
How tragic that we have to stand up and defend one of the most successful health innovations in the history of our species. Vaccines have saved hundreds of millions of lives and eradicated or greatly reduced scourges like smallpox and polio. They have protected millions from the worst effects of COVID and hastened a return to our pre-pandemic way of life, even though the dangers of the disease are not fully behind us.
Vaccines are also incredibly safe, especially when compared to all the other things people put into their bodies. There is no reputable scientific debate over any of this.
But none of these facts have dissuaded the instigators of ignorance, the cultivators of conspiracy theories, and the sellers of pseudoscience. They have whipped up their throngs of followers into a mania around vaccines that threatens the safety of this country and the world. And they have targeted doctors, scientists, and other medical professionals — the very people trying to keep us healthy.
This past weekend, we saw a particularly grave example of this destructive dynamic. Joe Rogan, the right-wing podcast host and frequent amplifier of conspiracy theories, welcomed notorious anti-vaxxer Robert Kennedy Jr. to his show. Kennedy is running for president as a Democratic challenger to President Biden, even though he sounds more like a MAGA Republican. Not surprisingly, he spouted his usual nonsense about the alleged dangers of vaccines, and Rogan ate it up.
That would have been bad enough. But the incident quickly escalated across social media and into the general press in a manner that speaks to our particularly troubled times. Pediatrician and vaccine expert Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, shared this article from Vice: “Spotify Has Stopped Even Sort of Trying to Stem Joe Rogan’s Vaccine Misinformation.” Spotify, the online music service, hosts Rogan’s podcast.
The response to Dr. Hotez’s tweet — which has now been viewed more than 28 million times — was a tidal wave of bananas. The doctor, a prominent voice on the importance of reputable science, was already a boogeyman for the anti-vaxxers and COVID deniers. They were ready to pounce. Rogan challenged Dr. Hotez to come on his podcast to “debate” Kennedy.
Then Elon Musk piled on and attacked Dr. Hotez on Twitter, which further empowered the legions of right-wing radicals. Dr. Hotez said he was confronted by anti-vaxxers outside his home. Scientists, journalists, and even business leaders like Mark Cuban jumped to the researcher’s defense against the onslaught of anti-science nonsense from Rogan, Musk, and their confederates.
There are many angles to this particular story that highlight the bad faith of the vaccine critics. They like to paint promoters of inoculations as tools of “Big Pharma.” But Dr. Hotez has developed a patent-free vaccine for COVID, which means neither he nor a big drug company will benefit financially from its use. Furthermore, going onto a podcast to talk about vaccines with Kennedy is not a “debate” — it’s performative nonsense. We don’t have NASA scientists debate flat Earthers.
And the idea that this is a matter of free speech is undercut when Musk uses the platform he bought to intimidate responsible voices by unleashing the mob (not to mention that we aren't talking about government prosecution). In the wake of this episode, reports indicate scientists are (understandably) leaving Twitter in greater numbers because it has become an increasingly vile environment for mainstreaming anti-science harassment.
More generally, this episode represents another data point in a very disturbing trend, one exacerbated by, but not limited to, COVID or vaccines. Science is under siege from powerful players in American politics, business, and culture. It is largely a phenomenon of the modern Republican party and its reactionary allies, but not exclusively. It can be seen in our haphazard response to the climate crisis but also in a broad assault on data, expertise, and knowledge. This overall, general attack on science as a whole is a threat to our national security, health, and welfare.
Science can be a wonderfully encouraging and hopeful endeavor. It is a means for learning about the mysteries of life and the universe. It can lead to solutions for seemingly intractable problems. It is why cancer is not always a death sentence, why we can turn sunlight into clean electricity and take pictures of distant stars. Scientists aren't perfect, of course. They are humans, after all. But science offers a way for us to arrive at important truths and then figure out where to go from there.
The likes of Kennedy, Rogan, and Musk are robbing us of this better future. By sowing discord and confusion, they are turning science and medicine into political footballs they toss back and forth at the public’s expense. But ultimately, the truth often wins out. Dr. Hotez and those who support him are standing up to the destructive bullying. In their courage and commitment, we can find reasons for hope.
Here is part of what Michael Gerson says about this in The Washington Post:
White evangelical Christians have resisted getting vaccinated against the coronavirus at higher rates than other religious groups in the United States. Some initial resistance came in the context of a familiar ethical debate: Did the creation of coronavirus vaccines involve cell lines produced from aborted fetuses?
The short answer is: no. A slightly longer answer is that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is grown in fetal cell line PER.C6, which was derived from an elective abortion in 1985. “But contrary to social media claims,” Francis Collins, former director of the National Institutes of Health, told me, “there are no fetal cells or fetal DNA in the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.” The Vatican has indicated that Catholics can take the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
“The Pfizer and Moderna mRNA are synthesized without the need for a cell line,” Collins said. “The only possible objection against those is that their effectiveness was tested in certain lab experiments that used fetal cell lines. But if that is sufficient reason to decline them, that would also need to apply to a very long list of current medicines, including aspirin and statins.”
The main resistance of evangelicals to public health measures does not concern abortion. Having embraced religious liberty as a defining cause, they are now deploying the language of that cause in opposition to jab and mask mandates. Arguments crafted to defend institutional religious liberty have been adapted to oppose public coercion on covid. But they do not fit.
More than that, the sanctification of anti-government populism is displacing or dethroning one of the most basic Christian distinctions. Most evangelical posturing on covid mandates is really syncretism, a merging of unrelated beliefs — in this case, the substitution of libertarianism for Christian ethics. In this distorted form of faith, evangelical Christians are generally known as people who loudly defend their own rights. They show not radical generosity but discreditable selfishness. There is no version of the Golden Rule that would recommend Christian resistance to basic public health measures during a pandemic. This is heresy compounded by lunacy.
It is worth recalling, as a matter of law, that someone does not need a good or theologically coherent religious-liberty claim to make a religious-liberty claim in court (absent fraud or opportunism). To deny such a claim, government needs a compelling interest advanced in the least restrictive manner. But it is hard to imagine a clearer, more fundamental example of a compelling state interest than preventing the spread of a virus that has already taken the lives of more than 800,000 Americans.
And when Christians are asserting a right to resist basic public health measures, what is the actual content of their religious-liberty claim? The right to risk the lives of their neighbors in order to assert their autonomy? The right to endanger the community in the performative demonstration of their personal rights?
This is a vivid display of the cultural and ideological trends of a warped and wasted year. It just has nothing to do with real Christianity.
Here’s a look at seven scary things that are not in the vaccines:
Aluminum. They use it in pickup trucks, food containers and antiperspirants. But in the COVID-19 vaccines? No.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that small amounts of aluminum — specifically aluminum salts — have been used in vaccines since the 1930s as an adjuvant, which helps elicit a stronger immune response from the body.
But none of the three COVID-19 vaccines currently being used in the U.S. — Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, all of which have publicly accessible ingredient lists — contain any aluminum.
As for other vaccines, research has shown their levels of aluminum are so low that they can't easily be absorbed by the body, let alone the brain. There has been no evidence of the aluminum in vaccines causing illness or developmental disorders.
While your cell phone can help Big Brother, or your mother, locate you via 5G networks, the vaccines cannot.
Yet some social media users likened the bubbles of fat in the vaccine to the sort of tracking microchips implanted under a pet’s skin. That’s a lot of creepy nonsense.
There is no evidence that the COVID-19 vaccines contain technology similar to pet microchips. The lipid nanoparticles used in some of the vaccines are called "nanoparticles" because they are very, very small. They have nothing to do with 5G networks or tracking technology.
This baseless conspiracy theory says that the shots include a technology that changes "what it is to be human." The vaccines don’t contain any such thing.
"None of the vaccines contain nanotechnology of any sort, let alone 'transhumanism nanotechnology,’ which isn’t even a thing," Mark Lynas, a visiting fellow at the Alliance for Science and Cornell University, told PolitiFact.
"RNA" and the prefix "nano" are valid scientific terms, though. Here’s what they mean:
"RNA" — ribonucleic acid — is a molecule that carries coded genetic information to a cell and a messenger form of RNA is used in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to send information about the coronavirus to the body’s cells to teach the immune system to identify and prepare to fight off a COVID-19 infection. (Spoiler alert:It does not modify a person’s DNA or RNA.) The Johnson & Johnson vaccine uses a disabled adenovirus to deliver instructions to do the same.
"Nano," as we said earlier, is a term widely used to describe things that are very tiny, and scientists use the prefix more specifically to refer to things on the scale of individual atoms.
A chilling, grainy black-and-white image being shared on social media has been described as a "Trypanosoma Parasite" purportedly observed in Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. Several variants of the parasite, internet users claimed, are lethal and are one of many causes of acquired immune deficiency syndrome or AIDS.
This is erroneous, on all counts.
Dr. Bobbi Pritt, the director of clinical parasitology at the Mayo Clinic, told us the blurry image likely represents an out-of-focus non-cellular component of the vaccine and doesn’t show a Trypanosoma cruzi or any other parasite.
As for the claim that this particular parasite causes AIDS, that’s also wrong, she said.
"The only thing that causes AIDS is an infection with the human immunodeficiency virus," she said, "and this cannot be acquired through the Pfizer vaccine."
A popular video claimed that the Pfizer vaccine contains "particles that could germinate and cause illness" — and that vitamin supplements could stop this from happening. You can bet someone is selling those supplements online.
There’s no truth to this one either. The ingredients for Pfizer vaccines are chemical components — not living organisms.
"Contamination with spores or other microbial material can theoretically happen during production of any biologic, including vaccines," said Volker Mai, associate professor in the epidemiology department at the University of Florida. "However, quality control is extensive and monitoring occurs continuously. Thus, it is highly unlikely that any contaminated batch would make it into the market."
A vaccine turning you into the Marvel villain Magneto? That sounds terrifying (unless that’s what you wanted.) But don’t worry, the COVID-19 vaccines won’t make you more attractive to magnets.
Social media users have shared videos that appear to show magnets sticking to people’s arms where they say they were injected, and claimed this as proof the shots have microchips in them.
But medical experts called the claim utter nonsense.
Al Edwards, an associate professor in biomedical technology at the University of Reading in England, told Newsweek that because vaccine’s ingredients are some of the same things that are in the human body, "there is simply no way that injecting a tiny fragment of this material" could make it respond to a magnet. "Most food is made of similar molecules, and eating food doesn’t make people magnetic," he said.
A similar claim cites a video showing what looks like small balls connecting and growing on their own. The disturbing clip was described as the COVID-19 vaccine’s reaction once it hits the bloodstream.
That’s wrong. The video was actually from a 2015 science experiment by the Stanford Complexity Group, an initiative to bring complexity science to a wider audience, that shows self-organizing wires, which is still weird.
One more time for the people in the back: None of the COVID-19 vaccines contain microchips or metals.
An incendiary video that speaks of murder claims that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is dangerously packed with something called graphene oxide.
A Pfizer spokesperson told PolitiFact that while graphene oxide — a material made by the oxidation of graphite — is used in some vaccines, it is not used at Pfizer and is not in its COVID-19 vaccine.None of the listed ingredients is another name for graphene oxide, and the material doesn’t appear in ingredient lists for the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines.
Right-wingers are howling that President Biden's vaccine mandates are a violation of personal rights. As usual, they are wrong! The mandates are necessary to end the pandemic and improve the economy -- and THEY WORK!
The following is part of a column on this by Paul Krugman in The New York Times:
Three weeks ago President Biden announced plans to require Covid-19 vaccinations — or, in some cases, weekly testing as an alternative — for most U.S. workers. There were immediate predictions that the move would backfire, that it would only stiffen vaccine resistance. Indeed, some surveys suggested that as many as half of unvaccinated workers would quit their jobs rather than take their shots.
But such threats are proving mostly empty. Many state and local governments and a significant number of private employers have already imposed vaccine mandates — and these mandates have been very successful. Compliance has been high, and only a relative handful of workers have quit or had to be fired.
To understand why vaccine mandates seem to work so well, we need to think about the real nature of vaccine resistance. Most of the people refusing to take their shots don’t really believe that the vaccines contain tracking microchips or that they have severe side effects.
Instead, everything we’ve seen suggests that many vaccine resisters are like the people who in the past raged about seatbelt laws and bans on phosphates in detergents, or more recently refused to wear masks. That is, they’re people who balk at being asked to accept what they imagine to be a cost or inconvenience on behalf of the public good. . . .
The point is that most vaccine resistance isn’t about deep concerns, but it often involves assertions of the right to give (misguided perceptions of) self-interest priority over the public interest. So, luckily, many resisters fold as soon as the calculus of self-interest reverses, and refusing to take their shots has immediate, tangible financial costs. . . .
But why have so many Republicans refused to take their shots? Some, of course, have bought into the wild claims about side effects and sinister conspiracies that circulate on social media. But they’re probably a small minority.
Almost surely, mainstream right-wing media outlets, especially Fox News, have played a much bigger role. These outlets generally steer away from clearly falsifiable assertions — they have to worry about lawsuits. But they nonetheless want to do all they can to undermine the Biden administration, so they have done their best to raise doubts about the vaccines’ safety and effectiveness.
The effect has been to encourage many Republicans to think of getting vaccinated as an imposition, a cost they’re being asked to bear rather than a benefit they’re being offered — and, of course, something they’re primed to oppose precisely because it’s something Democrats want to see happen. Medical experts may say that going unvaccinated greatly increases your risk of getting seriously ill or dying, but hey, what do they know?
As I said, there probably aren’t very many Americans, even among self-identified Republicans, who really believe the vaccine horror stories — or are willing to make large, visible personal sacrifices in the name of “freedom.” So as soon as the cost of going unvaccinated stops being about statistics and becomes concrete — refuse the shot, lose your job — most vaccine resistance evaporates.
All of this has a clear policy implication for the Biden administration and for other leaders like governors and mayors — namely, full speed ahead. Vaccine mandates won’t cause mass resignations; they will cause a sharp rise in vaccination rates, which is key both to finally getting Covid under control and to achieving sustained economic recovery.
And Democrats shouldn’t fear the political fallout. Almost nobody will vote Republican because they’re enraged by public health rules, since such people are most likely to vote Republican anyway. What really matters for Democrats’ political fortunes is that life in America be visibly getting much better by next fall — and getting shots in arms is the way to make that happen.
The chart above is from the Morning Consult Poll. Between August 24th and 30th, they surveyed 47,351 adults in the United States and between 2,275 and 5,824 adults in several other countries.
It shows the United States is an outlier compared to other countries when it comes to the percentage of people who have taken (or plan to take the COVID-19 vaccine. Only 56% of U.S. adults say that, while the percentage is much higher in the other countries.
Those other countries are treating the virus seriously, and don't have Republicans feeding them misinformation (as is happening in the U.S.).
It shows that nearly half of Americans say they've been getting information about COVID-19 and the vaccines from social media. I find that depressing, but it explains why so many people are misinformed.
I love social media (as my Facebook friends can tell you). But it is not a good place to get news -- about COVID and vaccines or anything else. It's a great place to stay in contact with friends and associates, but much of the "news" there is little more than propaganda -- or outright misinformation.
Americans are lucky in that they have many places to get real news. There are newspapers, TV, radio, and magazines that all dedicate themselves to reporting the truth. Use those sources for getting news, and use the social media for entertainment.
There have been many false or misleading statements about the vaccine in the past few months. PolitiFact has examined those claims. Here are the 10 false claims being spread the most You can go to their website for an in depth examination of each false claim:
1. "The COVID-19 vaccines do not work."
FACT: They do.
2. "The COVID-19 vaccines were not properly tested or developed."
FACT: They were.
3. "The COVID-19 vaccines are mandatory."
FACT: They aren’t.
4. "The COVID-19 vaccines contain microchips for government tracking."
FACT: They don’t.
5. "The COVID-19 vaccines contain metals and other problematic ingredients."
FACT: They don’t.
6. "The COVID-19 vaccines have caused widespread death and disease."
FACT: They haven’t.
7. "The COVID-19 vaccines killed or harmed various celebrities."
FACT: They haven’t.
8. "The COVID-19 vaccines alter your DNA."
FACT: They don’t.
9. "The COVID-19 vaccines stunt fertility and disrupt pregnancies."
FACT: They don’t.
10. "The COVID-19 vaccines can ‘shed’ to affect unvaccinated people."
FACT: They don’t.
It shows that a substantial majority (64%) of the unvaccinated say they are not confident in the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine. We're going to have to somehow convince them of its effectiveness if we are to reach herd immunity and conquer the virus.
It shows some of the ridiculous reasons that many people say they don't want to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Perhaps most ridiculous is that 20% of adults, and 51% of the unvaccinated, think the vaccine contains a microchip put in by the government to keep track of the population.
The charts shows why those refusing the COVID-19 vaccine are doing that. 62% say it could cause infertility and 60% say it could alter a person's DNA. About half think it's being used to microchip the population and will cause autism.
The six questions above were asked of 928 young people in a 2 or 4 year college or trade school between May 5th and 8th by the Axios / Generation Lab Youth Poll. No margin of error was given.
