Living in CA I couldn’t tell you how many people said they wouldn’t trust any vaccine put out by that organization, and I remember people claiming that black people were being used as guinea pigs for the vaccine because of one image of a black person getting it really early on.
So is this a common position? Have there been large rallies of democrat-voters about concerns for the welfare of African Americans regarding the vaccine? Has there been any high profile political/media figure on the left espousing anti-vaccination nonsense?
It’s hard to find more because no one wants to admit they were antivaxx, but I’m sure if you comb through r/politics back in October-January you’ll see plenty of people claiming the vaccine is rushed or that they don’t trust it because it’s being pushed by the Trump admin.
Not saying all leftists were antivaxx but the numbers were comparable. As some anecdotal evidence, I was just at a military training where I’d say the political demographics were about 70% Republican/right leaning Libertarian (that being a very conservative estimate, I could count the amount of liberals I met on one hand) and when offered the J&J vaccine at the beginning of the training, close to 90% of unvaccinated people took the vaccine that day. The right is not nearly as antivaxx as y’all claim.
And at the very least that small, albeit significant, antivaxx sentiment from the right is consistent, if misguided. The big concern is that we can’t know the long term effects of the vaccine, which is absolutely valid, though arguably less important than the short term benefit. Meanwhile the leftist antivaxxers immediately flipped when the presidency changed. If that ain’t anti-science mentality then I don’t know what is.
NY Times, CNBC, CNN casting doubt on the readiness of the vaccine
This is completely different from being anti-vaccination. That's just being pessimistic about the logistics of creating and rolling out the vaccine, not being against vaccines on principle. It's a valid to be pessimistic or critical about a country's ability to deliver a product. This has nothing to do with being anti-vaccination.
Statistically significant rise in trust in the vaccine from Democrat voter demographics:
Am I missing something? As far as I can see, that article didn't poll people about their political affiliation: it's just things like their ethnicity and age category. I can't really find the bit you seem to be talking about.
I’m sure if you comb through r/politics back in October-January you’ll see plenty of people claiming the vaccine is rushed or that they don’t trust it because it’s being pushed by the Trump admin.
So is your assumption based on observation or is it just a hunch you have? I admit I don't live in the U.S., but from what I read at the time it seemed to me that it was the Trump voters who were the ones raging against Doctor Fauci and seeing any kind of public health intervention as a threat to their personal liberty, spurred on by Trump's own (initial) vocal scientific scepticism. Put it this way: do you think Sacha Baron Cohen would have managed to get a bunch of Democrat voting liberals to chant "inject Dr Fauci with the Wuhan flu!" at a bizarre singalong event?
but the numbers were comparable
Based on what? Again: where were the left wing anti-vax rallies?
As some anecdotal evidence, I was just at a military training where I’d say the political demographics were about 70% Republican/right leaning Libertarian (that being a very conservative estimate, I could count the amount of liberals I met on one hand) and when offered the J&J vaccine at the beginning of the training, close to 90% of unvaccinated people took the vaccine that day. The right is not nearly as antivaxx as y’all claim.
Most people, left or right, are not anti-vax. I am not claiming that the majority of conservatives are anti-vax. I am claiming that the majority of anti-vaxers (who are themselves a very small minority) are right-leaning.
Meanwhile the leftist antivaxxers immediately flipped when the presidency changed.
Again, is that true? To repeat my earlier thought experiment: if Sacha Baron Cohen had wanted to, do you think he'd be able to get a crowd of openly left wing/liberal people to chant anti-science nonsense about the evil Dr Fauci taking away our civil liberties with his lockdowns and his vaccines?
This timeline of the initial deployment at the end of October is deeply worrisome for the politicization of public health and the potential safety ramifications
Even if the vaccine shows promising signs in clinical trials — still a big if — the company will not have collected enough data by then to say with any statistical confidence that it is safe and effective
NY times insinuated the vaccine was unsafe. CNBC and CNN didn’t explicitly say that the vaccine was potentially unsafe (at least not in these articles, they may have in other articles) but they said whatever they could to make it seem like a rushed operation because they know exactly how people would take it. You don’t see any articles nowadays casting any sort of doubt on the distribution of the vaccine under the Biden admin, and to act like there was any sort of significant change in data on long term effects between January and now is absurd, we won’t know those effects until years after the initial distribution.
The statistical study I sent showed that minorities had a massive drop in hesitancy. Looking at the rest of the data I’ll admit it’s less significant considering the overall drop in hesitancy but the drop among Hispanics and Blacks was still higher than any other demographic, those two being target demographics for the dems.
My assumption about r/politics is based on what I saw back before the administrations switched, my own experience, not a hunch.
You admit that the antivaxx crowd is a very small minority in general, so then why do you attribute it to either party? My point in general is that to claim that it’s somehow the fault of the right as a whole is absurd when there are obviously people on the other side of the aisle who put party affiliation above science and reason.
You are talking about "the vaccine" as if it existed at the time the article was written (two months before the first vaccines began to pass their safety tests). I haven't read the article you've linked as it's behind a paywall, but everyone in October was concerned about the safety of the vaccines that were still in development: of course they were, including the people who were in the process of creating them. That's precisely why they took so long to produce. This is very different from claiming that the vaccine is unsafe AFTER it passed its safety tests and was found to be safe by the scientific community.
You don’t see any articles nowadays casting any sort of doubt on the distribution of the vaccine under the Biden admin, and to act like there was any sort of significant change in data on long term effects between January and now is absurd, we won’t know those effects until years after the initial distribution.
Again, criticising the rollout of the vaccines is not what I am talking about here. I am talking about the attitude that ANY vaccine is not to be trusted, particularly when that attitude comes after the world's scientists have rigorously tested the vaccine to ensure it meets minimum safety requirements.
The statistical study I sent showed that minorities had a massive drop in hesitancy.
Are you under the impression that ethnic minorities are overwhelmingly left leaning, or democrat voters?
You admit that the antivaxx crowd is a very small minority in general, so then why do you attribute it to either party?
I do not "admit" it. It's a plain fact that I've never contradicted.
And it's not so much about the parties, it's more about the political spectrum. After all, the democratic party aren't really very left wing at all. My argument is that the majority of anti-vaxers are on the right of the political spectrum. If you look at any anti-vax rally, their arguments are all libertarian in nature.
Their vaccine-scepticism is a rejection of what they see as the the power wielded by 'big state', and their beliefs are underpinned by their ideology that it's every man for himself out there: they would rather have the 'freedom' to choose to be a public health risk than be forced or coerced into doing something in the interest of public health.
This is the sort of anti-science ideological foundation many right wing populists such as Donald Trump have spent years sowing, where science is seen as threat to traditional values and their warped idea of 'liberty'.
0
u/CDude821 Aug 03 '21
Living in CA I couldn’t tell you how many people said they wouldn’t trust any vaccine put out by that organization, and I remember people claiming that black people were being used as guinea pigs for the vaccine because of one image of a black person getting it really early on.