>> COVID-19 vaccines, which could have prevented endemic establishment in the US of COVID-19 had the GOP base adopted them quicker _(along with non-pharmaceutical interventions)_.
No one gets those diseases [because of vaccines, unstated and ignored] and so there's no point inflicting the unspeakable horror of an innoculation on your precious precious baby... is the reasoning.
My first wife was in this camp.
The issue came in forcing vs persuading.
Also people who got Covid before vaccine were totally ignored and let in an awkward position of being demonized for a vaccine that is to late.
And his political opponents were actively undermining trust in the vaccines at that time.
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/563771-guess-who-und...
Seems like even people here have latched onto this partisan merry-go-round.
Well, yeah. New Zealand had great policies and good compliance.
Then the same shitty murdoch and facebook led conspiracy theories, selfishness, and lies spread. Now they're dealing with the same issues as everyone else. Plus without the insane propaganda machine, lack of aid, and hoarding of unused vaccines we may not have even developed some of the mutations or had it become endemic in animal populations.
At least people in new zealand had a chance to get fully vaccinated there and avoid the short term death toll though.
EDIT: Whoa, people surprisingly hate this comment. It's true though -- rural red counties have been hit much harder, due to demographic factors, lower vaccine uptake as well as boosting, lower access, and lower testing generally (leading to higher serology rate differentials to reported counts). The entire state of GA, for example, looks like each county has low case counts compared to the rest of the US until you realize testing there only captures 1 in 4 cases. This selective intransigence to public health measures was a problem when there was one case, and has persisted to be a problem until today.