Our greatest hindrance to vaccinating the requisite number of adults to achieve herd immunity from the coronavirus may very well not be supply or even distribution but rather vaccine hesitancy.
From Kamala Harris questioning, prior to winning the vice presidency, whether she would take a vaccine approved during the Trump administration, to Anthony Fauci claiming that even vaccinated people must still socially distance, there’s plenty of blame to go around. But by the numbers, the group posing the greatest threat to achieving herd immunity is Republicans, who post higher rates of vaccine hesitancy than any other demographic.
Thus, the revelation that the former president and Melania Trump secretly received their vaccinations back in January is little more than dismaying. Trump publicly getting the vaccine could have done wonders to convince his followers to get vaccinated themselves. But just because he can’t get his own vaccine publicly again, that doesn’t mean he can’t help.
In his first live speech since leaving the White House, Trump urged people to get vaccinated as an aside, sprinkled with his listing of usual grievances.
“Never let them take the credit,” Trump said on the final night of CPAC. “Joe Biden is only implementing the plan we put in place.”
If Trump doesn’t want Biden to take all the credit, he could channel his favorite hobby with some public good that could recoup some of the credit for himself. He could resume rallies among his biggest supporters, but rather than campaigning for himself personally, he should be campaigning to get people to take the vaccine. It would be a legitimate public good that the media would be moronic to oppose, and it would serve as a useful reputational rehabilitation among the Republicans he alienated with his election lies that spurred the storming of the Capitol.
Of course, that it’s a win-win for everyone involved means it’s destined not to happen, but if Trump continues to lament Biden receiving credit for ending the pandemic, don’t say he couldn’t have done something.
