Now that the COVID-19 vaccine is approved, put politics aside and do what’s right
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From the moment the coronavirus arrived in the United States, it got politicized.
Science, medicine, treatment, precautions, efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19, facts about how dangerous it was — it all got politicized.
Wearing a mask got politicized.
Work on emergency vaccines began, those vaccines got emergency use authorization, and that got politicized.
Warnings from doctors and health care experts got politicized.
And we’re all still suffering for it.
Vaccine hesitancy has been high, and vaccination rates, particularly in Idaho, have been low.
In Idaho, health care systems’ efforts to keep their patients and health care workers safe and healthy by requiring the vaccine became political. Those who want to prevent Saint Alphonsus, St. Luke’s and Primary Health from requiring the vaccine opposed the vaccine on the basis that it is only “experimental” because it didn’t have full FDA approval, and therefore was unsafe.
But that reason is off the table now.
U.S. regulators on Monday gave full approval to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.
Now that we have full approval, will the people using emergency-use authorization as an excuse get the shots?
Will we finally put this fight to rest and get everyone vaccinated who is able?
Can we then all go back to our lives and avoid reimplementing public health measures as caseloads climb again — yet another thing that got politicized?
We shall see. Anti-vaccination sentiment has seemed to go hand-in-hand with politics.
All one has to do is look at a map of Idaho. Lay a map of who voted for Joe Biden for president last year next to a map of who has been vaccinated, and it jumps right off the page. Those people are largely one and the same.
The flip side, of course, is a strong resistance to the vaccine from those who vote Republican, and more precisely, who supported Donald Trump.
And that’s where it all circles back. Trump took the stance of downplaying COVID-19, spread misinformation about it, contracted the disease and acted as if it wasn’t a big deal, even though he received an intensive treatment not available to most Americans. And so the politicization was entrenched, especially among the far-right crowd that is his base.
Gov. Brad Little has encouraged Idahoans to get the vaccine now that it’s approved. Not merely relying on the science, though, Little wisely injected a little bit of politics into his words.
“President Donald Trump last year boldly moved our country forward with Operation Warp Speed — the first-ever public-private partnership of its kind — to enable faster approval and production of COVID-19 vaccines during the global pandemic,” Little said. “Today, we reached the culmination of President Trump’s leadership.”
Of course, since politics got us to this point in the pandemic, maybe it’s what can get us out, too.
After all, Little, a Republican, has rightly urged people to get vaccinated from the get-go. One of his opponents in the gubernatorial primary in 2018, Tommy Ahlquist, started Crush the Curve Idaho and has been a leading voice during the pandemic. And across the country, some Republicans — including the governors of Utah, Arkansas and West Virginia — are becoming more forceful in urging people to get the shots.
Trump, by the way, was vaccinated in January.
If the vaccine was good enough for Trump, shouldn’t it be good enough for his followers? After all, the vaccines were developed under his administration. Maybe if they were called the Trump Vaccines, people would come around.
Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin is among those who have led the anti-vaccination charge. She wants the Legislature reconvened to interfere in the business of health care systems and private employers. She runs the lines about personal, private medical decisions and about the vaccine not having full approval, but let’s make no mistake: This was about politics.
McGeachin is running for governor and wants to score politically with the anti-vaccine crowd.
For sure, some vaccine hesitancy came from those in the wait-and-see camp, not ready to take a vaccine that had only “emergency use authorization,” and not full FDA approval. But now that the Pfizer vaccine has earned FDA approval, that excuse should be off the table.
Because, if not, we’ll know that this was all just politics as usual.
Statesman editorials are the unsigned opinion expressing the consensus of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, editor Chadd Cripe and newsroom editors Dana Oland and Jim Keyser and community members J.J. Saldaña and Christy Perry.
