Trump is desperate to get credit for the vaccines, so much so that he claimed the other day on a pathetic Newsmax interview that he believes they should be called “Trumpcines” (yet another example of his highly overrated branding expertise…) But he couldn’t bring himself to be photographed getting the shot and neither has he done any kind of PSA or outreach to his own voters to get vaccinated.
Why? Because he’s a chickenshit who can’t ever bear to get on the wrong side of his voters over anything (unless he just blurts out something he doesn’t understand like saying “we should take the guns first and then have due process.”)
He knows his people aren’t getting vaccinated largely because he promoted the idea that the virus was “just going to go away” and that it’s been overblown in order to hurt him politically. They believed him and now they are giving their lives for the cause and taking a lot of people with them:
About 31 percent of adults in the United States have now been fully vaccinated. Scientists have estimated that 70 to 90 percent of the total population must acquire resistance to the virus to reach herd immunity. But in hundreds of counties around the country, vaccination rates are low, with some even languishing in the teens.
The disparity in vaccination rates has so far mainly broken down along political lines. The New York Times examined survey and vaccine administration data for nearly every U.S. county and found that both willingness to receive a vaccine and actual vaccination rates to date were lower, on average, in counties where a majority of residents voted to re-elect former President Donald J. Trump in 2020. The phenomenon has left some places with a shortage of supply and others with a glut.
For months, health officials across the United States have been racing to inoculate people as variants of the coronavirus have continued to gain a foothold, carrying mutations that can make infections more contagious and, in some cases, deadlier. Vaccinations have sped up and, in many places, people are still unable to book appointments because of high demand. In Michigan, where cases have spiraled out of control, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, recently urged President Biden to send additional doses.
But in more rural — and more Republican — areas, health officials said that supply is far exceeding demand.
In a county in Wyoming, a local health official asked the state to stop sending first doses of the vaccine because the freezer was already stuffed to capacity with unwanted vials.
In an Iowa county, a clinic called people who had volunteered to give shots to tell them not to come in because so few residents had signed up for appointments.
In a county in Pennsylvania, a hospital set up a drive-through in the park, stocked with roughly 1,000 vaccine doses. Only about 300 people showed up.
And in interviews with more than two dozen state and county health officials — including some who said they were feeling weary after a year of hearing lifelong friends, family and neighbors tell them that the virus was a hoax or not particularly serious — most attributed low vaccination rates at least partly to hesitant conservative populations.
“I just never in a million years ever expected my field of work to become less medical and more political,” said Hailey Bloom, a registered Republican and the public information officer for the health department that covers Natrona County, Wyo., which Mr. Trump won by a wide margin last year.
If the shoe were on the other foot, the Republicans would be demanding that Democrats either be forced to get vaccinations or should be denied medical care if they caught the virus after refusing.
You know they would. Personal responsibility and all that: