By
Aaron Blake
Senior reporter
Today at 1:21 p.m. EDT
No governor has proved as polarizing in his coronavirus response as Florida’s Ron DeSantis. And the allies who have hailed his actions in the face of criticism over things such as reopening schools early often point to his attention to detail. In a March piece in Politico, a like-minded Stanford University professor recalled a lengthy conversation with DeSantis. “He knew all the studies I mentioned,” the professor said. “I couldn’t believe it. He’d read everything.”
With the Republican governor’s response again under a microscope thanks to a big surge in cases and deaths in Florida, though, he has repeatedly offered curious comments about how all of this works.
His most recent: suggesting that vaccinated people need not really be concerned about others choosing to remain unvaccinated.
“At the end of the day ... it’s about your health and whether you want that protection or not,” DeSantis said Friday referring to vaccinations. “It really doesn’t impact me or anyone else.”
DeSantis went on to claim that the data backed him up on this.
This echoes claims by a number of Republicans in recent months: Why do you care whether others are vaccinated when you’re protected?
The reality for anyone who has truly digested the data and the realities of vaccination campaigns or a pandemic, though, is clear: It does have a substantial impact. And while vaccines offer very significant protection, there is a huge collective and even personal interest in getting the vast majority of Americans vaccinated — and not just for the unvaccinated people’s own good.
The first reason is its impact on the course of the virus. We’ve already seen how variants — particularly the delta variant — can emerge that lessen the efficacy of the vaccines. Studies have repeatedly shown this is a greater problem when the unvaccinated continue to spread a virus. One prominent infectious-disease expert has likened the unvaccinated to “variant factories.”
(Some vaccine skeptics, including popular podcast host Joe Rogan, who has recently battled the virus, have suggested that the vaccines themselves are responsible for creating the variants, but this claim rests upon a faulty reading of the science.)
There’s also the fact that, however much vaccinated people are protected — and studies show the vaccines still having a very significant impact in preventing serious cases, even as overall “breakthrough” infections rise — it’s never going to be 100 percent. So even as it’s very rare for a vaccinated person to fall seriously ill or die, the odds of that increase with unvaccinated people spreading the virus and allowing it to mutate.
The second reason is that, as Republicans have long argued, there is a balancing act here. The virus is dangerous, they have said, but there are also drawbacks to shutting down society and other less-restrictive mitigation techniques — including economic ones and when it comes to mental health and the development of children. Leaders need to weigh the costs and benefits of coronavirus restrictions, rather than just doing everything they can to stamp out the virus and neglecting the side effects of that.
But to the extent that the unvaccinated prolong the pandemic by becoming more ill or spreading the virus more easily, that impacts vaccinated people who would like to return to work, keep their kids in in-person school, venture out in public and do lots of other things. To suggest that the unvaccinated don’t really matter to the vaccinated is to suggest that the long-standing goal of many on the right to fully get back to normal suddenly is relatively insignificant.
The final reason we’ll touch on follows from the above. Even if virtually nobody who is vaccinated wound up contracting the virus or falling seriously ill thanks to the decisions of the unvaccinated, there’s the impact it has on both loved ones and the health-care system.
There are people in this country who are either more susceptible to serious cases because of preexisting conditions (even if vaccinated) or who can’t get the vaccine at all (specifically, children under 12). Lots of them are the family members and close friends of the vaccinated. The spread of the virus thanks to those who can get vaccinated but won’t means that the vaccinated could see people who are dear to them fall ill or die, even if they personally might never get sick.
And they also could confront the realities of a health-care system with finite resources. We’ve repeatedly seen surgeries and other care delayed because hospitals are overrun with covid-19 cases, particularly among the unvaccinated. Hospitals have been at or near capacity in recent weeks in Arkansas, Mississippi, California and other states. DeSantis would seem to be well aware of the scarcity of resources in his home state, too, given that Orlando recently urged residents to conserve water because they need to prevent the depletion of supplies of liquid oxygen to treat covid-19 patients who require respiratory therapy.
DeSantis’s comments very much fall in line with how other ambitious Republicans talk about vaccination. He and many of them have long encouraged people to get vaccinated, but they have often qualified that with a reminder that this is a personal choice.
That’s undoubtedly at least in part a nod to the vaccine-skeptic community, which constitutes a large portion of the GOP base. A more charitable read would be that they are simply arguing against mandates and want to make that clear.
But as Philip Bump wrote earlier Tuesday, there is such a thing as the common good. Making the case to the unvaccinated that they would help their society, their neighbors or their family members — rather than just themselves — could seemingly be compelling to at least some of them. Telling them it’s all about them is one of the worst conceivable messages, because it’s wrong and because it absolves them of any feelings of social responsibility.
The fact that DeSantis, a prominent governor who has otherwise encouraged vaccinations, would go down that road in favor of justifying the decisions of the unvaccinated says a lot about where the Republican Party is on this issue.
Aaron Blake
Senior reporter
Today at 1:21 p.m. EDT
No governor has proved as polarizing in his coronavirus response as Florida’s Ron DeSantis. And the allies who have hailed his actions in the face of criticism over things such as reopening schools early often point to his attention to detail. In a March piece in Politico, a like-minded Stanford University professor recalled a lengthy conversation with DeSantis. “He knew all the studies I mentioned,” the professor said. “I couldn’t believe it. He’d read everything.”
With the Republican governor’s response again under a microscope thanks to a big surge in cases and deaths in Florida, though, he has repeatedly offered curious comments about how all of this works.
His most recent: suggesting that vaccinated people need not really be concerned about others choosing to remain unvaccinated.
“At the end of the day ... it’s about your health and whether you want that protection or not,” DeSantis said Friday referring to vaccinations. “It really doesn’t impact me or anyone else.”
DeSantis went on to claim that the data backed him up on this.
This echoes claims by a number of Republicans in recent months: Why do you care whether others are vaccinated when you’re protected?
The reality for anyone who has truly digested the data and the realities of vaccination campaigns or a pandemic, though, is clear: It does have a substantial impact. And while vaccines offer very significant protection, there is a huge collective and even personal interest in getting the vast majority of Americans vaccinated — and not just for the unvaccinated people’s own good.
The first reason is its impact on the course of the virus. We’ve already seen how variants — particularly the delta variant — can emerge that lessen the efficacy of the vaccines. Studies have repeatedly shown this is a greater problem when the unvaccinated continue to spread a virus. One prominent infectious-disease expert has likened the unvaccinated to “variant factories.”
(Some vaccine skeptics, including popular podcast host Joe Rogan, who has recently battled the virus, have suggested that the vaccines themselves are responsible for creating the variants, but this claim rests upon a faulty reading of the science.)
There’s also the fact that, however much vaccinated people are protected — and studies show the vaccines still having a very significant impact in preventing serious cases, even as overall “breakthrough” infections rise — it’s never going to be 100 percent. So even as it’s very rare for a vaccinated person to fall seriously ill or die, the odds of that increase with unvaccinated people spreading the virus and allowing it to mutate.
The second reason is that, as Republicans have long argued, there is a balancing act here. The virus is dangerous, they have said, but there are also drawbacks to shutting down society and other less-restrictive mitigation techniques — including economic ones and when it comes to mental health and the development of children. Leaders need to weigh the costs and benefits of coronavirus restrictions, rather than just doing everything they can to stamp out the virus and neglecting the side effects of that.
But to the extent that the unvaccinated prolong the pandemic by becoming more ill or spreading the virus more easily, that impacts vaccinated people who would like to return to work, keep their kids in in-person school, venture out in public and do lots of other things. To suggest that the unvaccinated don’t really matter to the vaccinated is to suggest that the long-standing goal of many on the right to fully get back to normal suddenly is relatively insignificant.
The final reason we’ll touch on follows from the above. Even if virtually nobody who is vaccinated wound up contracting the virus or falling seriously ill thanks to the decisions of the unvaccinated, there’s the impact it has on both loved ones and the health-care system.
There are people in this country who are either more susceptible to serious cases because of preexisting conditions (even if vaccinated) or who can’t get the vaccine at all (specifically, children under 12). Lots of them are the family members and close friends of the vaccinated. The spread of the virus thanks to those who can get vaccinated but won’t means that the vaccinated could see people who are dear to them fall ill or die, even if they personally might never get sick.
And they also could confront the realities of a health-care system with finite resources. We’ve repeatedly seen surgeries and other care delayed because hospitals are overrun with covid-19 cases, particularly among the unvaccinated. Hospitals have been at or near capacity in recent weeks in Arkansas, Mississippi, California and other states. DeSantis would seem to be well aware of the scarcity of resources in his home state, too, given that Orlando recently urged residents to conserve water because they need to prevent the depletion of supplies of liquid oxygen to treat covid-19 patients who require respiratory therapy.
DeSantis’s comments very much fall in line with how other ambitious Republicans talk about vaccination. He and many of them have long encouraged people to get vaccinated, but they have often qualified that with a reminder that this is a personal choice.
That’s undoubtedly at least in part a nod to the vaccine-skeptic community, which constitutes a large portion of the GOP base. A more charitable read would be that they are simply arguing against mandates and want to make that clear.
But as Philip Bump wrote earlier Tuesday, there is such a thing as the common good. Making the case to the unvaccinated that they would help their society, their neighbors or their family members — rather than just themselves — could seemingly be compelling to at least some of them. Telling them it’s all about them is one of the worst conceivable messages, because it’s wrong and because it absolves them of any feelings of social responsibility.
The fact that DeSantis, a prominent governor who has otherwise encouraged vaccinations, would go down that road in favor of justifying the decisions of the unvaccinated says a lot about where the Republican Party is on this issue.
