Five words in last Sunday’s New York Times in an article entitled “What Causes Vaccine Hesitancy,” wiped away most of my confusion about anti-vaxers. It also provided me with some new clarity about why so many people are climate change deniers.
Those five words are: “Being healthy is not cheap.”
I know this first hand from four personal medical encounters. My “medical history” includes a year-long dance with cancer therapy, two stent insertions (heart and Carotid arteries) and now the ongoing treatment for an ear damaged by targeted cancer radiation. I mention this only to illustrate that had I not been eligible for Medicare and had supplemental medical insurance I would be in deep debt today. We’re talking in excess of a hundred thousand dollars.
Now consider the US Census Bureau data showing that 27.5 million Americans had no health insurance in 2018. The uninsured rate increased 10.9% in 2019. The data shows that 44 million adults in the US today have no health insurance while 38 million do not have adequate health coverage. What chance do these people have of being healthy?
The overall number of uninsured Americans began to fall in 2010 when President Obama fought to get the Affordable Care Act signed into law…in spite of fierce Republican opposition. The ACA, nicknamed Obamacare, was the U.S. healthcare system’s most significant regulatory overhaul and expansion of coverage since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965.
However, millions of uninsured individuals today remain unnecessarily susceptible to medical complications and debt accumulation. Unlike me, non-seniors are likely to find it more difficult to pay for health coverage as compared to those who have Medicare and/or private insurance coverage.
With respect to anti-vaxers, the Times said, “In America anti-vaccine movements are as old as vaccines themselves; efforts to immunize people against smallpox prompted bitter opposition in the turn of the last century. But after World War II, these attitudes disappeared. In the 1950s, demand for the polio vaccine often outstripped supply, and by the late 1970s, nearly every state had laws mandating vaccinations for school with hardly any public opposition.”
With persistent vaccine avoidance and unequal access to vaccines, unvaccinated pockets can act as reservoirs for the virus, allowing for the spread of new variants like Omicron. Today, about 70 percent of American adults are now fully immunized, but in many areas — rural Red states and predominately minority neighborhoods in large cities — vaccine hesitancy remains a stubborn obstacle to beating the pandemic.
Why this resistance beyond the weaponizing of the pandemic by ultra-conservative politicians and conspiracy criminals? In the mid-60s, the number of government-funded social programs targeting the poor and communities of color skyrocketed. The anti-measles policy, for example, was an outgrowth of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and War of Poverty initiatives. Government workers from initiatives like Head Start assisted on vaccination campaigns.
The experience of the 1960s suggests that when people feel supported through social programs, they’re more likely to trust institutions and feel they have a stake in society’s health. Only then does social solidarity and mutual obligation begin to make sense. The Times writes “the types of social programs that best promote this way of thinking are universal ones, like Social Security and universal health care. Universal programs inculcate a sense of a common good, because everyone is eligible by virtue of belonging to a political community.”
In the 1980s, politicians insisted it was no longer the government’s job to ensure people’s well-being and began to cut social program spending. Americans were now expected to be responsible for their own bodies, not anyone else. Except in the case of women. As I write this, a woman’s choice to be responsible for her their own body bodies is being “decided” by the ultra-conservative majority on the Supreme Court. What IS government’s “job?” one might ask.
Public health prevention campaigns such as the COVID 19 mask and vaccination mandates are built upon trust. Public trust in institutions — the for-profit health care “industry” and our federal government — is at rock bottom. Is it any wonder that millions of people, who have been ill-served by our government, don’t trust the COVID masking and vaccination campaigns?
The World Health Organization has declared vaccine hesitancy one of 10 threats to global health. Worse than the Omicron-revived pandemic in 19 states and counting is the unprecedented publication by 233 worldwide health journals of an article calling inaction on climate change “the greatest threat to global public health.”
Being healthy will not be cheap.
“Connecting the Dots” by John Bos usually appears every other Saturday in the Recorder. His next column on Christmas Eve Friday will be his ninth annual “reinterpretation” of “The Night Before Christmas.” Bos is also a contributing writer for “Green Energy Times” and “Citizen Truth.” His climate-focused articles have been published in various other regional newspapers. He invites comments and questions at john01370@gmail.com.