Right wing media figures and Republican elected officials could save lives and prevent illness by championing COVID vaccines

In the mid­dle of a glob­al pan­dem­ic that has already claimed the lives of mil­lions of peo­ple, what does it mean to be pro-life?

I’ve been pon­der­ing that ques­tion late­ly as I read sto­ry after sto­ry about the grow­ing vac­ci­na­tion divide in this coun­try. Pro­gres­sive com­mu­ni­ties like Red­mond, where NPI is based, have pop­u­la­tions that are fair­ly well pro­tect­ed against COVID-19 due to high vac­ci­na­tion rates, while con­ser­v­a­tive com­mu­ni­ties like Wal­la Wal­la are grap­pling with increas­ing cas­es and hos­pi­tal­iza­tions thanks to the trans­mis­sion of COVID-19’s high­ly infec­tious delta vari­ant by unvac­ci­nat­ed people.

The exis­tence of this vac­cine divide is a tragedy — a tragedy that does­n’t have to con­tin­ue. We have the means to pro­tect peo­ple — we just need peo­ple to get their shots. Peo­ple will get sick or die from COVID-19 who oth­er­wise would have lived or have fend­ed off the ill­ness if we don’t get more com­mu­ni­ties vaccinated.

Although there is no uni­ver­sal­ly agreed upon def­i­n­i­tion of pro-life, at least some right wing orga­ni­za­tions define the term as being “against the unjust tak­ing of human life” as opposed to just syn­ony­mous with we oppose repro­duc­tive rights.

“To be pro-life is to be against the unjust tak­ing of human life,” reads an essay writ­ten by Save the Storks. “This is why we oppose abor­tion, not because it is the only instance where human life is unjust­ly tak­en, but because it is one of the most wide­spread and because those affect­ed are the most defenseless.”

By that log­ic, should­n’t those who con­sid­er them­selves pro-life be mak­ing COVID-19 vac­cine advo­ca­cy a top, urgent priority?

COVID-19 is one of the most wide­spread threats to human life right now, and those who are unvac­ci­nat­ed are def­i­nite­ly the most defenseless.

There’s an oppor­tu­ni­ty right now to save a lot of lives from being unjust­ly tak­en by a dead­ly virus. A real­ly big oppor­tu­ni­ty. We no longer have the logis­ti­cal prob­lem of not hav­ing enough vac­cine dos­es. There’s plen­ty of sup­ply, there’s just not enough will­ing­ness in many com­mu­ni­ties to get vaccinated.

Over half a mil­lion Amer­i­cans have already died in this pan­dem­ic. Now we have vac­cines that pro­vide robust, excel­lent pro­tec­tion against the orig­i­nal per­mu­ta­tion of COVID-19 and its increas­ing­ly sin­is­ter vari­ants, delta includ­ed. Unlike Amer­i­cans, peo­ple in many oth­er coun­tries have no access to COVID-19 vaccines.

How can we get more Amer­i­cans who pre­dom­i­nant­ly use the right wing val­ues sys­tem in their polit­i­cal think­ing to get vaccinated?

This is a ques­tion that the Biden-Har­ris admin­is­tra­tion and weary pub­lic health lead­ers in every state are wrestling with right now.

“As the Delta vari­ant rips through con­ser­v­a­tive swaths of the coun­try, some elect­ed Repub­li­cans are fac­ing grow­ing pres­sure from pub­lic health advo­cates to speak out — not only in favor of their con­stituents being inoc­u­lat­ed against the coro­n­avirus but also against media fig­ures and elect­ed offi­cials who are ques­tion­ing the vac­cines,” The New York Times report­ed yesterday.

The NYT’s Jonathan Weis­man spoke to Sen­a­tor Mitt Rom­ney of Utah about the lack of pro-vac­cine advo­ca­cy in Repub­li­can pol­i­tics for his story.

“We don’t con­trol con­ser­v­a­tive media fig­ures so far as I know — at least I don’t,” Rom­ney told Weis­man. “That being said, I think it’s an enor­mous error for any­one to sug­gest that we shouldn’t be tak­ing vac­cines. Look, the politi­ciza­tion of vac­ci­na­tion is an out­rage and frankly moronic.”

Mean­while, Ken­tuck­y’s Mitch McConnell pro­nounced him­self confused.

“I’m per­plexed by the dif­fi­cul­ty we have fin­ish­ing the job,” McConnell said.

“If you’re a foot­ball fan,” the long­time top Sen­ate Repub­li­can con­tin­ued, using a grid­iron metaphor, “we’re in the red zone. But we’re not in the end zone yet. And we need to keep preach­ing that get­ting the vac­cine is important.”

Very nice sen­ti­ments. But mere­ly say­ing such things to news­pa­per reporters isn’t going to put vac­cine mis­in­for­ma­tion and dis­in­for­ma­tion in their place.

Wimpy respons­es just aren’t going to cut it. The harsh truth is that plen­ty of Repub­li­can vot­ers are going to die if more dras­tic mea­sures are not taken.

Mitt Rom­ney is right that he does­n’t con­trol con­ser­v­a­tive media figures.

But there is one per­son in Repub­li­can pol­i­tics who wields great influ­ence over both con­ser­v­a­tive media fig­ures and Repub­li­can mem­bers of Con­gress, and that’s Don­ald Trump. If Trump would just instruct his rabid cult fol­low­ers to get vac­ci­nat­ed, we’d see move­ment. Would every­one respond favor­ably? No, but we’d almost cer­tain­ly see a change in how Repub­li­can vot­ers feel about vaccines.

Trump isn’t going to lis­ten to Rom­ney, and prob­a­bly not McConnell either, but there are oth­er peo­ple he might lis­ten to, such as his eldest child, Ivan­ka Trump, who is wide­ly con­sid­ered the most lev­el head­ed of the Trump chil­dren, and the one who is arguably the most capa­ble of think­ing empathetically.

The likes of Rom­ney and McConnell are not pow­er­less. There is always a way. They could, for exam­ple, focus on find­ing peo­ple they have good rela­tion­ships with who are will­ing to lob­by the peo­ple who Trump is most like­ly to lis­ten to.

(It’s sad that I have to write a para­graph like this in 2021, but, this is where we’ve sunk to, unfor­tu­nate­ly. The Repub­li­can Par­ty has become a cult.)

Repub­li­can mes­sag­ing maven Frank Luntz, who has been help­ing Repub­li­cans com­mu­ni­cate with their base and with bicon­cep­tu­al vot­ers for decades, is among those who believe that Don­ald Trump could deliv­er the biggest win for vac­ci­na­tions in Repub­li­can cir­cles in the short­est amount of time.

And he’s in favor of hav­ing Pres­i­dent Biden weigh in.

“I think Joe Biden needs to say explic­it­ly, ‘Pres­i­dent Trump, tell your peo­ple to get vac­ci­nat­ed … If you won’t, explain why. And if you won’t, stop try­ing to take cred­it for devel­op­ing the vac­cine because what good is the vac­cine if peo­ple won’t get it,’” Luntz explained in com­ments report­ed by Politico.

The Politi­co sto­ry pro­ceed­ed to note, in its clos­ing para­graphs: “Luntz also offered some sug­ges­tions based on his lat­est focus group find­ings, which show an effec­tive way to reach reluc­tant pop­u­la­tions is through deploy­ing grand­par­ents to talk to their grand­kids and local phar­ma­cists to talk to their patients.”

“You got­ta keep try­ing,” [Luntz] said. “Because suc­cess saves lives.”

Indeed it does, and Luntz’s find­ings make sense. Suc­cess in pol­i­tics is deeply con­nect­ed to trust and iden­ti­ty. We know that peo­ple vote for who they trust and who they iden­ti­fy with. It makes sense that peo­ple would respond to peo­ple they have strong rela­tion­ships with. But grand­par­ents aren’t going to pitch their grand­kids on get­ting vac­ci­nat­ed if they don’t believe in the vac­cines themselves.

This is where Trump could be a dif­fer­ence maker.

If Trump would start speak­ing favor­ably about the COVID-19 vac­cines and tell peo­ple to get one, that could influ­ence Fox’s pro­gram­ming, and, in turn, Fox’s audi­ence, who are pri­mar­i­ly elder­ly peo­ple who lean right in their politics.

We know that Lau­ra Ingra­ham and Tuck­er Carl­son are busy beat­ing their anti-vac­ci­na­tion drums these days, which is result­ing in need­less death and ill­ness. (Sean Han­ni­ty, for his part, men­tioned plan­ning to get vac­ci­nat­ed in a show that aired a few weeks back and urged view­ers to “talk to your doctor”.)

It’s entire­ly pos­si­ble that Trump won’t respond to any lobbying.

But it sure seems like it’s worth it to try.

After all, Don­ald Trump is rather shame­less and nar­cis­sis­tic. He is, as Bernie Sanders has said, a patho­log­i­cal liar. He could be an Orwell character.

Trump can turn on a dime and change his posi­tion. We’ve seen it before, over and over and over again. Trump has changed his posi­tions on issues like repro­duc­tive rights and gun safe­ty to appeal to the peo­ple he wants to manipulate.

When old asso­ciates have got­ten in trou­ble (life Jef­frey Epstein) Trump has claimed either not to know them or to have bare­ly known them.

When Trump has fall­en out with peo­ple who used to work for him (like Michael Cohen) he has fierce­ly dis­owned them as hav­ing absolute­ly noth­ing to do with him or his pur­port­ed suc­cess, despite abun­dant evi­dence to the contrary.

Trump has proven that he is total­ly up for revi­sion­ist his­to­ry games. If he said tomor­row, “Get vac­ci­nat­ed — I did. I’ve always been a strong pro­po­nent of vac­cines. I’ve always cham­pi­oned them vocal­ly. I’m the rea­son we have vac­cines, it was my doing!” — there real­ly would be noth­ing shock­ing about that.

It would just be the new par­ty line decreed by the man atop the cult.

Regard­less of whether the manip­u­la­tor-in-chief can be manip­u­lat­ed into offer­ing pro-vac­cine mes­sages at his ral­lies and media events, those Repub­li­cans who do believe in sci­ence and in the vac­cines owe it to them­selves, their fam­i­lies, their friends, and their coun­try to demon­strate leadership.

That means hav­ing dif­fi­cult and awk­ward con­ver­sa­tions about get­ting vac­ci­nat­ed. It means not tip­toe­ing around the issue, but tack­ling it head on.

Every life that can be saved should be saved.

Those who pro­fess them­selves to be pro-life have, by their own admis­sion, a moral oblig­a­tion to do what they can to pre­vent the unjust tak­ing of life. The fail­ure to inoc­u­late against a dead­ly virus that has already killed mil­lions eas­i­ly qual­i­fies as an unjust and total­ly pre­ventable tak­ing of life.