Are NC Republicans urging COVID vaccines? Depends on who’s talking.
If you’re listening to politicians talk about North Carolina’s future with COVID-19, you’d be forgiven for feeling unsure.
The messaging is either urgent or lukewarm; practically non-existent or the most important issue facing the state and the nation. Depending on the elected official, COVID-19 either still carries immense risk to the unvaccinated, or the coronavirus is an excuse for the government to wade knee-deep into authoritarianism.
Similar to many public health experts, U.S. Sen. Richard Burr speaks about COVID-19 with a sense of urgency and foreboding.
“The next few weeks and months will require us to answer some very difficult questions, especially as we work toward the last few miles of administering the vaccine in this country,” North Carolina’s senior Republican senator said during a Senate committee last week.
His warning came a day before FOX News commentator Sean Hannity urged his viewers to “take COVID seriously,” saying, “Enough people have died, we don’t need any more deaths.” Pat McCrory, the former governor currently running for Burr’s Senate seat, thanked Hannity on Twitter, writing, “Vaccines work and they will save lives.”
The messaging reflects an ongoing problem that is perhaps most prominent in, but certainly not limited to, conservative circles. Doubt or outright opposition to the vaccine has left millions of Americans unprotected from the virus, all while the more-contagious Delta variant surges and politicians remain split on the issue.
While many conservatives — including Burr, U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis and several leaders in the North Carolina General Assembly — have promoted public safety measures and the vaccine throughout the pandemic, legislators are far from unified.
Not everyone agrees that politicians can have much of an impact at this point. Many think the private sector will spur the next wave of vaccinations, as some businesses mandate vaccines for employees returning to in-person work.
For now the lack of unity among politicians could be contributing to vaccine hesitancy, according to some public health experts.
Cases rising amid mixed messaging
The division, with Burr on one side and others like U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn on the other, comes as the virus is spreading rapidly among the unvaccinated. Over the past seven days, the state has reported 9,053 cases of COVID-19, a 66% increase from the seven days prior.
More than 94% of recent cases in North Carolina are from people who never got the shot. The figure is even higher among people who have to be hospitalized.
“Unvaccinated North Carolinians are unnecessarily getting sick, being hospitalized and dying,” Mandy Cohen, the N.C. Department of Health of Human Services secretary, said in a press release on Friday.
While legislators almost never decry the vaccine outright, several refrain from promoting it in the way that Burr and others have. Cawthorn, for example, uses his platform most prominently to criticize Dr. Anthony Fauci or warn against government-mandated vaccines.
In a radio interview earlier this month, Cawthorn said a door-to-door strategy to encourage vaccinations could be used to “go door to door to take your guns. They could then go door to door to take your Bibles.”
U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia, has gone further, falsely claiming that there have been thousands of vaccine-related deaths and that the virus was “not dangerous for non-obese people and those under 65.”
Notably, some Democrats have also flip-flopped on the vaccine issue. Before last year’s election, both Cal Cunningham and Kamala Harris cast doubt on whether they would get the shot. (Harris, in September, said she would not trust then-president Donald Trump’s word on whether to take the vaccine, though she said she would trust public health experts. Cunningham, in a debate with Tillis in September, said he would ordinarily have confidence in vaccines, but that “we have seen an extraordinary corruption in Washington.”)
Regardless of political party, public health experts worry that the government’s outreach around the vaccine has been muddied by fears of government overreach, outsized concern about side effects, and mixed messaging. The impact is becoming more dire.
“They need to be a lot, a lot more blunt and clear,” said Audrey Pettifor, an epidemiologist at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. “When politicians don’t send clear messages, it’s one piece of many pieces of the puzzle that contribute to not solving the problem.”
During the Senate committee meeting this week, Burr echoed that concern, saying that the Trump administration had lost the trust of citizens on public health issues, and warning Biden’s to not follow suit.
“I’m worried American leadership is no longer what it once was when it comes to public health,” he said, adding, “Messages from public health experts won’t be followed if Americans don’t believe in the experts.”
COVID vaccine hesitancy
The issue of vaccine hesitancy, and who or what can change a person’s mind, varies wildly from person to person, said Dr. David Weber, the associate chief medical officer of UNC Health Care.
For some, a politician telling them to get vaccinated could move them to get the shot. For others it would make no difference. Some people may be convinced by a celebrity like their favorite sports idol. More commonly, people are influenced by the people closest to them: friends, family, their primary care doctor.
In the Observer’s recent review of North Carolina conservatives’ vaccine messages, many strongly urge constituents to consult with their chosen doctor on COVID-19 inoculation.
Only 57% of adults in North Carolina have been fully vaccinated — just shy of the national average. As cases rise and vaccination rates stall, “there is a real sense of urgency” to convince people who remain on the fence, Weber said.
“The longer people have a mindset, the harder it is to change,” he said.
Comparing vaccination rates and North Carolina voting records shows a clear correlation between vaccine hesitancy and conservative politics, based on a recent data analysis by the Observer. In the 10 counties with the lowest vaccination rates, just two preferred President Joe Biden in 2020.
What’s next?
Demand for vaccines has stalled since winter and spring, when people who wanted the shots were clamoring for appointments. In North Carolina, the number of shots doled out last week was the lowest it’s been since mid-December.
Both Weber and Pettifor said they worry that the longer the vaccination rates remains flat, deaths among unvaccinated people will become more common. How to respond to that looming threat is where the divergence becomes clear.
On Friday, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, was about as direct as any politician has been to date.
Ivey told reporters, “It’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks.”
“It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down,” she continued.
Other politicians have remained notably more quiet, or have taken the opposite approach, telling people to be on the lookout for government-mandated vaccinations, or calling into question the credibility of prominent health experts like Fauci.
Larry Shaheen, a Charlotte attorney and former chairman of the Mecklenburg County Young Republicans, disputed the notion that Republicans were any more to blame than Democrats for the doubt among vaccine skeptics, pointing to Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, which led to effective vaccines in record time, as well as public service announcements from prominent GOP legislators in North Carolina.
The next and most important step in getting people vaccinated, Shaheen said, will not come from politicians, but from the business community. To increase vaccination rates in a big way, a bipartisan message that the vaccine works must be coupled with a decision by “all institutions and agencies and organizations that are capable of mandating the vaccine to mandate it,” he said.
On Thursday, several North Carolina hospitals, including Atrium Health and Novant Health in Charlotte, announced that they would require their employees to get vaccinated. Several universities, including Duke and Wake Forest, have announced a vaccine mandate for students returning to campus this fall.
“Society as a whole has to come down on these people once and for all,” Shaheen said of the unvaccinated. “At some point the corporations of this country and going to have to say, ‘OK, enough.’ That’s the obvious next step.”
This story was originally published July 26, 2021 at 10:45 AM with the headline "Are NC Republicans urging COVID vaccines? Depends on who’s talking.."
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