The worrisome Omicron variant lends fresh urgency to President Joe Biden’s months-long grind to vaccinate Americans against the coronavirus. He needs it.
That 78 million Americans still resist protective shots confounds anyone examining the medical evidence of the vaccines’ effectiveness. But the evidence of history, turbocharged by the modern Republican Party’s extremism, makes vaccine resistance no mystery — and Biden’s effort a slog even after nearly 800,000 deaths from Covid-19. …
America has a century of experience with the problem. What Biden now faces vexed predecessors in struggles against smallpox, polio, measles and swine flu. “Vaccine resistance is as old as vaccination itself,” observed Elena Conis, a University of California, Berkeley, medical historian.
Resistance typically flows from three overlapping sources: religious objections, assertion of individual rights and disputes over medical risks. As early as the Asian flu in 1957, the Gallup poll measured higher vaccine resistance among Republicans. CONTINUED
John Harwood, CNN
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