Maeve Higgins: Resistance to vaccines leaves US in critical state

Political leanings can make US citizens act against their own best interests, but when the Governor of Texas signed an executive order prohibiting cities and government entities there from enacting vaccine requirements or mask mandates, it stunned me, writes Maeve Higgins

President Joe Biden: "People are dying and will die who don’t have to die. If you’re out there unvaccinated, you don’t have to die." Photo: AP/Susan Walsh

I love living in New York City because I can get a bowl of matzo ball soup at 1am after catching a jazz show on my way to a sleepover at the Natural History Museum. Please understand I’m quite shy and lazy so I’ve never done that, but in theory it’s all possible! 

This week made me love the city even more, when mayor Bill de Blasio announced the first government-issued mandate in the US requiring proof of Covid-19 vaccination for people taking part in indoor activities in the city. Workers and customers of indoor restaurants, gyms, and entertainment and performance venues will require patrons to show a vaccination card or a city or state vaccination “pass” or they will be denied entry. 

This is a relief to me, because I have been really worried about unvaccinated people passing along the plague in some terrible infinite loop. That is what is happening all across the US today, and politicians are struggling to tackle it.

“This is an American tragedy. People are dying and will die who don’t have to die. If you’re out there unvaccinated, you don’t have to die.” President Joe Biden uttered those exasperated words on July 29 after announcing new vaccine mandates for federal employees and contractors. 

What's your view on this issue?

You can tell us here

As the Delta variant rips through the unvaccinated population of the US and coronavirus cases and deaths rocket back up, the Biden administration laid out some new rules. Any federal employee who does not attest to being fully vaccinated will be required to: Wear a mask on the job no matter their geographic location; physically distance from all other employees and visitors; comply with testing once or twice each week; and have their official travel restricted.

The federal government employs more than 4m people, including over 2m in the federal civilian workforce, throughout the country and across the world.

The administration hopes to apply similar standards to all federal contractors and encouraged employers across the private sector to follow their model. The very next day, two of the country’s biggest employers, Disney and Walmart, introduced a requirement for their employees to get vaccinated. 

We can now feel a little safer around Snow White when we meet her in Disneyland, and breathe that bit easier amongst the ammunition-selling teenagers in any of the thousands of Walmarts throughout the (non-Disney) land. Near the end of President Biden’s statement he said:

Look, this is not about red states and blue states. It’s literally about life and death. It’s about life and death. That’s what it’s about.

Laudable but unfortunately inaccurate; vaccine mandates are certainly about life and death but they are also about red states and blue states. It is about politics, red states meaning states with a majority of Republican voters, blue states meaning a majority of Democratic voters.

Take Texas, an outsized example of a red state that could not give less of a rope toss what I or anybody else thinks and has flung off any suggestion of a vaccine mandate like so many Bachelorettes from a bucking bronco. Texans are famously resistant to any hint of being told what to do. 

As the country’s second largest state in both landmass and population, it’s a powerful part of the country and that power largely belongs to the Republicans. The last time a Democratic presidential nominee took Texas was in 1976 when Jimmy Carter was elected President. 

It’s been 30 years since Texas elected a Democrat for a Governor, and their current governor Greg Abbott is deeply Republican, and was very pro-Trump during the latter’s presidency. The same day as President Biden’s mandate announcement, Gov. Abbott signed an executive order prohibiting cities and other government entities in the state from enacting vaccine requirements or mask mandates to protect against the coronavirus. 

Abbott’s order applies to any government entities receiving state funds, including counties, cities, school districts, public health authorities and government officials. He announced “no covid-19-related operating limits for any business or other establishment” in the state so that he could “ensure the ability of Texans to preserve livelihoods while protecting lives.” 

I’ve lived in the US for long enough to know that political leanings can easily make the citizens there act against their own best interests, but this one still stunned me. Gov. Abbott himself has been vaccinated, so I have to assume that unlike his views on climate change mitigation or same sex marriage, he must believe that the vaccine is both a good idea and a morally acceptable one.

Yet he forbids any government entity from requiring that same protection he himself availed of.

He banned regulations in a week that saw Covid-related hospitalizations in Texas rising nearly 40% according to The Washington Post. Meanwhile, the country’s leading immunologist, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr Anthony Fauci, told CNN’s Jake Tapper: “I have been of this opinion, and I remain of that opinion, that I do believe at the local level, Jake, there should be more mandates, there really should be. 

We're talking about a life-and-death situation. We have lost 600,000 Americans already.

The moment my empathy started to fray with people who refused a coronavirus vaccine was back in March when Krispy Kreme announced a special promotion; one free doughnut when you show you’ve been vaccinated. What more could you want? 

Beyond the promise of seeing and touching my family and friends again, not forgetting the potential to save my actual life, I didn’t need much of an incentive to get the vaccine. I was vaccinated in City Hall in Cork and happily made do with free parking and the intriguing prospect of spending 15 minutes of observation time with people the exact same age as I am. 

Now, 15 minutes is plenty of time to compare and despair, but I remained thrilled at the ache in my arm that signified liberation, a way out of this terrible and sad time. I mentally tot up all the fun extras you can pick up in the United States, depending on which state and location you’re in - you can get a whole selection of cash bonuses, vouchers for flights, tickets for games and venues, and in case you forgot, free donuts. 

Anti-vaxxers

The more I do this the less patience I have with anti-vaxxers and people who are, in that most cowardly of phrases, ‘vaccine hesitant’. By passing up this golden opportunity to save themselves, people who choose not to get the vaccine are endangering us all. Until we’re all safe, none of us are safe, and if a mandate is the only thing that can make that possible then that is what must happen.

I’m glad New York City is leading the way, and I’m not surprised. Before that godforsaken bat passed the coronavirus along to humans sometime in 2019, the city was faced with a difficult decision about vaccine mandates to deal with another, older foe. 

Measles had come back, outbreaks returned to Brooklyn with a vengeance among unvaccinated Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn in late 2018 and early 2019. At first, public officials tried education and outreach, working with trusted religious and community leaders to encourage parents to vaccinate their children. 

As hundreds of people sickened and some ended up in intensive care in hospital, the city tried a ban on unvaccinated students from going to school. That didn’t work either, and the measles continued to spread. 

Eventually Mayor Bill de Blasio declared a public health emergency requiring people in the Williamsburg neighborhood to be vaccinated. Mandates worked then, and if it comes down to it, mandates will work again.