PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE:  This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

Even as the pandemic appears to be lessening – notice the word “appears” because there are so many twists and terms in the process – many people continue to avoid vaccines.

Call them “anti-vaxxers.”

Why?

There aren’t many good reasons.  At least that’s my view.

Atlantic Magazine had the same view, so sent one of its writers, Derek Thompson, on a quest in early May to find out more about anti-vaccine beliefs.  It was a tribute to quality enterprise journalism.

Here’s how Thompson started an article he wrote for the magazine:

“Several days ago, the mega-popular podcast host Joe Rogan advised his young listeners to skip the COVID-19 vaccine.  ‘I think you should get vaccinated if you’re vulnerable,’ Rogan said.  ‘But if you’re 21 years old, and you say to me, ‘Should I get vaccinated?’ I’ll go, ‘No.’”

Thompson reports that, while Rogan’s comments drew widespread condemnation, his view is surprisingly common.

“One in four Americans say they don’t plan to take the COVID-19 vaccine, and about half of Republicans under 50 say they won’t get a vaccine,” Thompson reports.  “This partisan vaccine gap is already playing out in the real world.  The average number of daily shots has declined 20 per cent in the past two weeks (the Atlantic article was published on May 3) largely because states with larger Trump vote shares are falling off the pace.”

To find out what “vaccine-hesitant, vaccine-resistant, and COVID-apathetic” persons thought, Thompson posted an invitation on Twitter for anybody who wasn’t planning to get vaccinated to explain why.  

“In the past few days,” he wrote, “I spoke or corresponded with more than a dozen such people.  I told them that I was staunchly pro-vaccine, but this wouldn’t be a takedown piece.  I wanted to produce an ethnography of a position I didn’t really understand.

“The people I spoke with were all under 50.  A few of them self-identified as Republican, and none of them claimed the modern Democrat Party as their political home.  Most said they weren’t against all vaccines; they were just a “no” on this vaccine.  They were COVID-19 no-vaxxers, not overall anti-vaxxers.

“Many people I spoke with said they trusted their immune system to protect them.  ‘Nobody ever looks at it from the perspective of a guy who’s like me,’ Bradley Baca, a 39-year-old truck driver in Colorado, told me. ‘As an essential worker, my life was never going to change in the pandemic, and I knew I was going to get COVID no matter what. Now I think I’ve got the antibodies, so why would I take a risk on the vaccine?’

“Some had already recovered from COVID-19 and considered the vaccine unnecessary.  ‘In December 2020, I tested positive and experienced many symptoms,’ said Derek Perrin, a 31-year-old service technician in Connecticut.  ‘Since I have already survived one recorded bout with this virus, I see no reason to take a vaccine that has only been approved for emergency use. I trust my immune system more than this current experiment.’

“Others were worried that the vaccines might have long-term side effects. ‘As a Black American descendant of slavery, I am bottom caste, in terms of finances,’ Georgette Russell, a 40-year-old resident of New Jersey, told me. ‘The fact that there is no way to sue the government or the pharmaceutical company if I have any adverse reactions is highly problematic to me.’

“Many people said they had read up on the risk of COVID-19 to people under 50 and felt that the pandemic didn’t pose a particularly grave threat.  ‘The chances of me dying from a car accident are higher than my dying of COVID,’ said Michael Searle, a 36-year-old who owns a consulting firm in Austin, Texas.  ‘But it’s not like I don’t get in my car.’

“And many others said that perceived liberal overreach had pushed them to the right.  ‘Before March 2020, I was a solid progressive Democrat,’ Jenin Younes, a 37-year-old attorney, said. ‘I am so disturbed by the Democrats’ failure to recognize the importance of civil liberties.  I’ll vote for anyone who takes a strong stand for civil liberties and doesn’t permit the erosion of our fundamental rights that we are seeing now.’

After many conversations and email exchanges, the Atlantic writer said he came to understand what he called “the deep story of the American no-vaxxer.”

“The under-50 no-vaxxers’ deep story has a very different starting place,” Thompson wrote.  “It begins like this:  The coronavirus is a wildly overrated threat.  Yes, it’s appropriate and good to protect old and vulnerable people.

“But I’m not old or vulnerable.  If I get it, I’ll be fine.  In fact, maybe I have gotten it, and I am fine.  I don’t know why I should consider this disease more dangerous than driving a car, a risky thing I do every day without a moment’s worry.  Liberals, Democrats, and public-health elites have been so wrong so often, we’d be better off doing the opposite of almost everything they say.

“I don’t need some novel pharmaceutical product to give me permission to do the things I’m already doing.  This isn’t even an FDA-approved vaccine; it’s authorized for an emergency.  Well, I don’t consider COVID-19 a personal emergency.  So why would I sign up to be an early guinea pig for a therapy that I don’t need, whose long-term effects we don’t understand?  I’d rather bet on my immune system than on Big Pharma.”

The trouble, of course, is that those who oppose the vaccine, given its meritorious effect overall, risk the lives of others.  It’s not just the individuals who refuse the vaccine; it’s the rest of us.

And, in this way, it’s like so much else in this country these days.  It’s the, “I’ll do what I want TO DO because I know best and others can pay the price, not me.”  Call it what it is – being selfish.