ANALYSIS: How to encourage Trump supporters to get vaccinated and help achieve herd immunity

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Sun, 2021-03-21 12:54 — mike kraft

Perspective | Trump can’t get his supporters to take the vaccine. But doctors can. Shaming White Republicans for questioning the vaccines won’t help Frank Luntz, Brian C. Castrucci Washington Post

Words matter. And when it comes to science, medicine and health, so do the people who speak them.

Before the new coronavirus vaccines won emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration late last fall, it looked like the United States would have a problem getting people to take the shots. In early December, more than half of Black Americans said they wanted to wait and see how the rollout went before receiving a vaccine. For Latino respondents, 43 percent wanted to wait and see, and another 18 percent said they wouldn’t get it.

So political and health leaders prioritized efforts to promote vaccine confidence in these communities — and it worked. By late last month, the percentage of Black Americans who said they would wait and see about the vaccine had dropped from 52 percent in December to 34 percent, according to polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Only 14 percent said they would definitely not get it. A similar shift happened among Latinos, 52 percent of whom said in February that they had gotten or would get the vaccine, up from 26 percent in December, with just 12 percent saying they definitely wouldn’t.

Now another demographic stands as the most vaccine-hesitant group in America: White Republicans. Kaiser’s poll found in February that 27 percent of White Republicans definitely wouldn’t get the vaccine — up slightly from 24 percent in December — and just 46 percent said they already had or definitely would get the shot. Considering that White Republicans make up roughly 25 percent of the population, and that some members of other groups remain wary of the vaccines, that poses a real problem for reaching herd immunity.

To understand why those numbers haven’t budged, we held a focus group last weekend with 19 vaccine-hesitant Trump Republicans. Our mission was to test the ideas and messages that will help us move beyond ideological battles and restore our nation’s health and economy. On Zoom, we gathered people with diverse economic backgrounds who all supported the former president and said they would not or were unlikely to get the vaccine. ...

The Trump Republicans were almost as concerned about the possible long-term side effects of the shots as about the risks posed by the virus itself. And instead of praising Operation Warp Speed for being one of the most significant, impactful accomplishments of the Trump administration, more of these voters expressed concern about the speed of the vaccines’ development and approval.

That’s Donald Trump’s fault: He downplayed the virus so much for so long that his own voters now undervalue his achievement. He did finally say this past week that his supporters should get the vaccine, but our research found that people aren’t looking to him for cues now: While participants credited him for his handling of the pandemic, all 19 said they would trust their doctors over the former president when deciding whether to get vaccinated.

Distrust in government institutions, the press and political rhetoric also contributes to vaccine resistance. Participants strongly felt that the coronavirus has been used for political purposes and was weaponized against Trump in the 2020 election. One claimed: “They keep us locked up. Let’s put it this way, if the public is economically deprived and locked up, they’re going to be so much easier to control.” That’s why public-service advertisements featuring four former presidents or speeches from President Biden about bipartisanship and unity fail to reach Trump supporters: They simply don’t resonate. As one participant noted, “We are not all in this together.” ...

If we had that kind of time and space with all vaccine-hesitant Americans, we would surely be able to move the needle. The virus and its variants, however, will not afford us that kind of time. We need a nonpartisan, medically driven, fact-based approach right now. ...

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