GOP sees feud widening over promoting Covid shots

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Instead, a news conference with congressional Republican doctors, to discuss the delta variant, has turned into a forum for lawmakers to reiterate unverified claims that the virus escaped from a lab in China, and to attack Democrats for not thoroughly investigating the origins of Covid.

“That’s their choice,” Rep. Greg Murphy (RN.C) said when pressed on whether Republicans should urge people to get vaccinated. “It is our national duty to care for others, but it is also our national duty to understand that we have individual rights in this country.”

This caution among many GOP members, demonstrated in 11 interviews with GOP policymakers, could further complicate the pandemic response as the delta variable leads to more cases and hospitalizations while fewer Americans line up to get shots. The deteriorating situation is likely to weigh heavily on GOP voters: Eight of the 10 states where hospital admissions for Covid-19 have been rising fastest are led by Republican governors.

After getting his first snapshot of Covid-19 this week, House Republican whip Steve Scales (R-La.) has repeatedly encouraged others to do the same. But given a chance on Thursday to refute vaccine safety concerns raised by prominent conservative skeptics, the second Republican in the room objected.

“I haven’t heard any conservatives raise suspicion,” he said, a day after Charlie Kirk, co-founder of the conservative student group Turning Point USA, raised concerns about vaccine safety on Fox News.

That stance has angered Biden administration officials and public health experts and has stymied a vaccination effort that has so far reached 68 percent of American adults — short of the target the White House had hoped to hit nearly three weeks ago.

Daily vaccination rates have been steadily declining, with fewer than half a million injections averaging in the United States since the Fourth of July. And after Republicans took advantage of President Joe Biden’s pledge to go “door to door” to encourage vaccinations to falsely suggest that the government would go after those who refuse to get the shot, administration officials say they are struggling to bridge an ever-growing partisan divide.

“This has serious consequences,” a senior administration official said of hostility within parts of the Republican Party. “You are putting people in harm’s way, and this is very dangerous. This is as dangerous as we have been in.”

The faltering vaccine campaign — along with the rapid return of the virus that has infected almost exclusively unvaccinated Americans — has persuaded some prominent Republicans to step up their pro-vaccine rhetoric.

McConnell on several occasions promoted the shots, at one point denouncing “all these other voices giving clearly bad advice.” On Friday, Ivey said it was “time to start blaming unvaccinated people” after her case suffered a sharp acceleration in Covid-19 cases.

Jerome Adams, the former Trump administration surgeon general, has taken an increasingly public role in advocating the vaccination campaign — issuing dire warnings about Delta and seeking to allay fears in dozens of tweets each day, as well as in opinion pieces and. on TV.

And in Congress, some lawmakers admitted frustration that the party wasn’t up front touting the shots.

“I mean, it’s our base, right?” Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois) said in an interview. “These are our constituents and I think we have a responsibility to say, vaccinate.”

Yet few were eager to direct a target at the loudest and most influential skeptics of vaccines within their party, or showed great enthusiasm for personally fighting the disinformation that spread on social media platforms, conservative outlets, and in Congress.

“For me, the single most important public health action we can encourage people to take is vaccination,” said Senator John Cornyn of Texas, where the number of hospital admissions for Covid-19 has surged more than 50 percent in the past two weeks. . “But we are a free country – people are free to express their opinions.”

In interviews, many lawmakers declined to address Tucker Carlson, the popular Fox News host who has been vacillating for months between supporting vaccines and raising a host of unsupported or misguided concerns about their safety.

Others blamed the Biden administration for alienating conservatives, pinning their hopes on a sudden increase once the FDA approves vaccines completely or downplaying urgency because the delta variant has not yet been shown to be more virulent than previous strains.

“The good news is that it doesn’t look like it’s any more ferocious,” said Representative Andy Harris (R-MD). “If you look at deaths and hospitalizations, it’s probably no worse than the original virus.”

Meanwhile, skeptics of the GOP vaccine further inflated their skepticism largely without any objection from those within their own party. The false claim made by Georgia State Representative Marjorie Taylor Green that Covid-19 is “not dangerous” for some people has caused a comment from Twitter — but little more than a shrug of her colleagues. A month after organizing a widely criticized event to highlight rare side effects of vaccines, Senator Ron Johnson (R-whiskey) continued to oppose the Biden administration’s efforts to vaccinate all Americans.

“It scares people when the government is almost forcing someone to shave someone,” he said. “This is a drug experience, and they are asked to participate in it and they should be able to choose yes or no without pressure, without coercion.”

Perhaps to a greater degree than most, those are the views that have made Trump-era health officials grumble — especially after their work developing vaccines in record time emerged as a rare bright spot in a disastrous response to Covid-19.

“The entire Operation Warp Speed ​​team would want no more than 100 percent of eligible Americans to vaccinate,” said Paul Mango, a former HHS deputy chief of staff who worked on developing the vaccine.

Yet, apart from sporadic private discussions, few have taken a significant public role in driving the vaccination campaign — former officials suspect it will have much of an impact or are still embittered by the Biden administration’s early rejection of their work planning and rolling out vaccine production.

“If you ask me, I will,” Mango said before conducting research into Biden’s chief medical advisor. “But I wouldn’t be Tony Fauci out there running behind the cameras.”

He added that the only person who might be able to unite the Republican Party behind the vaccine campaign is former President Donald Trump. But neither Trump nor Biden has shown any flair for partnership. And even then, there is no guarantee that the vast majority of Americans will convince.

“I don’t know who the more credible voice is,” Mango said. “I don’t know who this day will be in America. I don’t even know if this person even exists.”

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