Short Wave - What's Driving The Political Divide Over Vaccinations

Episode Date: December 9, 2021

An NPR analysis shows that since the vaccine rollout, counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump have had nearly three times the COVID mortality rates of those that voted for Joe Biden. That difference appears to be driven by a partisan divide in vaccination rates. As NPR correspondent Geoff Brumfield reports, political polarization and misinformation are driving a significant share of the deaths in the pandemic.Read more of Geoff's reporting on vaccine misinformation:- Inside the growing alliance between anti-vaccine activists and pro-Trump Republicans: https://n.pr/31ylGNK- Pro-Trump counties now have far higher COVID death rates. Misinformation is to blame: https://n.pr/3dzPzzySee pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, Shortwave. Emily Kwong here. I am joined by Jeff Brumfield, NPR Science Correspondent. Hi there. Good to see you. Good morning. Okay, Jeff, you're usually on to talk about the nitty-gritty of science or space or something. But today you're going to be doing something a little different. You're going to be reporting on kind of the opposite of science, which is misinformation about COVID and the vaccines and the people who are being affected by that.

Yeah. I mean, for the past few months, I've sort of dropped down this rabbit hole of internet and social media and alternative reality almost where, you know, the vaccines are evil and dangerous. And there's a lot of really, frankly, incorrect views on what the vaccines are doing. I've been talking to anti-vaccine activists. And in October, I actually went out to Nashville, Tennessee to a conference where there were. a bunch of anti-vaccine speakers. Who was there? Well, it was organized by a couple named Ty and Charlene Bollinger. They have been active in sort of the medical misinformation business for many years now. And it's an annual event that sort of attracts this motley crew of homeopathic doctors, people who are promoting alternative cancer therapies, and a lot of anti-vaccine folks. But what was really interesting this year was Eric Trump was there.

And Eric Trump wasn't the only person from the political world. Trump's former advisor Roger Stone came to speak as well, as did a couple of other far-right Republican figures. So today on the show, why there's an alliance between far-right Republicans and anti-vaccine activists? And how a toxic mix of real politics and imagined dangers may be threatening the love. of thousands of Americans. This is Shortwave, the Daily Science podcast from NPR. Okay, Jeff Brumfield, why are you interested in political ideology and COVID misinformation? Why'd you want to look into it?

Well, the short answer is I wasn't, at least not initially. But what's happened is over the past sort of eight months, a lot of other groups of people have gotten the shot. And Republicans have gotten vaccinated. as well. In fact, about 60% of Republicans are vaccinated. But the thing is, that is so far below most of the rest of America that it really sticks out like a sore thumb now. Especially when the goal is to get as many people vaccinated as possible in this country, you've got to look at where the data leads you, which is who is not vaccinated. And in this

case, it led you to this anti-vaccine conference that you attended. Let's listen to your report from that. Eric Trump delivered his half-hour speech to thousands of people at the Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville, Tennessee. Some of his biggest applause lines came when he attacked the COVID vaccine mandates. Do you want to get a vaccine? Do you not? Do you want to be left alone or not? Do you want to own a firearm? So do I. This all sounded really different from what came just hours before. On the same stage, an anti-vaccine activist named Karek,

Mary Medea claimed the vaccines contained microscopic technology designed to turn humans into cyborgs. They're trying to put another kind of nervous system inside of you, but an AI kind. These are my hypotheses. I encourage you to do your own research. It's those sort of fringe views that kept political figures away from this conference in the past, but as America heads into an election year, there seems to be a magnetic energy drawing the political far-right and the anti-vaccine movement towards each other. The promise is more power for both sides, but the cost could be thousands of American lives. To understand what's going on, first you need to understand where the two sides are coming from.

The anti-vaccine movement has not always been politically aligned. The truth is, I'm still a registered Democrat. Del Bigtree is a major anti-vaccine activist. He's struggled to make his message appeal to liberals, but it seems to, tap into something on the political right. He still remembers the first time he noticed. He was invited to speak about a documentary he'd written and produced at a conservative women's group in Texas. They loved it. Clearly, I was shocked as a lifelong liberal progressive that I was, you know, hugging and hanging out and having a great time with a bunch of extremely conservative mothers and

grandmothers. Big Tree has been banned from social media platforms like YouTube for making false claims about the dangers of COVID vaccines, but as the pandemic has dragged on, his conservative audience keeps growing. Often he speaks at conferences alongside people who claim the election was rigged and promoters of Q&ON conspiracy theories. Unless there's going to be a white supremacist, you know, on the stage, then, you know, where I find out that there's something that I truly find distasteful, then I see that stage as simply an audience that, you know, that I find, I want to have hear this message. It's a numbers game. He wants to grow his movement, and he'll talk to anyone who will listen.

Now, on the other side of this alliance are far-right conservatives like Trump's former political advisor, Roger Stone. Most of you know my story. He was convicted of lying to Congress about the Trump campaign's ties to Russia and later pardoned by Trump. Stone was invited to this conference by anti-vaccine activists. Ty and Charlene Bollinger. The Bollinger's profit from selling alternative therapies. They've been labeled by a watchdog group as misinformation super spreaders. Stone says he's quite open to their ideas.

I'm interested in all information, medical, holistic, homeopathic. But he's not just there to learn. He sees vaccines as a potent wedge issue that can motivate conservative voters in the upcoming election cycle. Do you think that going forward, the vaccine, are going to be something that people are willing to fight over. An enormous amount of public polling, which I think is honest. I mean, legitimate polling shows that it is.

So we don't get to decide. We read what the public is saying as a political strategist, and you have to respond accordingly. I think it is highly likely that this will be an issue in the 2022 elections. Vaccine mandates may be a good way to get out the conservative vote. It's a fight about the role of government and personal liberty. But add in the views of anti-favits. vaccine activists and that whole fight gets punched up to another level. Just listen to Del Bigtree.

I believe that this vaccine approach, this vaccine itself, this brand new technology is so incredibly dangerous that we are actually putting our species at risk. That kind of rhetoric, even though it's false, creates an existential crisis. It's this synergy between real politics and imagine dangers that's bringing these two movements together. But, there's a side effect. Many thousands of conservative Americans are dying from COVID, in part because they're being pummeled with a lot of bad information about the vaccines. Liz Hamill heads public opinion research with the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan healthcare think tank. She says misinformation is now a major barrier to vaccination. We find a huge correlation between belief in

misinformation and being unvaccinated. And Republicans are, on the receiving end of a lot of that misinformation, which comes to them daily through conservative media channels. Kaiser's polling found that 94% of Republicans think one or more false statements about vaccine safety might be true. Hamill has watched over the past eight months, says Republican vaccination rates have fallen further and further behind the rest of America. Today, An unvaccinated person is three times as likely to lean Republican as they are to lean Democrat. To see the impact of this vaccination gap, NPR checked COVID-19 death rates against 2020 election results. The trend was clear. Since May, when the vaccines became widely available, counties that voted heavily for Trump experienced nearly three times the death rate from COVID-19 compared to those that voted for President Biden.

They also had far lower vaccination rates. When asked about Republicans' low vaccination rates, Roger Stone said, said this. Each person must make their own choice. God bless them. So it doesn't bother you. You're not worried about Republicans potentially getting COVID getting sick, not having the vaccine. I actually think that taking the vaccination probably enhances your chances of getting the disease. So I guess I'd be more concerned if I were a Democrat. That last statement is contrary to all the scientific and medical data available. Stone also declined to say whether he was vaccinated. He doesn't care of people are dying and he's spreading, pardon my French, quasi-medical information.

They don't care about that. They just care about winning. It's the worst element in American politics today. Annette Meeks is a lifelong Republican. She has the Freedom Foundation in Minnesota, a conservative think tank. Meeks has seen the data on vaccines, and she's watched people she knows get sick. She is worried. To see people reject those vaccines based on pseudoscience or words,

lies and to see lives lost is a tragedy beyond words. But she also says embracing the anti-vaccine movement carries huge political risks for the Republican Party as a whole. That's because elections and states like Minnesota are won and lost in the suburbs, and suburban voters tend to be vaccinated. I believe long-term consequences for the Republican Party will be a lot of those independent suburban voters will look a scant. at us and say, what is this all about? I got vaccinated. My whole family got vaccinated and we're just fine. The risks for the Republican Party in lives and votes may be real, but there is little downside for the other group in this alliance, the anti-vaccine movement. Antivacine

activist Del Bigtree says he's seeing more people at speaking engagements and getting millions of visitors to his website each week. He's hiring, expanding. And for now, his audience is clear, conservative America. Jeff, there is so much to talk about here. I mean, one thing I just want to spend a minute on is this detail. You said in the story that counties that went heavily for Trump had nearly three times the death rates as those that went for Biden. That's pretty devastating. How did you arrive at that figure?

Yeah. So NPR data journalist Daniel Wood and I looked at death. from COVID-19 since May of 2021 when the vaccines became more or less widely available. And what we did was we compared those death rates to 2020 election data. So we basically looked at areas that went 60 percent or more for Donald Trump and compared those to areas that went 60 percent or more for President Biden. And those are considered sort of big wins. And, you know, we found this very clear correlation.

that basically the areas that went for Trump had roughly three times the mortality rate from COVID-19 is those that went for Biden. And what's more, the larger the margin for Trump, the larger the disparity. And it's pretty dispiriting, to be honest, that a political map is showing you who's dying from a communicable disease. Yeah, and you and Daniel created basically like a scatter plot of this, which we'll link on our show notes. And one thing I want to point out is you didn't know the political affiliations of those who died from COVID. You're just looking at county level data. So how can you be sure about these conclusions, this correlation? That's exactly right.

We are not claiming that people of one political party are dying from COVID. That's not the claim. But the next thing we did was we looked at vaccine data and you see the exact inverse, right? So heavily Biden counties have much higher vaccination rates, counties that went for, Trump have much lower vaccination rates. You had all this data, but did you talk to any individuals who had been personally affected by misinformation? I did. I talked to a guy named Mark Valentine. His brother was a conservative talk show host named Phil Valentine, who worked in Nashville, Tennessee for many, many years, often expressed skepticism towards vaccines. But Mark and Phil actually were sort of under probably the most widespread piece of misinformation that we see out there that people are buying into, which is the pandemic just wasn't really that serious.

That if you're young and you're healthy, you can get through it just fine. And so they chose not to get vaccinated. And Mark and I had a lot of conversations, actually, about what happened to Phil. So Phil got it, and he called me, and I swear it didn't register, you know, an alarm with me because I had seen several other people get it and it was just a non-event. Before Mark knew it, he was in the intensive care unit and he went on to die from COVID. You know, something Mark Valentine said to me that just stuck with me, he basically said he thinks the way this is going to work out is just more people are going to have to get sick. What I think is going to happen that's going to help solve the problem that you're working on is this. I think that we're in the very near future going to reach a point where everybody in this country has had a family member die of this illness.

People have a natural aversion to the realities of horrific things like this until it hits them. But, you know, I just, I find that idea very hard to accept. I mean, that is the most brutal way to get people. people to accept vaccination through illness, through death. You know, I have to think that there might be some other way to change people's minds. Jeff, thank you so much for bringing us this excellent reporting. It's really good to have this conversation on the show. Thank you so much, Emily.

Today's episode was edited by Sarah Saracen, produced by Rebecca Ramirez, and fact-checked by Rasha Irides. I'm Emily Kwong. Thanks so much for listening to Shortwave. the Daily Science Podcast from NPR.