Sure and many criticized that at the time, because public health isn’t a partisan issue. But let’s not pretend the protest gathering compares to the organized, sustained resistance to basic precautions - mask mandates, social distancing, and later, vaccines - that became a defining feature of the political right.
Yes, and their distrust was rooted in historical abuse - like the Tuskegee experiment you mentioned. But guess what? Black communities closed the gap in vaccination rates, especially in blue states, once trusted messengers and outreach were in place.
Meanwhile, large chunks of the conservative base still clung to YouTube pseudoscience and libertarian Facebook memes. Just look at @Big Blitz who still can't accept that Trump was President when the pandemic started.
Would you take medical advice from a guy who told you to drink bleach?
Harris said she wouldn’t trust a vaccine pushed solely by Trump without scientific backing - a position that became irrelevant once the vaccines were reviewed and endorsed by the FDA, CDC, and global health experts. And she got vaccinated on camera like every other responsible adult. Why didn't Trump?
It dramatically reduced severe illness, hospitalization, and death - especially in the early waves. That’s how vaccines work: not force fields, but firewalls. And pretending they were worthless because they didn’t offer 100% sterilizing immunity is like saying seatbelts are useless because they don’t prevent all injuries.
Of course. But we’re talking about state-level outcomes - which correlate overwhelmingly with public health policy, governance, and yes, partisan control. Red states had higher death rates. That’s data you cannot contest.
Sure - it was going to hit. But the scale of the tragedy, the number of lives lost, and the chaos we lived through? That wasn’t inevitable. That was policy failure, willful ignorance, and political theater that cost hundreds of thousands of lives unnecessarily.