Republicans are at odds over the wisdom and efficacy of taking the COVID-19 vaccine, undermining national efforts to defeat the coronavirus and reinforcing the views of GOP base voters already reluctant to participate in the ramped-up inoculation program.<\/p>\n
Although the top GOP leaders, including Sen.\u00a0Mitch McConnell\u00a0(Ky.) and Rep.\u00a0Kevin McCarthy\u00a0(Calif.), were quickly vaccinated in December \u2014 and encouraged the public to follow suit \u2014 a number of high-profile rank-and-file members say they intend to ignore the advice.<\/p>\n
Some of those holdouts say they\u2019re concerned the vaccine poses a greater health threat than COVID-19 itself. Others have indicated they don\u2019t want to jump ahead of constituents in line for vaccines of their own. And still others note that, because they\u2019ve contracted the COVID-19 over the last year, they have the antibodies to fight the disease in the future, precluding the need to be inoculated.<\/p>\n
Why it’s important:<\/strong>\u00a0The hesitancy and muddled messaging arrives as the Biden administration, backed by public health experts, is urging Americans to get a vaccine as soon as they become eligible to do so. The issue, however, has become highly partisan, as a huge swath of Republican voters say they\u2019ll refuse to do so.<\/p>\n Infection not an excuse:\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cI have not chosen to be vaccinated because I got it naturally and the science of 30 million people \u2014 and the statistical validity of a 30 million sample \u2014 is pretty overwhelming that naturally immunity exists and works,\u201d said Sen.\u00a0Rand Paul\u00a0(R-Ky.), an ophthalmologist who contracted COVID last March, frequently clashes with health experts, and does not wear a mask in the Capitol.<\/p>\n But in fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends getting a shot even if you previously contracted COVID-19, because they are not sure how long the natural immunity lasts once you’re recovered. Current guidance suggests it’s only three months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Republicans are at odds over the...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32907,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32906\/revisions\/32907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}