On an intellectual basis, one of the most interesting questions for me is whether and when there will be a tipping point on how people see the COVID-19 vaccine.
Obviously, on one level, a consensus has developed among the majority of Americans: no more, thank you. Four out of five Americans have declined to get the shot for the latest booster.
Even in Missouri, Travis Kelce couldn't convince more than 15% of the population to get a new jab.
Opinions about how well our technocratic elite did during the pandemic are similarly hardening; trust in all forms of expertise has plummeted, and one of the more dangerous results has been a huge drop in the uptake of conventional vaccines that are nearly universally understood to protect children and their peers genuinely.
But politically, I have yet to see what I believe needs to happen: a consensus developing that political leaders and public health officials should never again be allowed to impose their will on us.
In other words, I haven't seen average, non-political people get angry enough at politicians.
As with so many things, it is the politically agnostic people in the middle who provide the winning margins in campaigns and hence can determine the direction of future policies. If you look at the issue of immigration, the tide turned when people for whom the immigration issue was not particularly important suddenly realized that a disaster was underway.
Suddenly immigration mattered not just to activists or the politically astute, but to everyone. One of the biggest issues in 2024 will be the border crisis, and Democrats are scared because the people in the middle awoke to the danger.
When will this happen with COVID-19 policies, and especially the vaccine?
'I want you to look into my eyes Rishi Sunak and I want you to look at the pain, the trauma and the regret I have in my eyes.'
— GB News (@GBNEWS) February 12, 2024
An audience member asks the Prime Minister why he and others affected by the covid vaccine 'have been left to rot'.#GBNPeoplesForum pic.twitter.com/HfHOYVcoWL
I think it will likely happen in the UK before it does in the US, but I could be wrong. There is an increasing conversation that is creeping into the mainstream about the harms brought about by the COVID-19 vax and much more discussion about excess deaths that are running quite high. Here in the US, if you are deeply interested in the issue you can find discussion about excess deaths, but in Britain more people and commentators are taking notice.
The Establishment is still foursquare behind the vaccine and is working to justify the entire panoply of measures they took, but it's clear that anger is building and could possibly have an impact on the election, whenever it happens.
In the UK, as in the US, the politics are messy because the Tories are more deeply implicated in the disaster than is Labour. Here, the responsibility is split, with Democrats as a class having been much more mandate-manic and pro-vaccine than Republicans, but of course, President Trump is the man who takes credit for the vax and he is wildly popular with much of the Republican base.
Trump is standing by his support of the vaccine, which may be tamping down the level of anger among many Republicans, but as I indicated earlier it is the politically non-aligned whose opinions must shift in order to fundamentally change the politics. Republicans as a group are tamping down their anger, but the anger is boiling under the surface.
I find it difficult to believe that as the damage done continues to be revealed more and more people won't openly vent their fury. The social acceptability of being anti-vax will continue to rise, just as even moderates are now expressing disgust with the COVID mandates for public schools.
As of now, there has been no reckoning despite the fact that COVID-19 policies have devastated millions of lives, harmed millions of children, and killed uncounted numbers of people. COVID-19 may be over as a medical issue for most people, but the policies it spurred are still an irritant to the body politic.
One of the reasons why I supported Ron DeSantis was his promise to have an accounting for the damage done, and to hold people responsible. I have my doubts that Trump would ever allow that to happen on his own, although if there were a groundswell...perhaps.
Until there is an accounting, the anger will mount. Worse, unless there are consequences much more damage will be done in the future.
