A normal summer depends on these key vaccine holdouts

If we assume roughly 25 percent of adult Americans identify themselves as Republicans, the poll numbers above would suggest that approximately 10 percent of U.S. adults won’t accept COVID-19 vaccinations in part because they harbor right-wing, anti-vaccine views. Given that some 20 percent of Americans are currently under the age of 15 and therefore are ineligible to receive COVID-19 vaccinations at all, this bloc of vaccine-refusing Republican adults jeopardizes our ability to reach the threshold of herd immunity, and could stall a safe reopening... We must engage in new outreach to conservative groups, to highlight both the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines and the urgency for all Americans. This includes debunking misinformation from conservative groups that claim we are already achieving herd immunity, or that young people are not at risk for severe disease and therefore don’t need to be vaccinated, or that those with past COVID-19 infections are already immune. (Worse are the conservative activists, including doctors, who make outrageous claims regarding COVID-19 vaccine safety.) Ultimately, we must find a way to delink anti-vaccine defiance and political allegiance to the GOP—and as a medical expert, rather than a political scientist, I don’t claim to know all the answers here. But we know that the impact of advocacy and reaching out can be profound. For example, vaccine refusal and hesitancy was also high in Black and Brown communities across the country, but this has declined significantly, according to some polls.