This may be the time to stop picking at the scab that is the vaccination wars. At a certain point you cannot patronize and scold people into changing their minds. Persuade but don’t bark and accuse. From the beginning the government should have sent pro- and anti-vaxxers out all over to debate each other—the pro-vaccine argument would have won. I still don’t understand why humor and warmth were never used in government vaccination campaigns, only bland and incessant hectoring from doctors in white jackets telling you it’s safe, it’s right, do it. Which came across as mere and heavily subsidized propaganda.

The president often sounds to me like a man trying to perceive what the public wants and deliver it, which in fairness is what most politicians do. But he and his people are not necessarily good perceivers. On the pandemic, he isn’t sure if they want reassurance or an acting out of shared indignation or a stirring Churchillian vow—“I’m gonna shut down the virus, not the country,” he said during the 2020 campaign. But people know when you’re telling them what you think they want to hear, and they experience it as talking down to them. They wouldn’t mind that so much if they thought the politician talking down was their intellectual or ethical superior, but they don’t often get to feel that way.