Jason Garshfield Posted:
Apr 27, 2021 10:29 AM
The opinions expressed by columnists are their
own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
Recent data
indicates that coronavirus vaccination rates are on the decline, to the
point where a reportby the Kaiser
Family Foundation has predicted “a tipping point on vaccine enthusiasm in the
next 2 to 4 weeks,” once most of the Americans who want the vaccine have gotten
it.
When this
critical mass is reached, it is likely – if recent history is anything to go by
– that we will hear vaccine-hesitant Americans ridiculed as “anti-vaxxers” and
fringe conspiracy theorists. But vaccine hesitancy is no fringe phenomenon:
more than one in five Americans,
including around 40% of Republicans, do not want to get vaccinated.
Instead of
the usual routine of sneering and finger-wagging, it would behoove our public
health officials to ask themselves what they may have done to lose the trust of
such a large slice of the public.
The plain
fact of the matter is that top public health officials, most notably Dr.
Anthony Fauci, have systematically deceived the American people over the past
year. This is a matter of verifiable public record. As reported in The
New York Times on December 24 of last year, Fauci boasted openly that
he had “slowly but deliberately been moving the goal posts” on herd immunity
numbers, “partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what
he really thinks.”
Furthermore,
Fauci did this “because many Americans seemed hesitant about vaccines,” proving
a willingness to mislead the general public specifically to encourage
vaccination.
This is a
clear and unequivocal admission of deceit, one which even Fauci’s defenders
cannot explain away. These are not the words of a scientist changing his views
as new information comes in. They are the words of a political actor cynically
manipulating Americans into a preferred course of action via twisted truth and
outright deception.
The same
goes for the abrupt, jarring about-face on masks early
in the pandemic. Here, too, the authorities went from discouraging masks to mandating
them not as the result of new scientific research but as a
matter of pragmatic expedience. They wanted to preserve masks for health care
workers, to prevent the sort of mass panic-buying that they had seen with
toilet paper and other goods.
It may be
argued that these were necessary deceptions; it cannot be argued that they were
not deceptions. Those same figures who demand we “trust the science” have done
a great deal to undermine that selfsame trust. While accusing lockdown
opponents of peddling “misinformation,” public health officials have themselves
been the largest-scale purveyors of misinformation this past year.
In light of
this, is it inconceivable that we may learn, a few years from now, that the
vaccines had serious potential side effects which the CDC knew of, but did not
inform the public about, so as to decrease vaccine hesitancy? Hardly; in fact,
I would say this is an uncomfortably plausible scenario.
There are
other legitimate reasons for vaccine hesitancy. For one, there is the
discouraging messaging on what people can do after being vaccinated. Per CDC guidelines,
vaccinated persons must still wear masks, social distance, and avoid large
gatherings. Meanwhile, we are told of a “permanent pandemic,” of
future booster shots, of face
masks into 2022 and for years to come. People can only be bait-and-switched
for long before growing fed up with the game.
And lastly,
there is the overriding sense of compulsion. When private and public forces
(most recently the California public university system)
come together to mandate vaccination as a prerequisite for participation in
society, then this takes on the air of blackmail. It sows doubts about the
efficacy of the vaccine – would they really have to push it
this hard if it was so great? – and makes getting vaccinated into a symbol of
cooperation, a mark of implicit consent to the current system.
Above it
all, however, hangs the track record of government deception.
When the
government misinforms the public, it never ends well. After the Bush
administration’s claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were proven false,
for instance, faith in American institutions decreased. We all pay the price
for this loss of faith, because while it is good for citizens to be skeptical
of their politicians, there must be a certain base level of trust for the
system to work at all.
Hopefully,
coronavirus vaccines are indeed as safe and effective as we have been told. If
they are, and if vaccine-hesitant Americans end up dying of the virus
unnecessarily, then the brunt of the blame should lie with those bureaucrats
who have betrayed the trust we have vested in them. This trust will not be
regained without a public reckoning for Fauci and his ilk, a reckoning that,
under the current administration, is unlikely to come.
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