COVID Treatment Threatened as Trump Hatred Fuels Anti-Vax Hysteria

02 Dec 2020 COVID Treatment Threatened as Trump Hatred Fuels Anti-Vax Hysteria

With promising medical advances on the horizon in the war against COVID-19, it would appear the biggest problem is getting liberals to trust and support vaccines produced with the assistance and oversight of the Trump Administration.

In an panel segment on Newsmax TV’s “National Report,” former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker praised the White House’s “Operation Warp Speed” virus program as “one of the most remarkable achievements in American history.” Yet there is a bias against it because of a liberal hatred of Trump.

As host Emma Rechenberg brought up during the segment, then-vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris said about any potential vaccine against COVID-19: “If Donald Trump tells us we should take it, I’m not takin’ it.” And New York Governor Andrew Cuomo suggested a “plan to fix it or stop” the White House’s vaccine plan “before it does damage.”

National Center Senior Fellow Bonner Cohen, Ph.D., also noted in the panel that liberals – including those who claim to follow the science – have allowed the debate to become “degenerated” into “an attack on those who call into question the measures that have been taken to stem the spread of the virus.”

Bonner is a coauthor of the National Center’s “Beyond COVID-19” report that offers pro-liberty and pro-free market recommendations to bring the nation through this crisis and prepare for the next one of its kind. Liberals who push failed policies have “demonized” critics rather than work with them to create the best solutions, he told the panel, adding:

The country has been put through massive lockdowns over the past seven months. And what we know about these lockdowns is they do not work.

Both the United States as well as Europe are now experiencing a second wave of outbreaks of coronavirus. And what we also know is that the measures that have been taken have done an enormous amount of harm. They have not only undermined the livelihoods of people – particularly the most vulnerable people, people who are in retail and small businesses and the like – but they have actually undermined public health.

And they have done so by instilling the fear in people that they shouldn’t go the doctor. That they shouldn’t be tested for things completely unrelated to coronavirus – with the result that we are going to see effects from this months and months and years and years down the road.

Bonner also noted a parallel between the COVID and climate change debates:

[T]he sad part about this is when people bring this up, when people challenge what has been done thus far, they are demonized just as people who call into question the whole notion of human-induced climate change: they are “climate deniers.”

We are running the risk of having now “COVID-19 deniers.” And sadly, we’re doing that precisely at a time when two – and perhaps shortly three – vaccines will be available to us in a few months that provide some hope for relief.

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*** This article has been archived for your research. The original version from National Center for Public Policy Research can be found here ***