Bad-faith progressive activists continue their insufferable, holier-than-thou strategy of claiming some kind of hero status for their (often disingenuous) stance on COVID vaccines. Their latest odious and lazy attacks are motivated by politics and cable news ratings, not our health.
The new narrative from the Left, parroted by Democrats across the media, is that supporters of former President Donald Trump are refusing to get vaccinated and are now responsible for new COVID cases. Worse, it's FOX News that is supposedly killing people with vaccine misinformation—all for ratings.
Neither talking point is accurate.
The new spin comes as the Biden administration failed to meet its goal of attaining 70 percent nationwide vaccination by Independence Day. So now, the blame is being placed on Trump.
Fortune magazine declared there are "two Americas" emerging. In Biden-dominated states, the underlying article argued, "most adults got their shots and daily life is rapidly returning to normal." But in "Trump country," conservatives are eschewing medical advice and rejecting the vaccine en masse.
In Washington State, Democratic governor Jay Inslee criticized Trump supporters in a bizarre and angry rant.
"[Y]ou are a bioreactor facility-generating virus and spreading it around, including to kids who can't get vaccinated. I want to reiterate that. If you're a 50-year-old man who, you know, voted for Donald Trump and didn't think COVID was a problem and you don't get vaccinated right now, you're a risk to every kid in your city because you could be spreading the virus to a 10-year-old who can't get eligible for the vaccine right now," Inslee said. "Now, some of us think that's not responsible, and if that's judgmental, so be it."
Inslee positions himself as a hero, as many Democrats do when talking about the vaccine. They are saving lives, and evil, selfish Trump supporters are a threat to our safety.
But these arguments don't match the data.
Los Angeles recently reinstituted mask mandates because of the spread of COVID. Seattle and King County, Washington are experiencing a surge in cases, and they hit a 70 percent vaccination rate. In fact, the COVID wave is happening across Washington State and Oregon.
This is hardly "Trump country." Unless Democrats are embracing the stolen-election conspiracies, something tells me these aren't Trump voters who are fueling anything. These areas aren't exactly flush with conservatives.
Certainly, the unvaccinated are more susceptible to COVID—Delta variant or otherwise. Are some conservatives vaccine-hesitant? Sure. But statistically, so are many liberal college students and black Americans.
The goal should be to get everyone vaccinated—not just Trump supporters. But are we to believe Democrats are only concerned with unvaccinated conservatives, and not their own voters' vaccine status? Democrats are just using this smear as an attack on one political party and on Trump, who is still viewed as a threat to the Left.
But perhaps these aforementioned numbers indicate more already-vaccinated people represent COVID-positive cases than is being reported. And if your goal is to get people vaccinated at any cost, outlets and public health officials might downplay some data. It's why you see a concerted effort to bully FOX News hosts into silence: The hosts are focused on the news around the vaccines, not just public service announcements.
Some CNN and MSNBC voices—along with public health officials and activists—claim FOX News is quite literally killing its viewers with COVID misinformation.
Speaking to Stephen Colbert on his late-night program, Joy Reid declared, "It doesn't make sense why folks at that particular network, we all know who we mean, would want to kill their own viewers."
Colbert aptly responded: "I hadn't thought about that."
Neither has thought about it. In fact, left-wingers usually offer up a paradox. For example, Walter Shaub, former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, tweeted, "Fox News is killing people to get ratings." How do you get ratings from dead viewers?
The FOX News smear is clear and somewhat ironic, given the talking points their personalities use. In reality, FOX News' rival networks also have financial interests; they're not necessarily motivated by a pure desire to better inform the public. If they were, half their analysis wouldn't make it on air to begin with. And FOX News anchors and analysts have, in fact, been pretty clearly pro-vaccine.
Offering analysis on why some government mandates are wrong hardly puts the public at risk. It's a principled position that everyone should hold, regardless of political ideology. That the party of "my body, my choice" suddenly says the opposite is bizarre.
Pointing to actual side effects, which can be deadly for some, shouldn't lead to vaccine hesitancy, either. It should lead to Americans being better able to make informed decisions and identify the rare serious side effects in order to know when to seek medical assistance. Ignoring a side effect simply because you think it's expected can sometimes have deadly consequences.
Are FOX News' rival outlets scared of advocating for more informed medical decisions? No, of course not. They'll just feign genuine humanitarian concern to cut into FOX News' dominant market share.
Jason Rantz is a frequent guest on Fox News and is the host of the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH Seattle, heard weekday afternoons. You can subscribe to his podcast here and follow him on Twitter: @jasonrantz.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
