THE TWO-FRONT VAX WAR — The highly politicized national dialogue over the unvaccinated goes like this: The unvaccinated are Trump loyalists , disproportionately rural, less educated and white. Their recalcitrance and denial has fueled the deadly Delta surge, threatening us all and obstructing our path toward "something-like-normal" life. It's true. But it's not the whole story. These partisan anti-vaxxers represent about 12 percent of the American adult population . That hasn't dropped much since last winter, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's Vaccine Monitor, which tracks immunization trends. But there's another large and important group of unvaccinated — the still-hesitant, or what Kaiser dubs "the wait and see." This is now 7 percent of the adult population — a drop from the 17 percent back in March, but still millions of people. The racial and ethnic gaps in this group have shrunk, according to data from KFF, Pew and the CDC. The new vaccine mandates, fear of the Delta variant and months of outreach, including among minorities, have helped boost immunization rates. By focusing our national dialogue on the hardcore ideological vax-refusers, we are doing a disservice to ourselves and to the vaccine hesitant, who remain vulnerable to the virus. In addition to getting hold-out adults protected, we need to get them to feel comfortable getting their children vaccinated, when those shots are authorized later this fall. As we celebrate signs that Delta may — may — be abating, we still need to get more shots in arms. And unlike the partisan Never Vaxers, some of the wait-and-see crowd is persuadable. On average, the members of the wait-and-see group are younger, lower-income and more urban than the people in the "definitely not" group. Both groups lean Republican, but the resistant group is more hard-core GOP. The hesitant group is more worried about a family member getting sick, and less likely to believe the news media has exaggerated the pandemic, explained Liz Hamel, Kaiser's vice president and director of public opinion and survey research. This group's vaccine skepticism is less intractable — but still a challenge to overcome, said Lisa Cooper, a Johns Hopkins physician/health equity researcher who was recently appointed to Biden's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology. The apprehension among the vax curious has many causes, ranging from fear of needles to religious beliefs to misplaced fears that the vaccines were dangerously "rushed" to market. Among people living in poverty and minorities, as Cooper points out, there are still large pools of distrust of the health care system. And some low income people are dealing with so many day to day crises and challenges — threats of eviction, joblessness, a family member with illness or addiction, to name just a few — that getting vaccinated just isn't a priority. Getting them protected will require "time, work and patience," Cooper said. It also requires remembering that not everyone who is unvaccinated is seeing the coronavirus through a politicized lens. Joanne Kenen, a former POLITICO health care editor and a contributing POLITICO writer, is the Commonwealth Fund Journalist in Residence at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas for us at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight's author on Twitter at @joannekenen. Programming note: Nightly will not publish on Monday, Oct. 11. But don't worry, we'll be back and better than ever Tuesday, Oct. 12.
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