I agree that limiting air/train/Greyhound travel to vaxxed people would help. So would requiring masks everywhere indoors and mandating air purifiers or a few minutes of regularly open windows.
Right now, vaccine reluctance or rejection by people who were not previously antivaxx is not homogenously balanced in the US and there’s nothing equivalent in Western Europe.
In a way, it’s sad but telling that comparisons are made to developing countries or non G8/non permanentG20 countries.
I honestly never thought we’d have to use this kind of comparison, although I’m not sure why it’s being made. To help improve?
I also don’t think we can color vaccine reluctance and rejection everywhere in the same color, nor would the same approach work.
To give another example: Guadeloupe (a French territory in the Carribean that’s similar to Puerto Rico?) has been rioting for a while. It sounded at first that it was all against the vaccine mandate for health care workers. No matter whether that mandate was a pretext or a motivating factor, it has spread to full-on riots, with roadblocks, extortion, etc. Some criminals saw a business open in kidnapping Health Care workers. The roots are totally unlike what you can see in the US or what the riots in the Netherlands were about.
First, the French government blithely and knowingly let the people of Guadeloupe be poisoned by a chemical, chlordecon, that made producing bananas efficient and inexpensive (at the cost of the workers’ health). After assuring them the product was safe, close to 30 years after knowing it wasn’t, people in Guadeloupe had reasons to mistrust the government telling them vaccines are safe. Then, the last straw: yet another water “cut”: tens of thousands of houses either got foul, non drinkable water at the tap for the umpteenth time, or got no water at all. Like everywhere in the developed world, covid’s impact on the economy has led to inflation and hasn’t stabilized back yet (it’s going but when it comes to water, waiting is not an option), which means costs are high, and bottled water is especially expensive to start with. Everything else, all the grievances and problems kept quiet since the beginning of the pandemic exploded then: monopolies, specific taxes the island pays, the lack of infrastructure, the shortage of stable jobs, educational underachievement. The Minister for Overseas Districts went and made things worse. (He basically told them, “stop all violence right now and advocate for autonomy”, which infuriated the people whose main issue was “drinking water” since it didn’t respond to their vital, immediate, primary concern, and of course didn’t calm the rioters. I understand his point but telling rioters to stop violence without offering something to start a negociation- even a bad-faith one-, and thinking “independence” is a legit way to barter with thugs, who, we all know, have IR degrees, was really stupid.)
So, you’re seeing “covid riots” in Guadeloupe but covid issues there are nothing like covid issues in the US nor like the “covid riots” in the Netherlands.
Want to hear about more mandates than Germany and Austria?
Italy doesn’t have a mandate but is starting a two-tiered system; crowded indoor places will be reserved to covid negative/vaccinated people.
All of it is to keep Delta in check and contain Omicron, and thus save the Christmas holidays, which typically run Dec 24-jan 1 or Dec 24-Jan 5. St Nicholas is already being cancelled in various places and those unvaxxed, who carry a higher viral load, are considered responsible.
The basic reasoning is the same as for “You’re free to get drunk, not to get drunk and drive”. Your freedom ends when it endangers others.
And I’m not trying to say the US has a monopoly on weird individual or collective decisions:
In France, which is about 2-3 weeks behind Germany in its 5th wave, last week Emmanuel Macron’s education minister lifted some mitigating measures in primary schools. It’s so bad that a usually neutral doctor’s publication has called him irresponsible, incidence rate is reaching 1,000 in some areas, and everyone’s afraid of what’s going to happen because all the unvaxxed little kids go home and contaminate everyone but their parents don’t want to keep them home, of course. The “national parents’ union” (FCPE) representative is asking for “stronger measures to keep schools open” but the minister of education hasn’t really discussed the ideas of HEPA filters/air purifiers or not packing 28 3rd graders in a space originally planned for 24.
So, sure, there’s vaccine reluctance, but its manifestations are definitely cultural.
In addition, it sounds like denial to me to say there’s nothing specific to American vaccine reluctance/rejection. This is real and we can’t get a handle on the problem if we don’t admit it exists.
County-level rather than country-level is more useful because in the US, the average is misleading. Some areas have remarkably high vaccination rates whereas others have worriyingly low vaccination rates, in a way that is unique to a “rich”, “G8” country (less pc than MEDC but perhaps clearer?)
Note that I listed 3 counties, in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Mississippi because I did NOT mean “rednecks in the South”.
Also, I find the concept of “waves” useful: we see the wave start in the East, grow and curl, crash, and then it’s flat again, till the next wave comes.
