Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, September. I'm Oscar Ramires from the Daily Dive
Speaker 1: podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America. A
Speaker 1: coronavirus vaccine may be on its way soon, but that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that people are ready to take it. According
Speaker 1: to an Axios Ipsos poll, six of people say they
Speaker 1: don't want to take a first generation vaccine, in part
Speaker 1: because of how it's been politicized. Margaret Talive, Politics and
Speaker 1: White House editor at Axios joins us for how resistance
Speaker 1: to taking a COVID vaccine is growing. Thanks for joining us, Margaret,
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for having me. I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about the vaccine. You know a lot of people have
Speaker 1: made this the kind of final thing. Once the vaccine comes,
Speaker 1: everything will be back to normal. We'll be able to
Speaker 1: get our lives going again. But there's been a lot
Speaker 1: of kind of conflict with the vaccine. How soon is
Speaker 1: it gonna come as it being pushed out too early
Speaker 1: and they're at Axio. So you guys have been conducting
Speaker 1: regular polls on people's attitudes towards the vaccine, and in
Speaker 1: your latest pole, it seems that there's a resistance growing
Speaker 1: to the vaccine. A larger share of Americans are saying
Speaker 1: that they're not as eager to try the first generation
Speaker 1: coronavirus vaccine. Margot tell us a little bit about what
Speaker 1: the polls are saying about this. We have been measuring
Speaker 1: since March people's attitudes towards the pandemic and how it's
Speaker 1: been impacting them. And this is everything from like how's
Speaker 1: your mental health too, are you going out to eat?
Speaker 1: And more recently we've been including some questions about the
Speaker 1: vaccine or the promise of a vaccine, And what we've
Speaker 1: seen is, over the course of the past month, dramatic
Speaker 1: and consistent and pretty unmistakable decline. We asked several questions,
Speaker 1: but I think the most important one is are you
Speaker 1: likely to take a first generation version of the COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen vaccine as soon as it becomes available? Right, because
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, we're all waiting for the vaccine, so
Speaker 1: it's available, great, are you going to take it? And
Speaker 1: we've seen across the board overall a decline from the
Speaker 1: mid forties now to thirty percent of Americans saying maybe
Speaker 1: learn to take it. But look at this really steep
Speaker 1: decline among Democrats from the mid fifties down to and
Speaker 1: decline among Republicans from the load of mid forties down
Speaker 1: to thirty three percent, So a really consistent decline across
Speaker 1: party lines. And this is important for a couple of reasons. One,
Speaker 1: Democrats and Republicans almost never behaved the same way about
Speaker 1: anything to do with a coronavirus, and we've seen this
Speaker 1: month after month after months. If there's a split, the
Speaker 1: most clear split is almost always likely to be along
Speaker 1: part of the lives, but the other is a very
Speaker 1: interesting cross trend. There's another number that we haven't mentioned yet,
Speaker 1: and it's independence. If you were an Independent, you were
Speaker 1: around forty percent likely to say you would take this
Speaker 1: first generation vaccine as soon it's available as of late
Speaker 1: August months ago. Now that number has barely declined it all,
Speaker 1: from forty percent to forty three percent. So Democrats, Independence,
Speaker 1: and Republicans are all at about the same place right now,
Speaker 1: less than half willing to touch a first generations vaccine
Speaker 1: when it becomes available. But the Independence have barely moved
Speaker 1: it all. And we asked ourselves in our posters, why
Speaker 1: why would that be true? And the best conclusion that
Speaker 1: we have at this point, and we'll have data to
Speaker 1: follow up on this in the leaks to come, but
Speaker 1: at this point it looks like it's largely politically druven. Yes,
Speaker 1: there are some scientific concerns of scientists warning let's be patient,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't want to rush things, But it's
Speaker 1: really that it's been politicized. If you look at what
Speaker 1: else has happened over the same period of a month.
Speaker 1: If the President Trump, right at the end of the convention,
Speaker 1: began putting out this idea that a vaccine could be
Speaker 1: ready before the end of the year, and as the
Speaker 1: days went on he began to say he could even
Speaker 1: be ready before the election, then there was a pushback scientists,
Speaker 1: public officials saying, no way, no way, the vaccine got
Speaker 1: to be in the American public's hands, and probably not
Speaker 1: even ready ready before the end of the year, much
Speaker 1: less before the election. And that is precisely the period
Speaker 1: of time where we have seen people's interest in being
Speaker 1: the guinea pigs on this decline, and we have so
Speaker 1: much news around the vaccine and development. All that happened
Speaker 1: what you just described, and then at the same time
Speaker 1: Astra Zeneca put a hold on their thing because there
Speaker 1: might have been some adverse effects. So people are hearing
Speaker 1: all this stuff and you know, they're like, I want
Speaker 1: to pump the brakes on it. My question is, I'm
Speaker 1: looking at it as far as people want to reopen,
Speaker 1: people want to get back to it. But these people
Speaker 1: that don't want to get these first generation vaccines, all
Speaker 1: that is is going to put delays and delays and
Speaker 1: delays on things. So you know, it's already gonna be
Speaker 1: a few months after a vaccine is approved before it
Speaker 1: can get out to the general public, let's say. So
Speaker 1: everything just kind of pushes things down the line. It
Speaker 1: makes me question, are people more comfortable just getting coronavirus
Speaker 1: naturally and going through it then going through the vaccine route.
Speaker 1: You know, it gets very confusing. That is a behavioral
Speaker 1: question that's completely unbounded by science. What we know is
Speaker 1: that when people actually get it, or when people have
Speaker 1: proximity to someone who got it much less someone who
Speaker 1: became very ill or died, their understanding of the disease
Speaker 1: really changes, right, or the virus really changes. It's one
Speaker 1: thing to think about it in the abstract. Oh, it's
Speaker 1: just like the flu. It's not that big deal. It's
Speaker 1: another thing if you of you know, had a loved
Speaker 1: one beyond a ventilator or recover and survive and then
Speaker 1: not be the same like four months again. And so
Speaker 1: this is happening as our children are going back to
Speaker 1: school or learning remote. Everyone knows who has a kid
Speaker 1: that learning and remote is kind of a disaster, but
Speaker 1: it's like the best you can do if your kid
Speaker 1: goes back to school. Our poll found it's heard of
Speaker 1: the people whose kids had returned to school already have
Speaker 1: had reports like within a couple of weeks of COVID
Speaker 1: illness or scares inside their school district. And so we
Speaker 1: know that mask us is really important for reducing your
Speaker 1: susceptibility or your ability to spread it, right, we know that.
Speaker 1: But from a political perspective, the president has sent such
Speaker 1: mixed messaging on masks that he has really shifted to
Speaker 1: a vaccine message and this notion that just trust me, like,
Speaker 1: you know, we'll get through the election and by then
Speaker 1: there would be a vaccine. And what we see is
Speaker 1: that people are not treating a vaccine like it's a
Speaker 1: silver bullet, like between a quarter and a third of
Speaker 1: the people in our survey, so they didn't want to
Speaker 1: take it at all. Forget about how quickly they don't
Speaker 1: want to take it. That's not the majority, but it's
Speaker 1: an important number if you're looking for anything approximating the
Speaker 1: sort of hurd immunity that people have talked about. So
Speaker 1: if you can't inoculate enough people, what would be the
Speaker 1: impact on society. But beyond that, it's these two trends
Speaker 1: that you talked about. On the one hand, everybody wants
Speaker 1: to get back to quote normal life, and on the
Speaker 1: other hand, there are real scientific barriers that are going
Speaker 1: to slow that moment where we can get back to normal.
Speaker 1: And then beyond there is a real question of public trust.
Speaker 1: How do you get enough of the public and people
Speaker 1: are resistance the idea of taking vaccines for very different reasons.
Speaker 1: If you actually unpack some of these cross currents, you
Speaker 1: might not trust vaccines in general. You might not trust
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical companies. You might not trust President Trump, And you
Speaker 1: like the idea of the vaccine until he said it's
Speaker 1: going to be ready, and then now you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't want it, or the other way around. You
Speaker 1: may put a great deal of trust in what President
Speaker 1: Trump says and be more likely to take a vaccine
Speaker 1: if he says that it's safe, and so we know
Speaker 1: that the numbers add up to a situation of real
Speaker 1: uncertainty if you are a government official or a public
Speaker 1: health official and you want science and reason and consensus
Speaker 1: to guide the day. But after that, that's about all
Speaker 1: we know. Everybody wants it to end. Nobody's clear on
Speaker 1: how to get there or what to do for it.
Speaker 1: But I mean, you know, we'll see once the vaccine
Speaker 1: gets approved, and then we'll go from there and we'll
Speaker 1: see how many people actually do come to the table
Speaker 1: and get the vaccine. Margaret Talive, Politics and White House
Speaker 1: editor at Axios, thank you very much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Appreciate it so much. I'm Oscar Ameiras, and this has
Speaker 1: been reopening America. Don't forget that. For today's big news stories,
Speaker 1: you can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast
Speaker 1: every Monday to Friday. So follow us on iHeart Radio
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