The Atlantic: “Conservatives are not necessarily vaccine-hesitant, to paraphrase John Stuart Mill, but most vaccine-hesitant Americans people are conservatives. Resistance to vaccines has been concentrated among Republican voters, and led by GOP politicians and various leading lights in conservative media. And that makes the past day or so one of the stranger stretches in recent pandemic politics. ‘Just like we’ve been saying, please take COVID seriously. Enough people have died. We don’t need any more deaths. Research like crazy. Talk to your doctor,’ Fox News’s Sean Hannity said last night. ‘It absolutely makes sense for many Americans to get vaccinated.’ Hannity’s ‘just like we’ve been saying’ is doing a lot of work. He reportedly called the pandemic a ‘hoax’ early on, and his colleague Tucker Carlson continues to cast doubt on vaccines, including on yesterday’s program. But Hannity’s statement comes as several other major conservatives are speaking up too.”

“Why the shift is happening now, and so abruptly, is not clear. One possible factor is that, as CNN’s Kaitlan Collins reported, ‘there have been regular, high-level conversations between the White House and Fox News regarding pandemic and vaccine coverage.’ Fox quickly denied the report. Another possibility is the emergence of a new COVID-19 surge, fueled by the Delta variant. Scalise, like some of the others, cited Delta as a reason to get vaccinated now. The more infectious strain has led to rising case numbers in the US, overloaded hospitals in some states with low vaccination rates, and reinstated lockdowns around the world. Fear about Delta is spreading around the US, and it was blamed for a swoon in the stock market yesterday. The Delta variant is also spreading particularly in red states, which lag more liberal areas in vaccine uptake. Yet widespread death and suffering among conservatives and Republican voters has not inspired such a unified response.”