Conservative hostility to Biden vaccine push surges with Covid cases on the rise

Biden's push led a group of 32 of the most conservative House members to accuse him of seeking to "coerce" people into getting the vaccination.Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican who has said officials should work to boost vaccinations, claimed such an effort amounted to "trying to scare" people into taking the shots."Big Government in control — Joe Biden is sending agents to your door to compel vaccinations," Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., tweeted Friday.Dr. Tom Frieden, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director under President Barack Obama, said the backlash to Biden's comments echoes prior pushback over the idea of “vaccine passports,” masks and other mitigation strategies that have come to define the pandemic discourse."It is certainly the case that we're increasingly two countries divided under Covid," he said. As a Kaiser Family Foundation survey this month found, the gap in fully vaccinated populations between counties that voted for Biden and counties that voted for former President Donald Trump is growing — from 6.5 percent in May to 11.7 percent in July.Additionally, five of the top six states with the highest daily average cases over the past two weeks have below-average vaccination rates and voted for Trump last fall.A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found that while just 6 percent of Democrats said they were likely to decline inoculation, 47 percent of Republicans said they were unlikely to get the vaccination.Beyond taking issue with Biden's effort, some conservatives have shown support for a broader pushback against vaccinations.In Tennessee this week, a top health official said she was fired over efforts to get teens vaccinated, and The Tennessean reported Tuesday that all vaccine outreach aimed at teens, for all diseases, would be paused.