The question this chapter discusses involves why so many people in America refuse to get vaccinated. We find the same reluctance to be vaccinated in other countries but not to the extent that vaccine resistance exists in the United States. In the United States now, since we developed vaccines, almost all of the people dying from Covid-19 are unvaccinated (over 90%) so we must wonder whether they form some kind of death cult, made up of followers of Donald J. Trump.When the virus first appeared, Trump paid little attention to it, saying that it was like the flu. He wasted precious months getting the vaccine out to people and told his followers not to wear masks and not to get vaccinated—though he was vaccinated and that probably saved his life since he caught the disease and ended up at Walter Reed Hospital where he received special treatments. He came very close to dying.

If Angela Merkel Were in Charge in America

Germany has a population of about 83 million people and it is estimated that as of October 2021, around 94,000 Germans have died from the virus. The United States has a population of 329 million people and as of October 2021 around 770,000 Americans have died from the virus. America has approximately three times as many people as Germany.

If Germany had the same population as the United States and we multiply 83 million times three to get approximately 329 million people, around 282 thousand people would have died, so if Angela Merkel and her German colleagues had been running the United States vaccination program, instead of Trump, around 500,000 Americans would still be alive.

Some of the 777,000 deaths occurred after the vaccines were developed and distributed, which means the epidemic of Covid deaths since then are mostly from the unvaccinated (Figure 8.1).

Rationales of the Unvaccinated

One reason many people have not been vaccinated in America is that wearing masks and becoming vaccinated have become part of the hyperpoliticization that is part of the Trump program. Under Trump, everything possible has been politicized, so not wearing masks and not getting vaccinated became political statements rather than public health imperatives.