TCNJ

7 PRAIRIE | WINTER 2021 key element of this partisan conflict. Recently, the political right, with its concern for personal liberties, has increasingly incorporated vaccine opposition into its platform. In spring 2019, while the U.S. was weathering the most severe measles outbreak since 1992, Republicans rejected six Democrat-supported state bills to tighten vaccination requirements for school-aged children. Further, they introduced legislation to make vacci- nation requirements less stringent in two more states. side doubting the leadership of the other. "We're at the point where we're in a crisis and we need corrective action, but the lack of trust is out there undermining our ability to fight a pandemic," he says. "It really does harm our ability to act collectively to solve a problem." The vaccine debate has become a objective and official-sounding names sow skepticism online and encourage people to circumvent public safety measures. But in 2020, politics also played a role. According to TCNJ Political Science Department Chair Daniel Bowen, when an issue breaks along such a stark party divide, it may well " The lack of trust is out there undermining our ability to fight a pandemic," Bowen says. PETER MURPHY But Bowen is optimistic vaccines will be returned from political opinion into the realm of evidence-supported science. One source of this optimism is that before losing the presidential election, Donald Trump celebrated the development of an effective COVID-19 vaccine through Operation Warp Speed and then delivered it to patients as a landmark achievement for his administration. "If Trump used the federal govern- ment to help develop the vaccine, and President Joe Biden uses the federal government to help disseminate it," Bowen speculates, their bipartisan investment could help to diffuse some of the politicization and build trust — both in the government's purpose of serving the people, and in the solu- tions they offer. According to Norvell, vaccine adoption is America's path to herd immunity, so trust in vaccines — especially a COVID-19 therapy — can't come soon enough. — Alexandra Marvar Political science professor Daniel Bowen have less to do with the issue at hand, and more to do with how leaders shape public opinion. "At the beginning of the pandemic, we did see some unification around communal support of one another through preventive measures against COVID-19, but there were other mes- sages activated and framed in terms of liberty, distrust of government, and distrust of big business," Bowen says. Sometimes, this was for short-term political gain, he says, but it may do long-term damage. "Distrust of government is certainly a long-standing thread in American politics," he adds. "The difference more recently is that that distrust has become starkly partisan," with each

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