Speaker 1: Most people in my audience probably agree that the United States is special, but you
might disagree in the ways in which the United States is special. But the US is right up there
with Russia as one of the only two major countries in the world in terms of opposition to the covid
vaccine. This is data from a morning consult poll of more than 75000 weekly interviews on the topic
of the covid vaccine. And it looked at vaccine opposition and it also looked at reasons for
vaccine opposition. In the United States, 20 percent of the population is unwilling to get
vaccinated. We knew that number from before. That number seems to be holding steady. One in five
Americans says they will not be getting vaccinated in Russia and only in Russia. Is that number
higher among the countries surveyed where 37 percent of Russians say no vaccine. Now behind the
United States are Australia and France, with 17 percent vaccine opposition, Germany at 16 percent,
South Korea at 12 percent. If you look at Japan and UK, only nine and eight percent respectively
are unwilling to get vaccinated. Now, there's something important to consider here
in the U.S., 20 percent plan not to get vaccinated when we have the top vaccines in the world
fully available. The testing in the Russian Sputnik vaccine actually has been sort of murky.
And so while Russian opposition is higher in some sense, it makes sense because of the sketchy
propaganda and nebulous testing data around that vaccine. Russia promoted their vaccine as
the world's first covid vaccine, making sort of a show of the speed with which they put it out.
They've also pushed some ineffective covid treatments like ARBIDOL and grippe Feron and
Carrousel. So there actually might be more empirical reason to be skeptical in Russia.
And if you look at the reasons why people are unwilling to get vaccinated in different
countries, you'll see that in Russia. Forty three percent of the vaccine opposed say they're worried
about side effects. And twenty five percent are worried that trials move too quickly.
It actually does seem that they did in the US. The reason for oppositions are 34 percent side effects
and 32 percent trials move too fast, which is a Republican talking point here that is not based in
reality. Trials moved at exactly the speed that they were supposed to. The Phase three trials
were completed. There's a question as to whether that was the case in Russia and then the rest of
the vaccine opposition in the US is based on either you don't think the vaccine will work,
you don't trust the companies that are making the vaccines. You believe you don't need the
vaccine because your risk of getting covid is very low. So the US and accept. Channel Country
standing out as one of the top two anti VAX countries along with Russia. I believe that
the US is special and it's special in the amount of conspiratorial thinking that people fall for
and often with really complicated explanations for stuff that are far more complicated than the real
explanation. And it's a culmination of decades of terrible education for much of the country,
terrible news sources that these people count on which push this stuff, not understanding science,
which again, sort of links back to education in many cases, and a Republican Party that
has adopted most of the worst instincts about every issue and a polarization
that seems to make everything, even a virus masks vaccines. Everything becomes political. This is
the culmination of that globally high vaccine opposition. When the vaccine is the solution,
the vaccine is the solution to the Delta variant. The vaccine is the solution to the pandemic. Now,
the good news is still 80 percent of the country will get vaccinated,
or at least probably will. There's an 11 percent slice that says they're unsure right now,
but only 20 percent like only is definitely opposed to the vaccine. If we were to get to
80 percent vaccination, we would absolutely crush this virus, delta variant and all. So if we want
to find something positive here, that is exactly what it would be. We'll have more coverage of this
on our Instagram page. So make sure you're following us there at David
Pakman show and make sure you're following me on Instagram as well at David Pakman