Anti-vaccination conservatives love Sweden to own Lib .s

In early 2016, with the Republican Party preliminary fury TrumpizedThe GOP’s presidential hopefuls were quick to rekindle the fascination of internationalists by unleashing one of the party’s oldest antics: beating Europe for being, just like , too socialist.

“Bernie Sanders is a socialist,” Sen. Marco Rubio scoffed. “[He’s] a bright candidate for the presidency – of Sweden. ”

Many Swedes were quick to correct their mistakes, their nation there is no president—But it has a long history as a Republican joke about socialism being a dangerous European import, unbecoming of a proud and free nation like America. But when the GOP goes to great lengths to get in the way President Joe Biden’s fight against COVID-19Sweden has emerged as a favorite Republican example of a country Biden should pursue.

On Monday, Florida’s far-right surgeon Dr Joseph Ladapo added to his lengthy record of politically motivated pandemic guide by announcing that Florida would officially recommend against vaccinating healthy children. Ladapo’s decision to fly in the face of CDC guidelines Vaccination is recommended for children five years of age and older. And the justification of many Republicans – that Sweden also recently decided not to vaccinate young children – went up in smoke in the Florida breeze.

Ladapo has finally demanded our nation’s intense attention with his controversial decision not to wear a mask while meeting an immunocompromised Florida lawmaker. fighting breast cancer. Now Ladapo is taking an unscientific point of view threatening a situation where, just two months ago, there were almost 70,000 new COVID-19 cases on average seven days ago.

The claim of Swedish inspiration is not only understandable, it demonstrates a GOP’s willingness to manipulate superficial data points to draw dangerously inaccurate policy conclusions. Donald Trump may no longer be president, but his tendency to build political unrealistics continues among Trumpist supporters like Ladapo and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who have cheered the decision. state regulations.

It should come as no surprise that a party without guiding values ​​like the modern Republican Party has no problem arising between ideological extremes. The party has had a proud tradition of working together on whatever policy position would best help stop progress in Washington, regardless of whether they really understood the details or not. For a party that has an animated principle since Trump’s arrival on the scene is “F*ck your feelings“A startling amount of modern GOP relies on ignoring fundamental facts in favor of raw sentimental arguments.

Law makers like Senator Ted Cruz clinging to the recent Swedish government decision on It is not recommended to vaccinate children between 5 and 11 years of age against COVID-19. Among right-wing supporters, Sweden’s decision is a godsend: if even sociologist Countries are backing vaccination requirements, what does that say about the US? Is it Joe Biden, or even Bernie Sanders, too descriptive even for the Swedes?

Ignoring the fact that most Republicans cannot identify Sweden on a labeled map, right-wing experts advertising Swedish policy have reached a new level in collecting data has bad faith.

While it is true that Sweden recommends against vaccinating young children, the public health reality in the US and Sweden is markedly different.

Almost 75 percent of Swedes are fully immunized, surpassing the US by 10 percentage points. And while Sweden has largely avoided lockdowns, a much higher percentage of Swedes voluntarily cover their faces and practice social distancing during the height of the pandemic, preventing the kind of direct hit that has devastated the United States in the past two years.

You’re less likely to hear from a bobblehead conservative who last year Sweden posted one of these worst COVID-19 infection rates in the whole of Europe relative to its population — and only thanks to the nation’s expanded universal health care system has it avoided large-scale deaths.

Universal health care is also not a cure-all. Sweden’s decision to keep schools open during the pandemic was driven more by vital need to keep doctors and nurses in hospital when the exchange rate increases. Closing schools is likely to move nurses out of hospitals and into home care at a time when Sweden needs fully staffed ICUs. And like in America, the end result is predictable: those lax school policies doubling Swedish teachers’ risk of COVID exposure.

When given the choice between doing their homework and seizing the opportunity to bring Biden down, Republican lawmakers followed their Trumpist operating procedures and went for spectacle rather than substance. This raises an interesting question: When did the GOP start looking to Scandinavia and the left-wing countries of Europe for guidance on how to manage America’s domestic affairs?

Conservatives may still be deeply tied to the roots of white supremacy, the nativi of “America First,” but Republicans are eager to Europeanize as much of America’s COVID response as possible – as long as that doesn’t mean creating a public health system that generates viable strategies.

And that’s one of the new, Trumped GOP issues: it’s long been a polemic choice on policy, and the latest pro-Trump party purge has Republicans of all levels really concerned. to the development of practically discarded ideas.

Ladapo – like DeSantis and Trump and pretty much every prominent Republican these days – is primarily a performer. Regulatory work begins to happen in a moment that is a far cry from using official government platforms to espouse right-wing conspiracy theories that undermine economic recovery and public health. of America.

In their eagerness to put Biden in the political black eye, Republicans are once again offering solutions that are not solutions designed to divide and make America’s COVID safety protocols less effective. . They will even praise Sweden, as long as it has liars.

Sadly, their strategy is working: A quarter of adults nationwide are still unvaccinated. The majority of them are conservatives who self-identify as those who see vaccine resistance as the primary defining sign of their political identity. For those Americans, the “Swedish model” is not designed to make our country safer from a pandemic. It is an excuse to justify inaction and openly oppose credible public health guidance.