In a hyper-politicized country, Americans tend to believe those with whom they identify politically. Hence those on the right supporting hydroxychloroquine as a therapeutic and those on the left, like Fox News's Neil Cavuto, saying “it will kill you.” If the future president and vice president were vaccine-hesitant, expect many Americans to adopt that view.

Once there was a new occupant in the White House, the vaccine narrative flipped and the administration embraced the new [spike protein mRNA gene therapy shots called] vaccines as if Biden and Harris conceived of and developed them, rather than having the vaccines and a robust rollout dropped on their laps when they strolled into the White House.

At present, the U.S. is 51 percent fully vaccinated. While that may not seem like success, if you break it down the numbers are more favorable. 62 percent of adults and 81 percent of the elderly are fully vaccinated. Another segment of the population has natural immunity based on having had COVID. Given natural infection as a second and more robust pathway toward herd immunity, America has done well.

Certainly better than countries like New Zealand, with only 24 percent of adults fully vaccinated and very little natural immunity as they are an island nation that has been largely cut off from the world for the past 18 months. Their population is being hit by COVID now with the inevitable surge [of just one] case [in mid August in Auckland] once this highly contagious virus variant got a foothold in the country.

Who isn’t yet vaccinated in America and why? There is vaccine hesitancy, which according to Wikipedia “is a delay in acceptance, or refusal of vaccines despite the availability of vaccine services.” It’s not simple and straightforward, either. “Vaccine hesitancy is complex and context specific, varying across time, place and vaccines. It is influenced by factors such as complacency, convenience, a fear of needles, or a lack of understanding about how vaccines work.”

Hesitancy is relative resistance, in comparison to those who are genuinely anti-vaccine, refusing any and all vaccines. A vaccine-hesitant person may be O.K. with routine childhood immunizations or a flu shot, but not the COVID or shingles vaccines. An anti-vaxxer would say 'no' to all of the above.

Leaving aside the rationale or flaws behind these views, who are the vaccine-hesitant and why? The media has reported on this group and, not surprisingly, their characterizations may be inaccurate.

Last March, Forbes reported that 49 percent of Republican men and 47 percent of Trump supporters will refuse any vaccine, setting the narrative for who is to blame now for the delta variant surge. Unknown then but known now is that the vaccines don’t prevent infection or transmission. According to CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky: “Vaccinated people infected with Delta can transmit the virus."

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What is the media not saying about the vaccine-hesitant?

As reported in Summit News, “A new report by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh has found that the most highly educated Americans are also the most vaccine hesitant.” This was not a survey of a few hundred, but of 5 million Americans.

They found a U-shaped curve with the greatest hesitancy among the least and most educated. “The most common concern for those who are hesitant to take the vaccine is potential side effects, with a lack of trust in government close behind in second."

So much for the media narrative that only the missing-teeth, knuckle-dragging, Neanderthal Trump supporters are against vaccination.

Political party affiliation does not account for this as those with doctoral degrees tend to vote Democrat. Pew Research found, “highly educated adults also increasingly have liberal attitudes and values.” Why not with [these new] vaccines [that are gene therapy and not traditional vaccines]?

A decision to be vaccinated involves looking at evidence, scientific studies and their validity, weighing risks and benefits, then arriving at a decision. This is the scientific method, something that most people with advanced degrees are quite familiar with. Are they seeing red flags in their analysis that the less-scrutinizing, including the media, are missing? Maybe they are thoughtfully, rather than blindly, following and questioning the science.

For the uneducated, they may be more susceptible to conspiracy theories. Or perhaps they just mistrust the government and heavy-handed vaccine mandates which burden lower socio-economic groups far more than the Uber Eats and Whole Foods crowds that seem to do just fine under even the most draconian lockdowns and mandates.

Public trust in government is quite low, at 24 percent, according to Pew Research. If the government says to take the vaccine, three of four may question that. Is that vaccine-hesitancy or government hesitancy?

Another group, not mentioned as vaccine-hesitant, is blacks. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the white vaccination rate is 1.3 times higher than for blacks. This is not education level-related but instead may be a mistrust of “government benevolence,” a remnant of the Tuskegee syphilis studies where the U.S. government withheld disease treatment in blacks as an experiment to learn the natural history of syphilis.