Puerto Rico Is Something Rare: A Covid Success Story
Unified messaging and a bipartisan united-front approach to vaccinations helped the territory achieve the highest vaccination rate in the U.S.
In the debate over why America’s vaccination rate is now thoroughly mediocre (nearly every Western country has a higher percentage of its eligible population vaccinated than the U.S. does), there’s a certain strain of thought that treats vaccination rates as something policymakers can’t really do anything about. The most nihilistic version of this argument says that even things like employer mandates or vaccine passports are pointless, since people will simply refuse to get vaccinated even at great cost to themselves.
The empirical evidence of how mandates have boosted vaccination rates shows that particular argument is false. But more common, and less obviously false, is the assertion that vaccination rates are subject to demographic factors that governments don’t really have any control over. And so we’re told that lower-income people and people without a college degree are less willing, or at least less likely, to be vaccinated, as are people of color, and people without easy access to healthcare services. So it’s easy for New England states like Connecticut and Vermont to have high…
