August 3rd, 2021 – Second Reading Podcast

2021-08-03
Welcome to the second reading podcast from the university of Texas at Austin, the
Republicans were in the democratic party because
there was only one party. So I tell people on
a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity
in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the constitution.
They have become the norm.
At what point must a female Senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized. Over the male colleagues in the room.
Jim Henson: And welcome back to the second can reading podcast for the week of August. The second 2021. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas politics project at the university of Texas at Austin.
Happy to be joined again today by Josh blank, research and polling director for the Texas politics project. How was your morning gone, Josh?
Josh Blank: I would say pretty productive, pretty nice
Jim Henson: productivity. What more could we ask in the system?
Josh Blank: So, yeah, I don’t, well, I mean, okay,
Jim Henson: well though, there’s plenty going on with the continued stalemate at the legislature, with Democrats at this recording still in Washington, DC and waiting out the return or the end of it.
Of the session of the special session this Friday, uh, we returned today, unfortunately, I think to the politics and policies around the COVID-19 pandemic, uh, amidst a clear, serious uptick in cases as a result of, uh, the spread of the Delta variant of the virus. So, you know, we should talk about where we seem to be now in terms of response by state and local governments.
Which have been as during earlier phases of the pandemic, uh, quite different and at odds here in Texas, but I want to start with some public, some of the basics, uh, in the pattern of public opinion that we know about up to this point. Uh, and some of the baselines for thinking about where we are in this new phase, and we can circle back and talk about what’s happened in the, in the last couple of weeks, uh, mainly governor rabbit’s response, which is essentially doubled down on the strategy that we’ve seen for, you know, really the last year or so from the governor and, and state government here.
Now for this discussion, we can draw on trend data that we’ve accumulated. Since we started pulling on the pandemic. Back in April of 2020, you know, and, and we do this because the responses we’re seeing so far to, you know, spoiler alert, uh, seem based on the established patterns that we’ve seen. Uh, you know, I mean, it looks unfortunately like the virus is changing and adapted and adapting much more rapidly than the political system is certainly.
Arguably, maybe even in the country. So what have we seen? We’ve seen a lot of things. I mean, let’s start with the overall sense and attitudes and behaviors. That, you know, within the, the, the, the data we collect on those things, we saw that overall concern kind of had plateaued and maybe even it was declining when we were last in the field of June of 20, 21st for the UT Texas Tribune polls.
I mean, I’m remembering that. Yeah, I
Josh Blank: think, I think that’s right. I mean, I th I think the way to think about that, and he’s really social science-y response to this in some ways I’ll put it out there. Three slides. No, I mean good for everybody. Well, okay. It’s not always good, but, but, you know, but there is something here that sort of, you know, we see there’s, there’s sort of a, a difference in the intercepts, but not necessarily the slopes Democrats started out significantly more concerned.
So where they began was much higher in terms of concern than did Republicans. And so you kind of look at the state as a whole and when, you know, Start pulling in April, you know, about half the state was April last year, April of last year. Yes. Half the say, you know, half the state was extremely or very concerned about, uh, the spread of COVID in their communities, but this is only 36% of Republicans and 76% of Democrats.
Now over time, both groups have declined and we go to June of this year and this summer and 27% of the state is extremely or very concerned about the spread of COVID. And this was before I think the uptake in cases that Delta variants. Make that clear all that it does. Variant was still spreading at this point, but I don’t think we saw the sharp uptake that we’ve seen in recent weeks affecting these, this data, which was collected before.
So again, in June of 2021, about a quarter of the state thought it was serious or extremely or very serious. I was very concerned about community spread and that was still half of Democrats, again, down from 76% in April, 2020, but it’s also done to 10% of Republicans. From April, 2020. So even though they started a lot lower being about a third of them who are very concerned.
Now it’s only about one in 10, and this is kind of the trend. I mean, the interesting thing is. B, when we pull again, honestly, is, is it wasn’t as though it was a straight line from high concern down to low concern because there was an uptick in certain, in February of this year, which was when we actually saw the first emergence of these new variants.
And I think when that happened, uh, ultimately people start getting a little bit more concerned because there’s a question that at that point, there was a clear question. Do the vaccines work with these variants? Are they going to spread faster? Is it going to affect you two
Jim Henson: things going on in February too?
Right? Cause the variants were beginning to emerge, but we had also seen the holiday search. Right. So if, you know, if we overlay this, you know, so those two things where I think we’ll come together.
Josh Blank: Right, right. Um, but the point is, is that, you know, th th the gaps in opinion and attitudes have never. Gone away.
So even though we do see, you know, a decline in concern, uh, overall, there’s still, you know, wide gaps in terms of both what, how people view the virus, the threat, they think the virus poses to them, but also, you know, not surprisingly then the response of people to the virus. And so, you know, as we started to kind of ask about, you know, basically.
Whether you’re living normally as kind of the one we always lean back on to see who’s gone back to sort of feeling like they’re, they’re living normally, you know, the share Texans who say that they are not sort of avoiding public places, that kind of stuff. And really just kind of living their life has continued to go up over the course of the pandemic, but it’s driven almost entirely by Republicans and Democrats are getting more safe as they get more vaccinated.
But overall, despite the fact that vaccination rates are significantly higher among democratic than among Republican voters, Republican voters have been the ones who have been the quickest to re-embrace life and in a lot of cases. And this is what’s, you know, I think scary, I think it was, I guess, the best way to put it.
It’s not only Republicans who are embracing, you know, uh, living life normally and engaging in a bunch of activities, but it’s actually, you know, unvaccinated. Republicans who are the most likely to be engaged in a normal activities and really shoeing, most social distancing guidelines that, you know, we’re still kind of relying on at this point,
Jim Henson: you know?
And, and I think that that intersection between, um, uh, actually I should say for, for people listening also, if you’re interested in these trend data’s and kind of following along at home or, or looking at, after you hear the podcast, you know, we’ve got our, uh, Not being very humble. What is a pretty good post and an interesting com compilation of the trend data on a lot of these measures that we’ll be talking about at the Texas politics project website, which is a Texas politics that you Texas study to you.
If you go to the point section, there’s a blog section and there’s a post from July 1st. What I’ll probably do when we’re done is, um, post the version of this podcast in the blog section of the website, where a lot of this stuff is in one place or at least a link to that. So it’s easier
Josh Blank: to find what’s really good about looking at that as we’re we’re we’re obviously focused on politics and I make no, you know, this is the Texas politics project, so I make no apologies about that.
But what’s interesting about looking at that trend data. Is it also breaks it down by race and by. Geographic density. So urban, suburban, rural. And so you can kind of look at a lot of these trends that I think are often reinforced by partisanship, but it’s not entirely partisanship and it’s not necessarily the case that, you know, people getting vaccinated or not is all about one story.
It’s a couple of different stories going on
Jim Henson: here, you know, and this is a story that I think is very live right now. I mean, I, you know, what are the reasons why, you know, even though the, in some ways. You know, the main headline story in the state right now, or the storyline, if you’re really following inside politics and, and institutions in the state really is the what’s going on with the legislature.
But one of the reasons I decided to we should go with this today. It really is that, I mean, it’s, it’s striking how dominant the storyline is right now. Um, and then we’ll get the target. Are you and I have talked about this and the way that I think there are reasons for that, that have to do with the difficulty of sorting it out and sorting it out, what to do other than, you know, in, in addition to the politics of this.
Well,
Josh Blank: I mean, you and I were, were joking a little bit yesterday, but I mean, it’s hard not to watch, you know, the Texas legend. I don’t want to say. I don’t want to say twiddling their thumbs, but twiddling their thumbs, dirt, you know, more or less during hearings about, you know, college football realignment at a time when you know, this is clearly a dominant public health and public policy problem.
If we would allow it to be, but we’re just kind of going along as if it’s not happening. And I think part of what’s interesting is, you know, the underlying attitudes kind of explain that. I mean, to a large extent. Right, right. Well, yeah, we
Jim Henson: might as well just talk about that. Yeah. I mean, I mean, it’s, it’s almost impossible to I, to me, I mean, I don’t, I shouldn’t say impossible cause people will do it, but if you look at the trends in the state and you look at.
How consistent as you were saying at the outset, when you were describing the concern data, but across almost, almost every measure, how consistent, both consistent and persistent the partisan gaps in attitudes towards the virus and behavior are. I mean, with that. Making excuses for, you know, what I have to say is, you know, pretty questionable public policy in the state right now, in terms of, you know, at best kind of ignoring this and at worst pushing against it.
If you want to explain politics through elections and following your base and responsiveness and partisan responsiveness on the part of elected officials, boy, this is yours.
Josh Blank: Yeah, I think that’s right. I mean, and if you, and if you go and you kind of look across our data, I mean, one of the things that I think.
I kind of keep leaning back on and all of this is, you know, we asked back in March about approval of governor Abbott’s decision back then to lift any restrictions on statewide business, basically prohibits, you know, restrictions on businesses due to COVID and to lift any mask mandate statewide. And if we look at, you know, the, the prohibition on business restrictions, we have 78% of Republicans approved to that decision.
62% strongly approved. So. You know, I mean, there’s not a lot of sort of middling opinion on this, uh, 85% of Democrats disapproved, 74% strongly that’s on business restrictions on removing the mask mandates pretty similar 76 Republicans, 76% of Republicans approved 60% strongly, 89, 80 8% of Democrats disapproved 81% strongly.
This was back in March. Now again, I like to be cognizant of the fact that there’s a shifting underlying landscape and the truth is I think a lot of criticism that people are making about. You know, I would just say inconsistent messaging from a note, a number of institutions, organizations, the CDC, the federal government, you know, local health officials, et cetera, you know, has made this, you know, a difficult situation.
But the other thing I would say is, you know, even back then, You know, the Corona virus was, was peaking at a higher level than it’s currently peaking now, or even back when it was peaking at a similar level to what speaking. Now, if we go back to last summer and let me think again about the surge that came after that in a question that we were asking repeatedly and we’ve since stopped was, you know, what’s more important here basically helping the economy or containing the virus versus, you know, containing the virus.
Even it hurts the economy and pretty much without fail. Every time we asked that question close to, you know, about 70% of Republicans say you have to prioritize the economy. And I don’t, you know, and I would say, as you know, even with the surge of the variant, I think, you know, for, if you’re a Greg Abbott, I can construct a pretty clear narrative that says, Hey, look, I know.
The majority of my Republican voters want, I know that the majority of them, even if they’re not getting vaccinated are living normally, and they don’t want me to be the one who tells them no, don’t do that anymore. They want to prioritize the economy. And the, just to be fair, at what point we do have a vaccine now, and a lot of people.
You know, are vaccinated, uh, which does a couple of things. One, it does it decrease the likelihood of people getting severe illness and overwhelming hospitals, you know, and I think, and, but it also significantly decreases the likelihood of death. And so, you know, Trying to sort of weigh out the political calculus here.
I can kind of see how we get to the place that we’re at, because I don’t think there’s much appetite. I would say there’s very little appetite generally to go back under more restrictions, but certainly almost none among Republicans, but further, you know, the situation has changed such that I think, you know, we’ve already accepted so much suffering in death, you know, in some ways it’s almost like, well, I guess we’re going to have a little bit more, but w but you know, the trade-off is we’re not going to restrict the economy, I guess.
Jim Henson: Uh, you know, yeah. I mean, I, I think that is a pretty at first, uh, you know, sorry. Well, I w I went from, you know, in, in listening to you say that first thinking, well, that’s, you know, maybe. Coldblooded assessment to then me thinking, well, maybe that’s a little charitable, but I mean,
Josh Blank: oh great. Okay.
Jim Henson: I’ll take that for her.
But I also think that, you know, another branch of you talking about the uneven messaging and the, and the trajectory of this is that, you know, it has turned out to be relatively. Difficult to predict how this was going to shake out in some ways, you know, um, based on the short term responsive folks. I mean, you know, as you mentioned in that, in that, in, you know, the, your comments there, I mean, there was a point when people were saying, well, we’ve got a vaccine.
And the vaccine seemed to work and distribution seems to be going after, uh, you know, shaky beginning a little bit, um, fairly well and people were saying, well, you know, the risk of the virus end is, is lower, you know, and it’s reduced. And so that that’s bound to affect people’s views on the economy. But as we look at the cases begin to increase again, and we look at.
You know, the, the fact that you and I wrote about back after the April poll that, you know, once the vaccine got into circulation, it became clear that, you know, the more and more the, and now it’s up to, you know, the high nineties, the, the vast majority of people that are still requiring hospitalization and are still getting seriously, ill are people that have not been vaccinated.
Right. And so the, you know, the problem with that is, you know, I guess, you know, at some point somebody has a responsibility. It seems to me to say, and Hey, you know what, if we want the economy to come back, we should do everything we can to get the vaccination right. As high as possible. And I think the rhetoric that we’ve seen has been reflective of a different set of priorities than that, frankly, you know, so just, you know, we probably should have done this at the beginning just to recap, and this is maybe an unfortunate time to do this, but fair is fair.
So, you know, last week, governor Abbott’s initial response to shifts in the CDC guidelines that you were talking about, the word admittedly, a little muddy, but that we’re basically saying. That people should increase their mass wearing and that there wasn’t increased threat and that there were indications that vaccinated people.
Could at a very, you know, in, in, in very rare cases, have what they call breakthrough cases and still get the virus anyway. But that the virus, the infection would not be serious to the person that has it. But in addition to that, that people that are vaccinated. And as I understand it, get infected with the virus, still spread the virus at about the same rate as unvaccinated people.
Now look, that’s complicated, you know, I’m willing to, but. Governing is often complicated. And so, you know, the initial response in this, into these guidelines in the state was for, you know, the governor to reiterate the, what has become the party line first on Twitter, and then in, uh, orders, you know, to the state.
You know, and, and to quote the governor’s tweaks of the time for government mask mandates is over now is the time for personal responsibility. A couple of days later, the governor underlying that message with a new general order that consolidated previous orders and reiterated that business, you know, quote unquote business activities and legal proceedings are free to proceed without COVID-19 related limitations, imposed by local governmental entities or officials.
And then also that no governmental entity, including a county city school district or public health authority, and no governmental official may require any person to wear a face covering or mandate that another person wear a face covering. Now I think if you ask the question, why to that there’s really only one answer.
And that answer is the politics of the situation because, you know, and you can say, well, it’s principle, well, those principles are not universally shared. We now have volumes of data showing that that principle is a principle that’s embraced primarily by partisans, the extent that nobody should be able to tell me to wear a mask if I don’t want to.
Right. And you know, the personal responsibility, the balance of personal responsibility and the concept of public health here. You know, seems to me to be very shaped by the politics of the situation. And I, I, I find it hard to, to find it. I, you know, I, I find it more person. I’m not seeing a more, uh, more persuasive explanation.
Josh Blank: No, I, I don’t disagree with you. And I mean, I think part, I mean, I’m trying to think about how to say this and it’s not even, you know, it relates to the politics, but it’s another aspect to this, I think, which is, you know, there’s sort of a like, well, now that we’ve done this, we can’t go back kind of mentality to this in some ways, which is we’ll look, you know, if we, if we look at the data and we look at the curves, I mean, you know, the.
The idea is, is once we’ve blown past, you know, a red line, as we say, well, then what difference does that red line make? Right? And that’s kind of been the way this pandemic has gone here in Texas, which is, you know, we say, well, you know, if let’s say, if positive tests go above this, we’re going to have to start to do something.
And then it’s like, well, actually once positive Tesco, by the way, you’re going to know if a total hospital CA if hospital capacity. ICU beds goes above that. It’s like, okay, well the ICU beds are going. And it’s like, okay, no, no total hospital capacity. It’s like, okay, well, sure. You know, and now here we are, you know, again, there was a, there was a trigger that would have allowed, you know, some of the regions to impose or county student for impose more mandates.
If the, the, a share of the hospital beds in like the five in the county regions that, you know, they’re doing the calculators exceeded, I think it was 15%. One of the regions already had a couple we’re approaching it and probably will pass it. And. Yeah, the governor said, Nope, we’re not doing that. I’m now again, I’m something else
Jim Henson: that was undone in the, in the executive committee.
And
Josh Blank: I’m very cognizant the fact that the situation has shifted. I mean, I think what’s interesting, but I think, you know, it’s interesting, we’re talking about, so all the uncertainty and the shifting underlying pot thing, but the thing that hasn’t really changed is what we started with, which is the underlying attitudes.
Right. And ultimately that’s what shapes, the political response that you see from the elected officials is, you know, what, what are my voters going to think? About my response to this. And as we’ve blown through these various kind of red lines, these various instances in which we would expect more government intervention.
Well, we’re out, you know, I mean, at this point, you know, it’s kind of like, well, can we go back now and say, well, you know, now we’re going to do mass mandates because ultimately, you know, if you think about all the heat, you know, Abbott got for the little bit of, you know, that the brief period of time in which there were some statewide restrictions, the idea that now, if he were to go and say, okay, you know what, we’re going to start allowing masks.
We’re going to start allowing whatever, maybe insert areas or regions who knows, you know, somebody from. Dissident right-wing Twitter universe. In fact, I could probably think of a couple of people would put a picture of the graphic of COVID cases and say why now? And, you know, I don’t know what the answer to that would be other than, you know, well now I’ve decided to follow good public health advice, but that hasn’t been the case up until this point.
So I don’t see why they would shift back to that now.
Jim Henson: Well, I mean, you know, yeah. You know, if I was to, to argue the why, I mean, I might, you know, and look, I, I, I agree with what you’re saying, that that is very likely the reasoning that’s going on there, that there is a, you know, I mean, if anything, what we saw last week was the, and, and this week in the.
You know, the melding of the immigration or, well, this was also last week, but it’s still carrying on this week, but the melding of the immigration general order that the, that the governor issued that being rationalized by the spread of COVID is a, you know, is, is it.
Josh Blank: Laughable under the
Jim Henson: it just underlines, you know what you’re saying? Which is once, you know, there’s a certain sort of commitment and this is where I just find it, you know, I get the politics of it and strictly bloodless or bloody political terms, you know, the, the situation is different than, you know, in a number of ways than it, than it was before, you know, in terms of context.
And, you know, there, you know, there are openings here. And I think that, you know, th this comes back to some degree to something that we were, you know, that we discussed. I think we wrote about publicly in the very beginning of this is that, you know, the governor has a lot of political capital and a lot of literal, you know, campaign, cash funding, actual capital.
Um, and I don’t, I, you know, I don’t know that if it’s spending some of it here, In the long run be okay. Particularly given that look, you know, I understand that. I mean, the, the two main primary challenges that he has right now, you know, for all people talk, you know, about this in general terms were likely, you know, germinated in those few months where the governor was trying to split the difference on that.
And trying to respond, you know, in terms of public health. I mean, you know, that, that is when Alan West, you know, got the bulk of his press. It’s still remains to some degree. The core of his challenge, very similar with, with, with, with Huffines is his other primary challenge. You know, at what point do you, you know, I mean, how secure do you have to feel in the, in the pace of those things?
You know, there’s a big story in the states when the Nicole cobbler wrote, when she talked to Mark Jones and couple other political sciences in the state. And I think both mark and somebody else. And forgive me if you’re out there, I can’t remember who the other person quoted was, you know, both characterize.
The governor’s position on this as gambling, that the pandemic is not going to get worse this time that this, that this peak will be not what the other one was.
Josh Blank: I don’t know about that.
Jim Henson: Yeah. You know, it is a gamble, but I mean, I think, you know, if you’re, if you’re playing on, you know, experience well, you know, his experience has been that for all the criticism he took jogging right.
Has been, probably has helped shore up his numbers.
Josh Blank: Yeah. You know, and ultimately there’s no, you know, there’s no limit to the number of other actors that he can point his fingers at around us. He gets pointed and he’s doing it right. He can pointed at local governments and government and local government mandates that are, you know, as he could say, detached from the science, he can point to.
Undocumented immigrants. Uh, you know, now he can point to the federal government. And so there’s lots of other places that he can, he can muddy muddy the water on this, but I mean, that’s a funny way to put it, this idea that, you know, he’s, you know, he’s calculated, he’s calculating this out because I mean, I was sort of thinking early on in the pandemic, going back to sort of one where there were these clear sets of guidelines.
Okay. If this happens, we’re gonna, we’re gonna have to, you know, basically. Shut down a little more. And you know, when they were really kind of being serious about following some of the data and then basically decided to start ignoring it. I mean, one of the things that I was wondering, you know, talking to reporters at that point, it was like, okay, was like, did anybody do like a cost benefit analysis?
Like how many more lives this might cost? And, and, and I mean, it was, it was a serious question because I think honestly, Well, there are a lot of people modeling, right. The building and saying, Hey, look, you know, we, we know that this could have, you know, a lot of people are doing this at the time. So you kind of what the effect of, you know, some, some, you know, strong social distancing, weak social distance, and all that kind of stuff might have.
Um, and I mean, it was pretty clear at that point in time that, you know, whether they looked into it or not, you know, how many additional deaths opening up the state would cost, you know, that was a pretty big surge. And we’re already through that. Yeah. And so I don’t see the cost here. Significantly higher.
I mean, I think, you know, as someone who studies public opinion, you know, one of the things that I’m kind of like maybe a little desensitized to is the, you know, how rarely public opinion shifts dramatically. And, you know, when I see, you know, a big shift might be, you know, maybe you see like a five to 10 point shift in a brief period, but a lot of times it snaps back to where it was.
If you check it again later. And so you don’t see these big, massive, like 20, 30 point shifts in opinion, it’s not like, you know, If because of the Delta variant, you know, we see the search continue up and let’s say, you know, we shouldn’t see as many deaths. I mean, that’s what, you know, because of all the vaccinations, but let’s say we see a surge, you know, continued surgeon cases and we blow past, you know, last July surge.
And we’re looking somewhere in between those two. And you know, the idea that all of a sudden, a bunch of voters are gonna say, Hey, this is, this is mismanagement.
Jim Henson: Yeah. And I think it’s worth talking to, I don’t think it’s, we’re talking a little bit about just again, The experiential part of this beyond the policy piece.
I mean, you and I were talking about this, so it was, uh, I, you know, I don’t know if you went back and saw it. There’s a good piece in the New York times over the weekend that talked to a lot of people about their hesitation or their, or their refusal to get the vaccine, you know? And there was a lot of interesting decision-making going on there.
And a lot of, you know, some of it is personality. Some of it is political belief. Some of it is, uh, you know, how people process risk. You know, and I think that is to some degree underappreciated, but I also think, again, it does come back. I can get away from the politics for about 20 seconds, but I mean, I think even, even though public opinion and must, you know, changes, you know, public attitudes don’t change very rapidly or very much in a lot of cases, you know, amidst a lot of uncertainty.
We do know that leaders. Matters and, and, and elites, you know, signaling by public officials matters. Now it may be that we’re just too deep into this now for, for that to be much of an option. But, but I, but I, but you know, I think the stakes are high enough that I, I mean, what would happen if for the next two weeks, you know, all the local news channels in Texas broadcast.
PSA’s by a wide variety of Republican officials saying you should get vaccinated. And until you get vaccinated, you should not go out. And that’s just because we all want the economy. You know, in other words, a message was crafted that attempted to consciously not run away from people’s opinions. Engage them and see what kind of effect you could have.
And look, national Republicans were clearly thinking this two or three weeks ago because we saw a little uptick in a lot of congressional Republican leaders doing exactly that going, perhaps not exactly that with frequent PSA’s, but certainly going on the record in a very public way in urging people to get vaccinated and urging their constituents and their partisans to get there.
Yeah.
Josh Blank: I mean, you know, thinking about, you know, the, the New York times article and all the reasons people give, you know, it reminds me of something that I like to, I think about a lot, which is, you know, life is aggressively connected. And it’s one of the limits, you know, I say, you know, I would say, you know, public opinion doesn’t shift that much, but it’s actually very easy to shift behaviors in the short run and in a very isolated way, in a very, you know, consequential way as a whole, you know, it’s what behavioral economics is basically all about.
Right? I mean, how you ask the question might lead people to do completely different things. Right? What do the fault is that kind of stuff? Yeah. And so I think, you know, that that does matter, but that’s sort of where, I mean, that is where, you know, beyond just the words of, you know, politicians, that’s where I think what you see in that, in that article.
And I think what is so vaccine about the state response, which is to say, you know, basically to state local governments and, and, and really as many entities as a candy, you cannot do anything to try to compel people to do the right thing here. But the thing is, is that, you know, ultimately if your job requires a vaccine, you know, and you’re kind of on the fence about it, you’re probably going to get a vaccine.
If your kid’s school requires you to do vaccine to come in and pick your kid up or go to the, you know, to go to the performance. That’s probably going to get a couple more people vaccinated. Ultimately, this is kind of what, where we’re at right now is we’re trying to find the people who for whatever reason are not what extra little nudge is going to push them over the edge to do what needs to be done.
So it doesn’t happen. And the problem with the, of the political instruction that we’re ended up with is we’re, you know, it’s funny at the same time, as I think. Just talking to the Republican party here. I’m not making a comparison as the Republican party is sort of, you know, I think over the last few years, throw it away a lot of sort of core tenants that I think you meant you usually think of as being part of the Republican party, this construction around social and personal or personal responsibility.
It’s just kind of a really odd one for this situation when it’s a public health crisis and the consequences public, and you and I were talking about this and to bring social science back into it one more time, you know, this is, this is a collective action problem. And it’s a problem with, with what we call free riders.
Ultimately, you know, a collective action problem occurs when there’s some kind of outcome that we can all contribute to, but, but our contributions are so smaller, significant that whether we contribute or not, you know, the outcome is going to happen either. And so it leads to the situation where we’re for your, as a classic examples, like clean air, if we’re all going and we’re, we’re contributing, you know, to, to basically making the air cleaner by whatever, not like burning our garbage outside, but you decide, you know, I’m going to burn my garbage outside.
Ultimately you still get to benefit from clean air. You’re a free rider. You don’t have to do what everybody else is doing, taking their garbage to the dump, all that stuff, whatever. Right. And I was thinking, you know, with the, with, with where we are right now, we’re the situation that’s just, as I described to you.
It’s like one of the most horrible collective action problems you can think of because essentially there’s a couple of things for it. I think that, you know, again, the majority of people are vaccinated and probably a lot of people who listen to this podcast, right. You essentially, you have to worry about.
As we all do, we’re all you go testicle. You should worry about yourself. Otherwise you wouldn’t live. And you know, the main question here is, you know, have you gotten the backs of, you’re not, if you haven’t, you know, significantly increases the chances that something bad is going to happen. If you get COVID or, you know, take the vaccine, significant decrease those chances.
Next you say, what about my family? And my closest associates, my relatives, people I’m gonna interact with a lot or they vaccinated. Well, they’re not. And you know, you get it or get a breakthrough infection. You give it to them. Well, they may get seriously ill. They may die. We have long COVID who knows. So there’s that, but maybe everybody that you interact with is vaccinated for the most part, not uncommon with the way that social networks work.
So that brings us to this other issue, which is like, well, what if I go out and I happen to get it? I don’t really, I mean, I may symptomatic and I give it to somebody else that I don’t really know who’s on vaccine. Well, myth, you know, I mean, that depends on your moral fiber and how you feel about it. But the biggest thing that I think, you know, we should, people should be concerned about is this idea of, you know, as long as this virus sticks round, we’re gonna have more.
And eventually, you know, if we keep having more and more variants, it’s more likely the variant will come along that, you know, proves, uh, to be able to overcome our vaccines. And that’s, here’s the thing though, you know, the individual action of you or me or any one of us is not going to necessarily contribute to that variant, but the collective action of the entire society is, which is why this whole idea of like personal responsibility becomes a bit of a problem because ultimately my decision is not going to fit.
Whether or not, you know, there’s a new variant of the coronavirus. It puts us all back into lockdown, you know, for an extended period of time. It’s this, it’s the collective decisions of millions and millions of other people. And, and that’s why that messaging is just so awesome.
Jim Henson: Yeah. Well, and I think that, you know, I mean, we’re gonna have to wind it up, but I mean, I think, you know, the, where that leads us, right.
You know, public health is a public good. Right, right. And, and particularly then vulnerable to this collective action problem. And I think that outside of that decision-making logic, which I agree with. There’s another kind of broader cultural, ideological, uh, dynamic going on right now where I think that, you know, and, and, and, and then the recourse, the individual responsibility, I think is one aspect of this.
You know, when was the last time you really heard the governor utter the words public health, other than talking about an entity? I think that, you know, the kind of polarization among in, in this kind of, uh, uh, sense that, you know, as a result of negative partisanship laid onto this ideological construction that Democrats have become socialists and all of it.
Yeah. That it’s harder to talk about the notion of public health right now, and, and for Republicans and there, they’re hesitant to do that for the political backlash that’s going to, it’s going to come at them. And, you know, the notion of public health sounds like, you know, you’re being a socialist or a, it’s something out of the new deal or, you know, something like this.
And, you know, it’s, it’s really getting in the way of messaging. On something that is, you know, because of the mechanisms you’re talking about is going to continue to be a problem for a while. If we don’t reach a higher threshold of, of different kinds of behaviors and, and, and a higher threshold of vaccination.
Yeah. I
Josh Blank: mean, you could imagine a scenario in which you just say, do it for yourself, do it for your family, do it for Texas, do it for the. Yeah. And it wouldn’t even be that hard. Right? I mean, we just passed a law requiring the player of the national Anthem. I mean, it’s, it’s a, it’s a patriotic thing to do.
And there was a little bit of playing with that, but, you know, going back to personal responsibility, ultimately I think, you know what we’ve talked about in social, again, you know, activates the idea of, you know, it’s a personal decision, right? It takes it back into whatever sort of, you know, whatever considerations you have to bear in your context.
If it’s not
Jim Henson: left to that, it’s a violation of that. Rather than being weighed in the context of something else, which we do all the time,
Josh Blank: which puts us at the status quo that we’ve been at, honestly, almost the entire time. We’ve been asking questions about people’s vaccine and touch intentions, which from the start has basically shown about a third of Texans who are going to say either unsure or now, and that hasn’t budged.
Jim Henson: Yeah. I think, you know, it will be interesting to see whether. The latest, you know, this where we are now there’s any chipping away. And this is kind of what the, you know, I mean, we’re seeing some anecdotal evidence, but I’ll be sure to see what the actual, you know, epidemiological and medical evidence looks like and what the polling looks like when we’re back on the field.
We’re chipping away at the unsures. I think. Right. Yeah. And that, that’s kind of what the New York times thing was coming at, but there was, you know, I mean, I think the anecdote I shared with you as the guy that just said, yeah, why did I wait? Oh, I don’t know. I kind of wait for everything. I’m just not an earlier adopter.
And look, there are some people that are going to be out there like that, particularly young people and that’s understandable, but I think, you know, If anything, what we’re seeing right now is that we’ve really got, there’s really got to be an effort to go after those people, even if there was some political costs among the people that are just like you even talking about making me do this, pisses me off, you know, which seemed, and those people seem to be having an a, to my mind, an undue influence on the public agenda in on public health.
With that. I think we’ve gone a little over. I want to thank Josh for being here, uh, and for all the prep he did and gathering data on this, uh, thank, uh, are excellent folks in the liberal arts development studio and the college of liberal arts at the university of Texas. Thank you for listening and we’ll be back next week with another second reading podcast.
The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas politics project at the university of Texas at Austin. .