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patrickv · 4 years ago

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cwsdjt · 6 years ago

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2019 MLB Predictions

AL East

Boston Red Sox – (all in a Boston accent) Man do I hate them moah than those gold-chain and backwahds fitted hat wearin’ Yanks. The team just won the World Sehries in pretty easy fashion. How can I bet against ‘em? They have the same loyneup. Heck, if they strengthen theahr second base and catcha positions, there will be no stawpin’ ‘em.

New York Yankees – They added Adam Ottavino and Troy Tulowitzki. Their bullpen is filthy. They have enough home run hitters to knock it over that 200-foot right field wall. This team is poised to win 100 games. I dread watching a bunch of gold chains and bare-chested Yankee fans banging the padded outfield walls during the playoffs, but it’s going to happen, so I’ve just accepted it.

Tampa Bay Rays – This team was sneaky good last year. 90 wins and no one talked about them. Their analytics department is one of the best in baseball. They added Mike Zunino. They have an all-around solid team. They might be able to land that second wild card.

Toronto Blue Jays – They’ll hold Vlad Guerrero down until he works on his defense or loses weight until he magically figures it all out around a Super Two cutoff date. They are obviously rebuilding because they can’t compete with the top three teams above them.

Baltimore Orioles – This team is brutal. Unless Trey Mancini, Chris Davis, and Mark Trumbo find strokes again, they may lose 120 games.

AL Central

Cleveland Indians – They were rumored to be in talks with teams about trading Kluber or Bauer. They didn’t. Their lineup is still solid and they don’t have much competition in the Central.

Minnesota Twins – The Twins might be sneaky this season, unfortunately. Nelson Cruz at the DH helps. Berrios is a future Cy Young winner. They have talent.

Chicago White Sox – They didn’t land any marquee free agents. We know why. Moncada and Anderson will take steps forward. We can maybe even see the same from López and Rodón. Eloy will be up right around April 15 for some reason, and Abreu can stay healthy. They’re poised to win about 73 games…MAX.

Kansas City Royals – They’re somehow going to be worse than the Sox. They have some fast guys…I guess.

Detroit Tigers – They may trade Castellanos and Josh Harrison by the end of the season. Look for them to round off an VERY weak AL Central in 2019.

AL West

Houston Astros – Come on. It’s the Astros. My guy Alex Bregman will be in the MVP race and finish second to Michael Trout. Altuve, Correa, Cole, Verlander, Springer, etc. It’s still a loaded team.

Oakland A’s – I doubt they live up to what they did last year. They were a sneaky good team, but they also had Trevor Cahill and Edwin Jackson put together their best seasons. Not to mention, their closer was Blake Treinen. Treinen is back, but I don’t see this team being better than 2018. Maybe they’ll surprise me.

Los Angeles Angels – They got Trout. They got Ohtani. They’ll get 82 wins or something.

Seattle Mariners – They’re rebuilding. Kikuchi hides the ball better than a magician with a card up his sleeve. They have some youthful talent, but again that’s about it this season.

Texas Rangers – This is just not a very good team. That rotation is absolutely atrocious.

NL East

Washington Nationals – Eaton could be at full health. Maybe Drake LaRoche will lead them to a World Series. I don’t know. Losing Harper didn’t necessarily kill this team. They added Yan Gomes, as well.

Philadelphia Phillies – Harper joins them, and so does Cutch. This team is good now. The rotation needs some work, but the lineup can do the heavy lifting.

Atlanta Braves – They added Donaldson, but compared to the rest of the division, they didn’t improve as much over the offseason.

New York Mets – The rotation is always good, and everyone gets hurt by week 3 because their training staff is worse than coffee breath. Cano can always hit. Lowrie was a nice addition. The same goes for Wilson Ramos and Edwin Diaz. If the staff is healthy, this team is solid.

Miami Marlins – That sounds about right.

NL Central

Milwaukee Brewers – They added Grandal to catch. The rest of the team is the same. This is an easy pick.

Chicago Cubs – Watch them win the World Series because I put them here. If they don’t have injuries, this team can win the division.

St. Louis Cardinals – Goldschmidt was a heckuva addition. Maybe Fowler can stay healthy. This bullpen is still shaky, though.

Cincinnati Reds – The Reds added Kemp and Puig. They also added Sonny Gray. This team could surprise some people. That lineup is sneaky stacked.

Pittsburgh Pirates – This team is so-so. Unfortunately, they’re playing in one of the toughest divisions in baseball.

NL West

Los Angeles Dodgers – They’re still good. Kershaw is experiencing injury issues again, sadly. The rest of the team is good. They added Pollock. Catcher could be shaky, but this is still a good ball club.

Colorado Rockies – They extended Arenado and Blackmon. This is a morale boost. They’re still good.

San Diego Padres – They added the prized possession, Manny Machado. Watch out for Franmil Reyes. They dude hits for power. Tatis, Jr. will be up around the same time as Eloy and Vlad. This team is the ultimate kick to the stomach for White Sox fans. Thank GOD, they play on the west coast.

San Francisco Giants – This team is not very strong. Their best players are older than Cub fans claiming no one goes to Sox games.

Arizona Diamondbacks – They’re as weak as George Costanza without his glasses.

AL Playoffs: Red Sox, Indians, Astros, Yankees (WC), Rays (WC) NL Playoffs: Dodgers, Nationals, Brewers, Cubs (WC), Phillies (WC) World Series: Yankees vs. Nationals, Yankees = Champions

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reveal-the-news · 2 years ago

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Houston vs. Texas Tech football preview, prediction

Future Big 12 member Houston takes it on the road against eventual conference rival Texas Tech on Saturday in Week 2 action. Houston is coming off a three-overtime win over UTSA and has dropped one spot to No. 25 in the polls. Tech beat Murray State by 53 in its debut, but lost quarterback Tyler Shoff. Here’s everything you need to know about this weekend’s matchups. How to see When: Sat,…

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tonyspicks · 2 years ago

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Texas Rangers vs Houston Astros 9/7/2022 Picks Predictions Previews

Texas Rangers vs Houston Astros 9/7/2022 Picks Predictions Previews by Tonys team of professional handicappers who research Major League Baseball. Visit Us for Free Football Sports Picks, NBA Free Picks, Free NCAAF Picks, Free NCAAB Picks, Free College Football Picks and Free College Basketball Picks

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redalertwagers · 2 years ago

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thomasproce · 3 years ago

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Sweet 16 Day 1

The first day of the Sweet 16 started on Thursday, with the first game being Gonzaga and Arkansas followed by Villanova and Michigan. The two water games that followed were Duke vs Texas Tech and the last of the Thursday games was Arizona vs Houston.

The biggest headline of the day was Gonzaga losing, as they were the title favorite by most. Their first two games were competitive and they finally lost the third one. The next big thing that happened was Arizona losing to Houston. Now, all the one seeds have been eliminated except for the Kansas Jayhawks who play against Providence tonight in the sweet 16. All the games went down to the wire as there were no blowouts and the teams were evenly matched.

Villanova advances to face Houston in the elite 8 and Duke advances to face Arkansas. The other 2 matchups are yet to be determined, but they will be today.

My personal predictions for the games tonight, on Friday, March 25th, are Purdue beating St. Peters and then UCLA to beat the red-hot Tar Heels. This would give an elite 8 matchup of Purdue and UCLA. The next two games I have Kansas beating Providence and Miami beating USC. This would leave Kansas playing against Miami to play in the elite 8.

I will see you all tomorrow to discuss todays action!

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newsfact · 3 years ago

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Where is ‘College GameDay’ this week? Location, schedule, guest picker for Week 10 on ESPN

“College GameDay” is breaking tradition somewhat in its latest college football destination, heading to Nippert Stadium in Cincinnati for the AAC meeting between Tulsa and the second-ranked Bearcats.

This will be Rece Davis, Kirk Herbstreit, Lee Corso, Desmond Howard, David Pollack and company’s first visit to Nippert Stadium, and it couldn’t have come at a more opportune time for Luke Fickell’s team. The Bearcats are among the biggest storylines of the year this season as they try to prove their College Football Playoff worthiness alongside the usual suspects of Georgia, Oklahoma, Alabama, Ohio State and more.

The first set of rankings came out on Tuesday, with Cincinnati ranked No. 6 in the initial poll.

MORE: College football picks, predictions against the spread for every Week 10 top 25 game

Cincinnati has more than just its five remaining opponents to defeat if it wants to make the 2021 Playoff. It must also defeat the perception that, as a Group of 5 team, it simply isn’t on the same level as its Power 5 counterparts. A win over the 3-5 Golden Hurricanes won’t do much to impress objective observers, but it is an opportunity for quarterback Desmond Ridder and Co. to put on a clinic in a nationally televised game.

Cincinnati does have two wins over Power 5 competition, however, traveling to beat both Indiana and Notre Dame, the latter of which ranked No. 8 in the initial CFP poll. Wins over SMU and a potential meeting with Houston in the AAC championship game could also be resume-boosters (both teams are ranked in both the AP Top 25 and Coaches Poll, but conspiciuously absent from the CFP rankings). Will they be enough to vault the Bearcats into the Playoff?

Only time will tell, but “College GameDay” will be there to document the first step forward for the Bearcats on Saturday. With that, here’s everything you need to know as “College GameDay” makes its way to Nippert Stadium:

MORE: Watch Tulsa vs. Cincinnati live with fuboTV (7-day free trial)

Where is ‘College GameDay’ location for Week 10?

Location: Cincinnati

Matchup: Tulsa at No. 6 Cincinnati

“GameDay” on Saturday will head to Cincinnati’s Nippert Stadium for the first time in the history of the show. It will be only the second time the Bearcats are among the featured matchups on “GameDay.” They are 0-1 all time ahead of the Week 10 meeting with Tulsa — their only previous appearance was a 38-13 loss at No. 11 UCF in 2018.

Tulsa will also make its first appearance on “GameDay” on Saturday.

MORE: Heisman Trophy watch for Week 10: Updated odds, top candidates to win 2021 award

‘College GameDay’ schedule on ESPN

TV channel: ESPN

Start time: 9 a.m. ET

Davis, Herbstreit, Howard and Pollack will preview Week 9 action live from Spartan Stadium starting at 9 a.m. ET. The game will be broadcast on ESPN2, with kickoff set for 3:30 p.m. ET.

“GameDay” has a few viable options for Week 11. The first is No. 8 Oklahoma at No. 12 Baylor, which would be only the second Big 12 matchup of the season. That said, it may hedge its bets and hope No. 11 Oklahoma State takes only one loss into its Week 13 Bedlam rivalry matchup. Another option is the ranked matchup between No. 14 Texas A&M and No. 16 Ole Miss. Both teams have two losses in SEC play, so the winner is out of contention to play for the SEC championship game. The winner retains a slim chance.

No. 7 Michigan and Penn State face off as well; the Wolverines must avoid a loss if they want to remain in contention for the Big Ten East championship — the Nittany Lions would enjoy nothing more than to ruin Jim Harbaugh’s season.

Week Matchup Location Guest Picker Corso’s Headgear Outcome 0 Alcorn State vs. NCCU Atlanta Eddie George Braves NCCU 23, Alcorn State 14 1 No. 5 Georgia vs. No. 3 Clemson Charlotte, N.C. Kane Brown Bulldogs Georgia 10, Clemson 3 2 No. 10 Iowa at No. 9 Iowa State Ames, Iowa Ashton Kutcher Hawkeyes Iowa 27, Iowa State 17 3 No. 22 Auburn at No. 10 Penn State University Park, Pa. Saquon Barkley Nittany Lions Penn State 28, Auburn 20 4 No. 12 Notre Dame vs. No. 18 Wisconsin Chicago Danica Patrick Fighting Irish Notre Dame 41, Wisconsin 13 5 No. 8 Arkansas at No. 2 Georgia Athens, Ga. Harris English Bulldogs Georgia 37, Arkansas 0 6 No. 6 Oklahoma vs. No. 21 Texas Dallas Mark Cuban Longhorns Oklahoma 55, Texas 48 7 No. 11 Kentucky at No. 2 Georgia Athens, Ga. Jeff Foxworthy Bulldogs Georgia 30, Kentucky 13 8 No. 10 Oregon at UCLA Pasadena, Calif. Bill Walton Bruins Oregon 34, UCLA 31 9 No. 6 Michigan at No. 8 Michigan State East Lansing, Mich. Ken Jeong Wolverines Michigan State 37, Michigan 33 10 Tulsa at No. 6 Cincinnati Cincinnati Nick Lachey TBD TBD

Who is the guest picker on ‘College GameDay’ for Week 10?

“GameDay” on Friday announced singer, TV personality and host Nick Lachey as its guest picker for Week 10. Lachey is a Cincinnati native and fan of the city’s teams, including the Bengals, Reds and Bearcats.

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xtruss · 3 years ago

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Anti-Vaxxers Could Fuel Spike in Childhood Diseases: 'It Will Be Horrific'

— By Steve Friess | October 06, 2021 | Newsweek

A recent gathering in a Quality Inn ballroom in rural Bradley, Illinois, offered a glimpse—terrifying to most epidemiologists, thrilling to longtime vaccine "safety" activists—of America's growing political divide over vaccinations and its implications for the nation's health. Ostensibly, the meeting was a community forum about employer mandates for COVID vaccines that the organizer expected to draw 80 people in this overwhelmingly Republican exurb of Chicago. Instead, more than 300 people piled in, mostly to complain about the notion that anyone—a boss, a school, a government—could force them to take any vaccines at all. As one Libertarian county commissioner told the crowd: "I will fight for your right to believe in whatever god, medicine or way of life you choose."

The event is being replicated in some form or another in cities and towns across America, emblematic of a growing grassroots movement of people who believe that vaccine mandates—for COVID, yes, but increasingly for other diseases as well—are an affront to their personal freedom. That represents a marked shift from pre-pandemic times, when vaccine opponents typically based their reasoning on medical concerns and were largely comprised of a few religious sects and a small number of left-leaning activists seeking explanations for rising rates of autism. As the anti-vaxx mandate movement gains political traction, particularly on the right, medical experts fear it could not only cripple efforts to eradicate COVID but could also lead to a surge in long-conquered diseases, from mumps to whooping cough to smallpox.

"Those [more established] vaccines have had a long history of use, so there's certainly data that suggests that they're relatively safe. But it always has to be a choice of individuals. You can't have government forcing that on us" - Conservative group Action 4 Liberty president Jake Duesenberg

"There are some more conservative states where we are likely to see other non-COVID vaccine mandates under attack, and it is very worrisome," says Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. "If we have some of these pediatric infectious diseases come back, it will be horrific."

Even before President Joe Biden's September 9 announcement of a litany of aggressive COVID vaccine mandates—covering an estimated 100 million Americans, including federal health workers and companies with more than 100 employees—evidence of changes in policy and sentiment toward such rules was cropping up, led by the right. This summer the Tennessee Department of Health, reportedly pushed by GOP lawmakers, directed its staffers to stop conducting "proactive outreach regarding routine vaccinations," including those for childhood diseases, HPV and influenza. Larry Elder, the top Republican vote-getter in the failed recall effort against California's Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, told the Los Angeles Times editorial board in August, "I don't believe that the state should tell a parent whether or not a child should be vaccinated. That's an intrusion of state power." In Minnesota this month, the conservative group Action 4 Liberty, which boasts an email list of more than 100,000 recipients, began hammering a leading Republican candidate for governor for refusing to sign the group's "Stop Vaccine Mandates" pledge.

A group demonstrators hold signs as they protest against mandated vaccines outside of the Michigan State Capitol on August 6, 2021 in Lansing, Michigan. Emily Elconin/Getty

"Those vaccines have had a long history of use, so there's certainly data that suggests that they're relatively safe," the group's president, Jake Duesenberg, tells Newsweek. "But it always has to be a choice of individuals. You can't have government forcing that on us."

In all, some 22 percent of Americans now identify as "anti-vaxxers," defined as people who support vaccine refusal and "embrace the label as a form of social identity," according to a report by researchers at Oklahoma State University, Texas A&M University and others, published in the journal Politics, Groups, and Identities. Underscoring concerns of public health experts, the study also found identifying as an anti-vaxxer to be predictive of increased opposition to childhood vaccine requirements.

Meanwhile, signs are also mounting about the partisan nature of growing opposition to vaccines and vaccine mandates, and the shift from medical to libertarian reasoning. Asked in a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation whether getting the COVID vaccine is a matter of "personal choice" or "part of everyone's responsibility to protect the health of others," more than 70 percent of Republicans saw it as a personal choice vs. just 27 percent of Democrats. And according to a Twitter analysis by Renee DiResta, research manager of the Stanford Internet Observatory, reported in The New York Times, even anti-vaxxers whose opposition in the pre-COVID era was focused on concerns about autism and toxins are now evolving their messaging to talk about freedom and "vaccine choice."

Paramedics transport a COVID patient in Houston, Texas, where the governor has banned vaccine mandates. John Moore/Getty

"The coalescing of previously distinct groups that are now more aligned on this issue of opposing vaccines is new," says Douglas Opel, a pediatrician at Seattle Children's Hospital and author of numerous papers on vaccine hesitancy among parents. "The politicization of the COVID-19 vaccine development and authorization process has been a concern of all of us on what that might mean for vaccine confidence and the sustainability of immunization programs generally."

The Road to Here

Until recently, mandates for vaccinations—which mostly surface when parents try to enroll their children in daycare facilities or schools—were a relatively uncontroversial, routine part of preventing the spread of mostly vanquished infectious diseases. Every state has such mandates, and all but six allow exemptions for reasons of either religious or "personal belief." In California, Connecticut, Maine, Mississippi, New York and West Virginia, only exemptions for medical reasons are acceptable.

All 50 states have vaccine mandates, typically dating back decades. Here, a young boy receives a smallpox vaccine as classmates watch circa 1967. United States Department of Health Education and Welfare/Getty

Opposition to such mandates in the decades before COVID included the likes of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the actress Jenny McCarthy, both liberal skeptics of vaccine science who promoted theories about widespread vaccine side effects that have been aggressively debunked and dismissed by the medical community. When the country experienced outbreaks of diseases such as measles—an illness that in 2000 was declared eradicated in the U.S. by the World Health Organization—the overall numbers were in the dozens or hundreds, which is relatively small. In California, where a 2014 outbreak was traced to Disneyland, and New York, where surges in 2019 were connected to insular Orthodox Jewish communities, lawmakers quickly voted to eliminate the ability of parents to opt out of vaccinations for religious or personal reasons.

Yet what scares epidemiologists now is that many conservatives who denounce vaccine mandates are eliding the medical questions of whether they are safe. Instead, says David Rosner, a Columbia University historian who specializes in the intersection of politics and public health, they're focusing on a political view that requiring them is wrong.

"We are at the beginning of a much more profound change that may lead to resistance to other vaccines but also may lead to disintegration of any sense of social obligation, social cohesion and social purpose," he warns. "It's part of the questioning of what the country is and what it represents. When you see this kind of breakdown and unwillingness to work together, even under the most obvious circumstances where we've had more than 650,000 people die, it feels like the beginning of a major dividing point."

Many opponents—like Elder and Ohio Senate candidate Josh Mandel, who likened vaccine mandates to the Gestapo—are themselves vaccinated for COVID-19 and aren't voicing criticism of the safety or efficacy of the shots themselves. They merely insist that it's not the government's role to force the shots on people, many of whom question the record speed of the vaccines' development, prefer to rely on natural immunity the body may develop after being exposed to COVID or believe a wide range of misinformation, from the myth that the shots contain microchips capable of tracking movement to concerns of potential harm to the reproductive systems of women of child-bearing age.

After receiving COVID shots this spring, Californians in Richmond wait in an observation area. David Paul Morris/Blooberg/Getty

"I am not against anyone getting the COVID vaccine, it's their choice," says Duesenberg, who declined to say if he is vaccinated against COVID. "From someone that's not in the medical profession, there are risky classes of individuals who, if they were to contract the COVID-19 disease, it could be very bad for them. There's a big argument for them to get the COVID vaccine. But for young, healthy individuals, that risk-reward is way different. I've heard even doctors ask why a young healthy person would get the vaccine when you don't know the long-term effects of it. Either way, it can't be the government's choice."

That notion, though, threatens to upend more than a century of bipartisan acceptance and judicial support for the government's ability to impose vaccine requirements. As recently as mid-August, in fact, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative, declined to block a requirement from Indiana University that all students and faculty be vaccinated for COVID. In doing so, Barrett upheld a ruling by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, featuring all Republican appointees, that said vaccine requirements "have been common in this nation" and citing a 1905 Supreme Court decision upholding a smallpox vaccine mandate.

Still, just because the practice is constitutional doesn't mean state legislatures must continue to mandate immunizations. Nor does it mean that local boards of health will continue to be stingy about allowing exemptions if the political winds shift in such a way as to make that position untenable. The outcome, experts say, could be significant regional differences in vaccine protections.

"It's hard to know how big that group of vaccine refusers could potentially grow, but it's very clear that they will be in pockets, that they will reside together in different communities, where then we will see increased rates of certain vaccine-preventable diseases, of whooping cough, of measles, potentially of COVID, of influenza—all vaccine-preventable diseases" as a result, says Mary Anne Jackson, dean of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine and a former member of the National Vaccine Advisory Committee and the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases.

GOP House colleagues look on as Maryland Representative Andy Harris, a doctor and vaccine mandate opponent, speaks at a news conference on the Delta variant this summer. Alex Wong/Getty

Factoring into the heightened risk is the very nature of viruses, which bide their time in asymptomatic carriers waiting for hosts whose defenses are down. Tara Kirk Sell, a public health expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, says the outcome is that any drop in vaccination coverage in a locality could present opportunities for, say, chicken pox or rubella to sicken and spread to other vulnerable people in the community, including people too young or medically fragile to be immunized.

Tara Kirk Sell at a congressional testimony. House Science Committe

"There are strong reasons why we require vaccines in schools, because we want to make sure that kids don't end up with measles or mumps and we don't want them spreading disease throughout the community," says Sell. "It's extremely concerning that this whole concern about COVID-19 vaccines is spiraling out into those other necessary public health requirements."

Signs of Trouble Ahead

The Centers for Disease Control's data so far is of little use in assessing the impact of COVID politics on vaccination rates for other diseases. The compliance rate for the usual litany of childhood shots was more than 95 percent as of the agency's most recently published numbers, but that only goes through 2019—before the pandemic's onset.

Still, based on spot reports from different pockets of the country, the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases noted "an alarming decline in vaccination rates" last year that it says puts individuals of all ages at risk of contracting vaccine-preventable diseases. Miami-Dade County in Florida, for instance, saw a 60 percent drop in the number of children's vaccines administered in April 2020 vs. April 2019; in Michigan in May 2020, half of infants five months or younger were behind on their vaccines; in New York City, vaccine dose delivery fell 91 percent between March and May 2020. But experts attribute those drops in shots more to parents' fears of taking their kids to doctors at the height of the pandemic lockdown out of fear of contracting COVID than to raging vaccine hesitancy.

Anecdotally, however, many pediatricians see a baffling, troubling sea change. Joel Heidelbaugh, a physician who oversees family practice residents at the University of Michigan School of Medicine at a clinic in suburban Detroit, says he now sees parents who refuse vaccines for their children at least twice a week whereas such refusals pre-COVID occurred a few times a year.

"I saw a baby today who didn't get their first vaccine in the hospital because the parents didn't want to give it, and then I saw a 14-year-old for a sports physical who had not gotten the COVID vaccine and was due for an HPV and a meningitis vaccine but the mom declined both of those," Heidelbaugh says. "When I suggested that they get the COVID vaccine for the 14-year-old, Mom vehemently told me no and said she'd thrown out everything in her house that's made by Johnson & Johnson because she's against the COVID vaccine and thinks it causes more harm than good." (J&J makes one of three approved COVID vaccines in the U.S.)

To those who have long toiled in the movement to question mass vaccinations and their safety, though, such stories are encouraging. "We're seeing many more people than before the pandemic asking serious questions," says Mary Holland, chief counsel to the Children's Health Defense, a non-profit advocacy group founded by RFK Jr., son of the late California Senator Robert Kennedy, that recently organized protests around the country in response to mask and vaccine mandates. "Is it safe? Is it effective? Were the clinical trials adequate? Is there liability protection? What's happening to the people who have been injured or have died? We're certainly seeing a level of interest in the movement for vaccine safety that we didn't see before the pandemic, and we are happy to see that renewed level of interest and education."

Brian Hooker, a longtime vaccine skeptic and one of the most prominent researchers to push a debunked claim that childhood vaccinations cause autism, agrees. "It's quite astounding to have more than 20 percent" of the public say they're anti-vaxxers, notes Hooker, a bioengineer and chair of the math and science department at Simpson University, a small Christian private college in Redding, California. "And that's not just specific to the COVID vaccine. This is something that is really, really new."

US President Joe Biden give remarks on COVID-19 response & vaccinations in the State Dining Room of the White House on June 18, 2021. Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post/Getty

Proof Is Elusive

It's more difficult to persuade vaccine-hesitant parents like those he's encountering than it used to be, Heidelbaugh says, because their political views make them unreceptive to medical information that contradicts whatever they've heard from conservative or social media.

"I try to explain what they're due for, what vaccines we recommend, I'm happy to give literature on each of the vaccines so they understand what it's for and potential side effects," he says. "Then I explain to them the risks of being unvaccinated and tell them that there's a reason we have eradicated these diseases. And there's a reason we're starting to see some of these diseases which are preventable." Does that work? "Rarely," he says.

Sell believes this is the best approach even if it is increasingly futile: "It's much harder to debate political beliefs or values. For both sides, it is about protecting kids. You can't just come in and say, 'You're wrong,' because nothing turns someone off faster than that."

Another challenge vaccine proponents face is new data showing no recent uptick in various preventable childhood diseases over the past year when many children did not get their vaccinations on schedule. While the CDC doesn't have national numbers yet for 2020, it issued an alert in June to urge parents to catch up after analyzing data from 10 areas of the country and found, for instance, that the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination rate dropped by an average of 63 percent among children 2 to 8 years old in 2020. Yet there was no corresponding outbreak of those illnesses and, in fact, some other childhood afflictions saw declines.

An EMS medic from the Houston Fire Department prepares to transport a Covid-19 positive girl, age 2, to a hospital on August 25, 2021 in Houston, Texas. John Moore/Getty

There are easy explanations for that outcome, experts say. Just as kids didn't go to doctors at the height of the pandemic lockdowns, they also didn't go to daycare or in-person school—and many wore masks and sanitized their hands when they did encounter friends and relatives—so they were cosseted from exposure to a variety of germs.

But activists like Holland nonetheless point to these declines as more proof that the sky won't fall if kids don't get their shots or don't get them on the schedule that epidemiologists and virologists insist is necessary for peak effectiveness. "We've published articles showing that infant deaths went down, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome went down during the pandemic," Holland says. (Most public health experts see no link between vaccines and SIDS; correlation doesn't equal causation.) "There are some positive associations for lower vaccine uptake that should be researched and followed up on. But instead, there's now a lot of emphasis on families catching up on their vaccines and staying with the regular schedule."

The Pushback Against Pushback

Pro-vaccine advocates say they have one important secret weapon in this battle: parents. Jackson says the overwhelming share do vaccinate and, she expects, will become more vocal if anti-vaxxers threaten the health of their kids and other loved ones. She predicts they will clamor for data on the percent of unvaccinated children in daycares and school classes, she says, and parents will make decisions about where their children go based on that information.

"There are some pediatric practices that now refuse to have kids in their practice whose parents have refused to vaccinate," she says. "That's a trend that the American Academy of Pediatrics worries about because those children also need quality providers. But pediatricians say they can't have situations where under-vaccinated children are sitting in my waiting room and could potentially bring in measles to a vulnerable population."

What's more, the cost of more frequent disease outbreaks on local health-care systems could make medical coverage more expensive for people in under-vaccinated areas. "In states that don't want to vaccinate, the insurance companies are going to either raise the premiums for all of us or they're going to have to put those states into a higher rate bracket because the risk pools in those states will go through the roof," predicts Connecticut State Representative Stephen Meskers, who earlier this year sponsored a successful measure that repealed the ability of parents to opt out of vaccine mandates based on religious or personal views. "It's not inexpensive to put people on ventilators and to have them in hospitals. So if you want to go that route, you're either going to let the hospital overfill or you're going to have to build better occupancy, and both of those have economic costs."

A shot of hope: A COVID vaccine manufacturing site in Germany: Recent data shows the shots are more than 90 percent effective in preventing deaths from the disease. Thomas Lohnes/AFP/Getty

Health economists such as Jonathan Kolstad of University of California at Berkeley back up this notion. He says, "If there's an increase in the cost of supplying healthcare in a certain area, we would expect in a competitive insurance market that premiums would increase."

Holland of the anti-vaccine-mandate Children's Health Defense believes her movement emerges from COVID in a much different, stronger place. She's less sure, though, that they can count on unqualified support from the GOP. "It's accurate to say that the Democratic Party is very aligned with the vaccine agenda, but I don't think you can say vaccine choice is cemented into the Republican party platforms," she says

And Meskers, the Connecticut State Representative, says much will depend on whether the COVID vaccines do stem the tide of the pandemic and whether the outcome differences between the vaccinated and unvaccinated remain so dramatically different. A recent CDC study found that unvaccinated Americans were nearly five times more likely than vaccinated people to contract COVID and about 29 times more likely to be hospitalized than fully vaccinated individuals; a separate study found the vaccines to be more than 90 percent effective in preventing deaths. But that could change.

"We run the risk of a breakthrough variant where the death rate picks up," Meskers says. "Are we going to get a breakthrough where the vaccine loses its effectiveness? If we do, we're going to go into another round of 'Well, the vaccine was never going to work.' And that's scary for what it will say to people about all the other vaccines out there."

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