Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) on Monday said it is the community’s mission to get more people vaccinated, previewing his administration’s desire to knock on doors, put unvaccinated people in cars, and drive them to “get that vaccine in their arm.”
“I wear a mask because I care about you. I get a vaccine because I care about you,” Cuomo said, framing compliance to various methods of government coercion as an expression of selflessness.
“We understand that we are all in this together. We understand that as goes one goes all in this city where we all live together and in this state where we all live together,” he continued.
“We have to get back to work. We have to get back to work, and we have to get back to work now, and we have to spread this message or we’re going to spread the virus,” he said before specifically expressing the desire to knock on doors and drive unvaccinated people to get the jab.
“And we have to get in those communities, and we have to knock on those doors, and we have to convince people, and put them in a car and drive them and get that vaccine in their arm. That is the mission,” the Democrat mayor said during Monday’s press conference, where he announced the allocation of $15 million from the state’s budget to promote vaccinations:
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“COVID-19 exposed longstanding inequities in our society, and we’ve seen evidence of that in both the positivity rate and the vaccination rate in communities that were hardest hit by the virus,” Cuomo said in a statement, claiming the state is “pulling out all the stops to get shots in arms.”
“This budget funding will help us target outreach efforts in the state’s most vulnerable communities to make sure that everyone is able to get vaccinated,” he continued, touting the “incredible progress” New York — once the U.S. epicenter of the Chinese coronavirus despite extended mask mandates and business restrictions — has made.
“We’ve made incredible progress in the fight against COVID-19, but there’s more work to do, and this will help us protect communities across the state,” he added.
Recent surveys suggest unvaccinated Americans remain firm in their decision not to get a coronavirus vaccine, and many of them cite concerns related to vaccine development, as well as worries over adverse side effects.
As Breitbart News reported:
Eighty-one percent of Americans who have not received the vaccine yet say they will “probably” or “definitely” not get the shot. Of those, 45 percent say they “definitely” will not, and 35 percent say they “probably” will not. On the flip side, 16 percent say they “probably” will get the jab, while just three percent say they “definitely” will, indicating that the vast majority of those who have yet to get the vaccine are solid in their decisions.
“Now we need to go community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood, and often times door by door – literally knocking on doors to get help to the remaining people,” Biden said during a speech this month.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki reiterated that outreach will include “targeted community by community, door to door outreach to get the remaining Americans vaccinated.”
Over 163 million Americans are considered fully vaccinated, comprising 49.1 percent of the nation’s total population, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) July 26 data.
