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With COVID cases on the rise again, there is a renewed push to get the unvaccinated to get the jab. (Jordan Vonderhaar)
Although demand for the COVID vaccine has plummeted in recent months, the virus remains active, spreading more quickly thanks to the more contagious Delta variant and largely afflicting the unvaccinated, who account for 99.5% of COVID deaths in Texas since early February, according to the Texas Tribune.
But the vaccine-hesitant are unlikely to change their minds. Eighty percent of unvaccinated American adults said they probably or definitely will not receive the vaccine, and 64% said they have little to no confidence that the shots are effective against variants, including Delta, despite evidence to the contrary, according to a recent poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Understanding the unvaccinated
Jeffrey Tucker, an Austin-based writer for the right-leaning news outlet Real Clear Markets, declined to share his own vaccination status—calling the subject unseemly—but he is a vocal supporter of those who opt out. "It's a rational decision not to get vaccinated," he told Austonia.
Tucker cited various reasons why someone might be hesitant or opposed, including natural immunity after recovering from a case of COVID, relatively low risk because of one's age and concerns about long-term side effects of the vaccine. Although he acknowledged that the vaccine not only offers individual protection against COVID but also contributes to herd immunity, he argued that individual choice should be respected.
Tucker attributed the politicization of the pandemic to government policies that infringed on such choices, like lockdowns and school closures. He believes that the current backlash against unvaccinated individuals will only deepen their distrust in public health officials. "Things have gotten so intense, and the Biden administration has literally demonized and blamed the whole pandemic on the unvaccinated," he said.
Some local businesses have recently reinstated mask mandates for customers, prompting some vaccinated Austinites to express frustration toward the unvaccinated. (BookPeople/Facebook)
The bright side
Travis County is outperforming Texas in terms of its vaccination rate, with nearly 63% of its population 12 and older fully vaccinated compared to around 52% statewide, according to the Department of State Health Services. But entrenched vaccine hesitancy means that Austin Public Health will likely struggle to reach its goal vaccination rate of 70% by Labor Day.
Still, all hope is not lost. The Central Texas Vaccine Collaborative, which organized 95 vaccine outreach events this month, saw the percentage of first-dose penetration increase 1.7%, on average, over the last two weeks, Travis County Fire Chief Ken Bailey said recently.
(Travis County Commissioners Court)
VaxTogether Austin, a volunteer organization that connects individuals to vaccine appointments, has also seen progress in recent weeks. When demand started to taper off in June, the organization shifted to more targeted outreach to communities with lower vaccination rates as well as vaccine education, offering Spanish and Arabic interpreters at clinics and debuting a peer-to-peer texting campaign to field questions about the vaccine ahead of such events.
"I think this kind of one-on-one work is really where it's at now," representative Katie Van Winkle said. "It's more time-intensive … but I think it's well worth it."
The recent shift to Stage 4 and discussion of the Delta variant may also boost vaccine demand. More than 70 people attended a VaxTogether Austin clinic at Covington Middle School in Southwest Austin on Monday of last week without appointments. "That's a clear increase in walk-up traffic over our July trends," Van Winkle wrote in a follow-up email.
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Bruce McCandless II's untethered spacewalk made history in 1984. The red stripes above his knees were the only way that NASA could determine which astronaut was Bruce and which was his fellow spacewalker, Bob Stewart. (NASA)
'Wonders All Around' is a new book by Austinite Bruce McCandless III about his dad, the astronaut Bruce McCandless II. (Bruce McCandless III)
I met McCandless III, who lives in Austin with his wife Pati, for a coffee a few months ago, thanks to the introduction from a mutual friend. As we talked about losing our dads, being writers and parents and living in Austin while still dealing with COVID, his dad's famous flight didn't come up, but the process of writing such an epic biography of a complex, only recently passed man was something worth unpacking over coffee.
I hadn't read the book yet, but over the next few weeks, I got to know the McCandless family in such a sweet way that I wanted to write a little about the book here to perhaps inspire you to seek out a copy of "Wonders All Around."
As much as this is a book about space, it's also a book about grief. And persistence. And stoicism. And masculinity and maternality.
The elder McCandless died in 2017, just a few years after losing his wife, Bernice, to cancer.
This passing of the torch from father to son left the younger McCandless inspired to take on this decades-long narrative. McCandless III sets the tone for the book with a memory of the family sitting around the dinner table at their home outside Johnson Space Center near Houston in the mid 1970s, when his dad, who joined NASA in 1966 at the age of 28, wasn't sure he'd ever actually make it to space.
"Our dinners were somber affairs. We ate around a rectangular Formica table in the breakfast nook. Tracy and I sat on benches padded with orange vinyl cushions. Mom and Dad occupied faux-Spanish style chairs with green felt upholstery. Despite the informal, Howard Johnson's-at-the-airport feel of the furnishings, there was a tension in the air that set in right around the time the frozen string beans started steaming. I had the feeling that my sister and I had forgotten to do something important, though I couldn't figure out what it was, or that judgment had been rendered on us and we'd been found guilty of … something — again, it was unclear what. Horseplay was prohibited. The TV and all sources of music or other frivolity were turned off, and singing was strictly forbidden. The only sound came from the aquarium pump. My father had a 100-gallon tank along the wall behind his chair. Sometimes the big plecostomus would attach itself by its mouth to the glass facing us, and I imagined it sucking all the oxygen out of the room."
Imagining what it must have been like to require oxygen to survive, not in outer space but in the living room with your family, sets up the story of the McCandless ancestors, including a guy who was killed by Wild Bill Hickok and the author's grandfather, who was an admiral in the U.S. Navy.
No pressure, Bruce.
It was fascinating to read about the 18 years that Bruce McCandless II worked for NASA before he finally had his first flight, which debuted the Manned Maneuvering Unit, a jet-fueled backpack that he and Ed Whitsett Jr. spent so many years developing. (That's the joystick-controlled machine he's wearing in that mind-bending poster that hung on millions of Americans' walls over the following decade.)
The author McCandless has the unenviable task of trying to put into words what that flight must have felt like. His dad flew 150 feet away from the shuttle Challenger, which would, of course, break into a million little pieces just a few years later.
When President Reagan called the shuttle to congratulate the astronauts that day in 1984, the command center set up a demonstration space walk to give the president a live view of McCandless through the shuttle window.
Bruce McCandless II, trains with Kathy Sullivan, right, in preparation to launch the Hubble Space Telescope. (NASA)
The only problem was, there wasn't much fuel left. McCandless went out anyway, trying to stay within 10-15 feet of the spacecraft. He got into position and turned off the unit to preserve propellant. After the president said a few words and the video switched off, McCandless turned on the unit and "looked for the closest piece of the orbiter, pointed at it, put the hand controller in +X (and) got a sort of sighing noise as it accelerated in that direction." He ran out of fuel just as he grabbed onto a rail on the orbiter. Hand over hand, he brought himself back to the donning station.
It's that kind of suspense that made this book so thrilling to read.
There's space tension like when McCandless is operating as CAPCOM, the only person talking to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin while they are walking on the surface of the moon, and his commander wants him to break protocol and call them back early, even though there are no signs of distress.
The book is also so touching. I cried while reading about the declining health of Bernice, who survived so many astronaut wife struggles over the years and at the end of her life remained a loving partner and mother.
Bruce McCandless was a Navy pilot who was picked to join NASA in 1966. His first space flight wasn't until 1984. (NASA)
It's easy to forget that McCandless II had an entirely other memorable historic moment—launching the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990—and this one seems to have struck an even deeper chord with McCandless III.
The Hubble launch was McCandless' second and final flight. He was 52 and had worked at NASA for 24 years.
McCandless II spends the last chapters of the book making a compelling case that his dad's work to fix and update the Hubble are among the greatest achievements to science. He continued to work on Hubble for another two decades after retiring from NASA through his work at Lockheed Martin.
Bruce McCandless, left, and the flight crew that launched the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990. He was 52 years old. (NASA)
He was the "nuts, bolts, screws, and wires guy," the auto mechanic rather than the scientist, who kept the telescope going 340 miles above Earth for more than twice its life expectancy. The Hubble has been cited in more than 18,000 scientific papers and has revealed countless secrets and unsolved mysteries from around the universe and beyond.
"The size, shape, and sheer spectral weirdness of the images boggle the imagination and make prophets and dreamers of us all," McCandless writes toward the end of "Wonders All Around. "Some of us pay therapists to tell us we're important and unique. Then we check in with Hubble so the satellite can inform us just how galactically marginal we all are. The truth is somewhere in the middle."
What a beautiful reminder.
