"Nuzzo and Hanage both say they expect the gap in deaths by political affiliation to shrink with time. As more Americans survive COVID infections, their chances of death from subsequent bouts with COVID will decrease. But Nuzzo says, new people are being born every day, and others are aging into different risk categories. Vaccination will likely remain an important tool for controlling COVID into the future. "The fact that we haven't gotten to the bottom of this hesitation," she warns, "is setting us up for bigger problems." And Hanage foresees even deeper problems if a subset of far-right politicians are willing to "take vaccines and turn them into a wedge issue for political gain." He worries that deeply Republican parts of the country will soon start to refuse vital childhood vaccines, such as the measles, mumps and rubella shot, which prevent outbreaks of other infectious diseases. "It's part of the long-term damage that happens when you have politicians relentlessly trying to denigrate it and turn it into a political football," he says."