Published July 26. 2021 12:01AM In an article by Jay Reeves of the AP, "With pandemic worsening in U.S., surgeon general worried," (July 19), we learn that “90 million eligible Americans…particularly conservative, rural white people” have refused to receive free vaccinations against the COVID-19 virus. Their life-threatening rejection is mostly political; their loyalty to Trump is unimpeachable, and even the slightest defection on any issue threatens their warped view of the supremacy of the white race, politicized Evangelical Christianity, and guns. Many poor and rural whites are bound to Trump’s racist politics because they fear any infringement on white privileges would make them social inferiors to those who do not look like them.