I took it as a commentary on people not accepting clear scientific evidence as it pertains to COVID and vaccinations.
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While I do believe that having a better understanding of the science would help in some cases, I agree with you that the lack of trust is absolutely a factor in why so many are choosing to go unvaccinated despite research showing the advantages of vaccination (especially around the percentage of unvaccinated hospitalizations and deaths).
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I donât see how someone can look at data showing 3 out of 22 people on ventilators in a hospital system are vaccinated when 75% of the people in the state are vaccinated, and still not get vaccinated unless theyâre scientifically illiterate (to put it politely).
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So I really donât understand the no-trust argument. That is a stated lack of trust of the government (both the last admin and current, I assume). But also a lack of trust of the vast (vast!) majority of physicians, epidemiologists, science researchers, etc???
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This is why media, which used to be written to 6th-grade level, is now pitched at a 4th-grade level.
Itâs an enormously serious problem, especially as inability to read well and think through things well hits increasingly complex matters in everyday life. It was very interesting â some time ago I was debating vax stuff on LinkedIn, which, to my surprise, the angry antivax bros had found as a platform. A brilliant thing about arguments there is that you can see who people are and what their history is. And I found that your average antivax bro was ex-mil, middle aged, âlibertarianâ (perfectly happy to use and draw all public services incl mil pension/insurance but much antigovernment posturing), and worked in a technical field, BS-level. He wasnât anti-science at all, but he had no idea how academic science works or how pharmaceuticals show up at the pharmacy, and was sure that complexity was unnecessary, featherbedding, and/or some other kind of scam, in part designed to tell him he was stupid. His living depended on kludging things together fast and at budget, working magic to keep the lights on and patting the customer on the head, and he didnât see why all these fancy âscientistsâ werenât doing the same unless they were incompetent or frauds. And heâd cite papers. He just couldnât read them, which meant that when they torpedoed his point (as they often did), he couldnât know. And on top of it all he had a bristling macho problem that made it extremely difficult to say, âyeah, I have no idea how all this works, and I am in fact not in control here and no judge of whoâs zooming who.â
You hit that kind of complexity, which is all over in our lives, and the partial illiteracy and scientific illiteracy combined become a bad problem. Because in the face of a potentially humiliating complexity, itâs incredibly easy to sell these guys on bad ideas that appeal to their combined desire for âIâm in the knowâ scientism, little-guy heroes, gadgets, and macho/âindependenceâ, and then theyâre very forceful propagandists, because theyâll just show up shout conspiracies and non-science at people.
But I donât see that itâs a new problem. Sinclair Lewis had it pegged a hundred years ago, Asimov 60 years ago.
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I think thereâs also the overarching general âknowledgeâ embraced by a significant segment of the âpublicâ that pharma drugs take a long time to come to market bc of testing requirements as well as the issue with insurance companies refusing to pay for experimental treatments or ones that maybe approved in the EU but not in the US. Not to mention all the lawyers advertising for âentitled compensationâ due to injury from pharma products. The opioid crisis is obviously one of the more recent. It contributes to some peopleâs distrust of a vaccine brought to market so quickly and with EUA.
Iâm not surprised at the segment of the population thatâs not interested in COVID vaccines as it probably has a fairly strong overlap with those that donât get yearly flu vaccines, shingles, or pneumonia vaccines. Many, many people in the country are pretty ârelaxedâ shall we say about their self health care as evidenced not only by vaccine indifference but poor eating and exercise habits, smoking, drinking, recreational drug use etcâŠ.
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Your stereotype doesnât match reality. The most unvaxxed in the country are the young, of all races. The military is one of the few groups with near universal vaccination rates. Vaccination rates rise with age, with the elderly heavily vaccinated, and the middle aged ( at least those over 35) mostly vaxxed. The 18-24 group is abysmal in vax rates.
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Sure. A lot of subset of bureaucracy and scam, which the pharmas havenât helped. I mean they are in fact very scammy and breathtakingly greedy, I donât think thatâs deniable. Itâs just really, really unfortunate now. EUA, thatâs just an acronym subbing in for âsketchâ, people are clearly uninterested in understanding what it means and why.
And the self-care, too. Francis Collins said something recently about his shock at how âwhateverâ people were about medical heroism vs. death, essentially, but heâs a very well-insulated guy. Lifeâs much more precarious for most than it was when he was a kid, thereâs far more inequality, and thereâs huge fatalism out there. People donât expect to be healthy, so they go YOLO, and death is tragic but not at all unexpected. Itâs a real regression. But heâs not seeing it from Bethesda.
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Yes, but the young arenât anti vaxxers. Theyâre procrastinators, or optimists, or lazy. They definitely arenât the group, as a whole, dissuadding folks with completely illogical conspiracy theories.
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I suspect that there is some overlap, but that the group that is loudest about spreading misinformation/distrust does not necessarily need to be representative of the population that is influenced & refusing vaccination. That is, there may be a very loud sub-group of middle-aged men who are anti-vaccine while the majority of middle-aged people realize the importance of vaccination & are vaccinated. However, this small but loud group of middle-aged men (assuming the anecdote correct) could have outsized influence on the young, who are at least risk and therefore possibly more susceptible to believing the risk of vaccination are higher than COVID.
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Thatâs the problem. They arenât looking at the data. Too bad they canât set aside their politics, or their long held suspicions. I guarantee they know people are dying and why. But stubbornness and willful ignorance is very hard to suspend.
I honestly donât know what else the government could do at this time to get people vaccinated. I get that there is a level of distrust among some people. But when we are approaching a MILLION dead in the US alone, at what point will the skeptics think âI keep hearing that these vaccines are saving people, and I personally know people who have been very sick or whoâve died. Maybe I should put aside my distrust and take care of myself.â? That people arenât getting vaccinated isnât the fault of the government.
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Youâre right. I would call not looking at data âscientific illiteracy.â
Though many of them will claim they are looking at data. What they donât care about is the source for their data. Or care that the source for their data even has a source themselves. Many Fact Check sites will say people seem to be making things up or seriously misreading things.
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Hereâs what the head of the Maine CDC wrote on Twitter:
"#DontLookUp is meant to be a wry take on impending catastrophe.
But I cannot think of a single scene that was so farcical as to be inconceivable. Not a scene where I thought, âThereâs no way that would ever happen.â
So much for satire."
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Perhaps, but the young donât often listen to the middle-aged. Moreover, the same vax disparity by age is found in Europe as well. I really doubt young Europeans are influenced by the middle-aged Americans that @Bennty seems to know. They may be loud, but they arenât that important statistically. If we want vax rates to substantially improve, we need to focus on those under 30, and particularly those under 25 years of age.
I am certain that the Fox News viewer demographic tends quite old, but apparently that didnât prevent the elderly from getting vaxxed ( at least 90%). The unvaxxed teens who are socializing are unlikely to be watching that news show. Ignore the pundits and try to reach the kids to improve vax rates meaningfully
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Youâve previously mentioned your familyâs difficulty with Covid, and I empathize with that. I wonder what the average Americanâs experience has been, and how that may influence their decisions.
The death toll of 800k is awful. Very sad. Those that do our own figuring may imagine how many stadiums full of people, how many 9/11âs this is, etc.
But this is 1 in 400 of our population, roughly. Positive cases are about 1 in 6.
The article below has an interesting graphic from a study that claims the average circle of friends (inclusive of family) is 150. This ranges from close friends (5) to acquaintances (500) to known faces (5000).
I havenât thought through the probabilities, but it seems the average person is not likely to have a victim of Covid in their circle of 150, but many Covid survivors in their 150. This surely has some effect on vaccine decisions of the aggregate population. Maybe the root of the age differential in vaxxing.
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However, some COVID-19 survivors have very unpleasant experiences (worse than any flu they may have gotten before) and/or long COVID issues.
Perhaps some people by chance happen to know only those who had asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases, with no long COVID. But that seems unlikely for most who know more than a few who had it.
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Yes, I know several people who had it who went to the ER. I also know of a few who were on ventilators. Unvaccinated.
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I lost several people in my workplace to covid in 2021. They may not be in my circle of 150, but if you work with someone for 25 years, you still care. Similarly, when I hear people in my office talk about their aunts and uncles and neighbors and their friends dying - itâs been dozens by now- I may not know them personally, but since I love my coworkers and they care, so do I.
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Much of my family is unvaccinated. Itâs very concerningâmy grandma had to be put on a ventilator and all of that just about a year ago due to COVID, and yet she still refuses to get the vaccine because âwell, she didnât die from it!â
It makes no sense to me, and itâs super frustrating because Iâm worried for her and my grandpaâs health. I myself am fully vaccinated and got the booster exactly 3 weeks ago.
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