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Mrs Whiggins

By Mrs Whiggins
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I'd just like to point out that neither myself nor any of my fellow nurses, fellow advanced nurse practitioners, and other healthcare providers ever swore an oath that we would lay down our lives for

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Welp, it finally happened. I snapped in public today. I went into work for a bit this morning because I’m trying to figure out the safest way to host physicians we are recruiting given our CV-19 sit

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I don't really know what to say anymore tbh. What happened last night is hard to put into words for anyone who hasn't worked in a hospital healthcare setting. Just unreal. Everyone is getting fucked.

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DonkeyCigars

DonkeyCigars 143

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Posted (edited)
16 minutes ago, Captainant said:

GOP as king george, eh? Surprising angle to take lol

I thought it worked because Georgia was named after him and obviously the main joke of "You'll be back".

It's also funny because, like with America, they won't be back and are forever gone due to demographics, but will also keep some vestigial qualities from the GOP always, like Americans have with Anglo/Saxon/English.

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pacman

pacman 7,371

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Posted (edited)
On 4/29/2021 at 1:37 PM, MC Fresh Breath said:

 

 

https://fortune.com/2021/04/28/covid-vaccine-tracker-update-us-state-by-state-pfizer-moderna-johnson-and-johnson-data-coronavirus-vaccines-april-2021/spacer.png

So there is a tracking device in the vaccine..says so right there

covid-19 ... tracker

/Don Wagner

Edited by pacman
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MC Fresh Breath

MC Fresh Breath 4,074

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Good news

Quote

 

CORONAVIRUS
Coronavirus Vaccine Updates: FDA expected to authorize Pfizer vaccine for ages 12-15 this week
COVID-19 Live Updates, News and Information
By Eyewitness News
Monday, May 3, 2021 7:09AM

NEW YORK (WABC) -- The FDA could expand COVID vaccines for 12-to-15-year-olds as early as this week.

Health experts say the agency is expected to authorize Pfizer's drug for that age group any day now.

The decision would allow middle school students and all high school students to get the shots.

Pfizer says clinical trials showed the vaccine was 100% effective for 12-to-15 year-olds.

If authorized, that age group may start receiving the Pfizer vaccine later this month.

 

https://abc7ny.com/covid-vaccine-india-coronavirus-charges/10572704/

 

My oldest will turn 12 this summer.  Will have him signed up as soon as I can.

 

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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32,429

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Even Mt. Everest is not immune (no pun) from the politicization of Covid.

https://defector.com/everest-base-camp-is-in-the-midst-of-a-covid-19-outbreak/

 

Quote

Over the past decade, Mount Everest has been beset by a steadily increasing amount of climbers, with a record 382 summit permits awarded in 2019. The pandemic wiped out the numbers for 2020, since peak Everest summit season stretches from mid-April to late May, but this year, tourists have flocked back to the (allegedly) tallest mountain in the world at a rather ominous time. The COVID-19 situation in the Himalayas is worse now than it was one year ago, yet 2021 could be Everest’s busiest year on record. You can probably see where this is going.

 

Quote

Everest sits astride the Nepal-China border, and since China has closed off access to its side because of the coronavirus, the already-more popular Nepal route has become the only way for climbers to get to the mountain. Nepalese authorities decided to open Everest up for a full spring climbing season this past winter, when COVID cases subsided to their lowest point of the pandemic. Tourism is a critical part of Nepal’s economy, and only 47,000 people visited in 2020 compared to the 12 million who came a year earlier.

 

Quote

“We have no other options,” Nepal tourism chief Rudra Singh Tamang told the New York Times. “We need to save the mountaineering economy.” Climbers initially had to isolate for seven days upon reaching Kathmandu, though Nepalese authorities relaxed that restriction right as the season began, mandating only a negative test result. That regulation solves some of the worry of infections being imported into the country, since the trek from the capital to Base Camp takes over a week. Even then, climbers told Outside magazine that enforcement of any restrictions was “virtually nonexistent.”

 

Spoiler

The mountain’s opening didn’t convince everyone to risk getting caught in a possible COVID surge, and several prominent outfitters canceled planned treks to Everest. “We don’t have confidence in Tibet opening for the spring,” Alpenglow Expeditions founder Adrian Ballinger wrote. “We don’t believe we can safely run an Everest climb in the current circumstances from the Nepal side.” Still, the Nepalese government handed out 408 permits to foreign climbers, up from 2019’s all-time high. A full Everest season would happen, damn the consequences.

Those consequences are here: Base Camp is in the midst of an outbreak. The first reported positive case came last Wednesday, when a Norwegian climber had to be airlifted to Kathmandu. He was quickly followed by at least three other COVID-positive people. “We can be almost sure there have been other cases already this year that were misdiagnosed or hidden, and that there will be more,” Ballinger told the Washington Post. Roughly 1,000 people—climbers, but also porters, cooks, and guides—are jammed together at Base Camp, which means there are ideal conditions for the disease to spread in one of the most isolated parts of the world, at a time when all local healthcare systems are strained to the breaking point. ExplorersWeb reported that at least 20 people had been helicoptered out, and someone at Base Camp ominously told Everest blogger Alan Arnette “the situation is much worse than anyone knows in the outside world.”

The problem seems to be compounded by Nepalese authorities’ denial that a problem exists on Everest, even as the rest of country has returned to a lockdown. Tourism officials have continued to insist that most evacuations and reports of illness are not COVID-19, but pneumonia. ExplorersWeb also reported that the government has also threatened to pull future permits from any team or organization “if they spread news of the COVID outbreak at Base Camp,” while also threatening similar penalties to those who post unflattering photos of crowds or trash.

Still, despite all the ominous signs—helicopter pilots are reportedly evacuating an average of eight people per day—climbers continue to arrive in Base Camp, including famed alpinist and ultrarunner Kilian Jornet. With Nepalese authorities fixated on suppressing all the information they can, and hundreds of antsy climbers already committed enough to travel all the way to the foot of the mountain, it seems the season won’t be called off. Some teams are booking it out of Base Camp and rotating up the mountain faster than expected, which might solve the COVID-19 problem while simultaneously making it harder for climbers to summit a mountain that killed 11 people in 2019.

 

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Js1

Js1 85,576

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Posted
4 minutes ago, NameAlreadyInUse said:

What in the actual fuck?  It's bad to trust science over your gut, now?

Yes, because science (and reality...and facts) have a liberal bias.  Duh. 

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deac_tracy

deac_tracy 516

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On 4/29/2021 at 2:58 PM, jimmyjazz said:

So proud of Texas.  Roughly #36 out of 50 states in vaccine penetration.  I'm beaming. 

What's funny is Texas's vaccine penetration rate is boosted by the wealthy Mexican nationals who come there for their shot. They'd probably be bottom 10 otherwise.

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The Dog

The Dog 44,140

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48 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

I... uh... I... woah. My brain hurts now. What is RVM?

Red Voice Media - a utoob channel hosted by someone named Stew Peters. Appears to be for those who think OAN is too liberal for their tastes...

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NWBuck

NWBuck 8,586

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6 minutes ago, OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys said:

tennessee is a bunch of fundies and snake handlers. this is no surprise.

Fascinating study by Vandy's Jonathan Metzl comparing Kentucky (which accepted Medicare expansion and other ACA funding) and Tennessee (which didn't). It was covered in depth in his book, but he also talks about it in this article.

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Js1

Js1 85,576

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49 minutes ago, Aqua Buddha said:

Darker the shade of purple, the more likely people are to get vaxxed.  Basically reads like a red/blue map.

 

map-1050.png

 

image.png.0c7d6fd7f15b010cf221ba9025b70f16.png

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gmr548

gmr548 16,616

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Source on this one?

I saw it in a NYT article this morning. I believe their source on the graphic was the CDC. I’m not sure of the methodology. Some of this is pretty counter intuitive. Similar countries in rural MN and IA are probably going to have similar vaccination rates, for example.
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OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys

OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys 2,082

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1 minute ago, gmr548 said:


I saw it in a NYT article this morning. I believe their source on the graphic was the CDC. I’m not sure of the methodology. Some of this is pretty counter intuitive. Similar countries in rural MN and IA are probably going to have similar vaccination rates, for example.

G Elliot was trashing it this morning based on the methodology.  

 

 

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babysdaddy

babysdaddy 2,728

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21 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/health/covid-herd-immunity-vaccine.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

 

So that map is an estimated map of people that would 'definitely' or 'probably' get the vaccine and the source is the HHS but I couldn't' find a link to the data or date (pretty important giving the shifting of attitudes over the last 6 months)of the data.  

 

 

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washparkhorn

washparkhorn 9,939

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10 minutes ago, babysdaddy said:

So that map is an estimated map of people that would 'definitely' or 'probably' get the vaccine and the source is the HHS but I couldn't' find a link to the data or date (pretty important giving the shifting of attitudes over the last 6 months)of the data.  

I did a bit of research (good luck on your own search) and it appears we added a question to the Household Pulse Survey:

Using survey data collected in March, the federal government recently created new estimates of hesitancy for every county and state in the United States. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services modelers used demographic factors and state-level responses of adults who said they would “probably not” or “definitely not” get a Covid-19 vaccine from the Household Pulse Survey, then used Census data to estimate the share of residents who might say that in every county.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/17/us/vaccine-hesitancy-politics.html

 

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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32,429

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https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/05/the-people-who-wont-get-the-vaccine/618765/

 

Quote

Several days ago, the mega-popular podcast host Joe Rogan advised his young listeners to skip the COVID-19 vaccine. “I think you should get vaccinated if you’re vulnerable,” Rogan said. “But if you’re 21 years old, and you say to me, ‘Should I get vaccinated?’ I’ll go, ‘No.’”

Rogan’s comments drew widespread condemnation. But his view is surprisingly common. One in four Americans says they don’t plan to take the COVID-19 vaccine, and about half of Republicans under 50 say they won’t get a vaccine. This partisan vaccine gap is already playing out in the real world. The average number of daily shots has declined 20 percent in the past two weeks, largely because states with larger Trump vote shares are falling off the pace.

 

Quote

What are they thinking, these vaccine-hesitant, vaccine-resistant, and COVID-apathetic? I wanted to know. So I posted an invitation on Twitter for anybody who wasn’t planning to get vaccinated to email me and explain why. In the past few days, I spoke or corresponded with more than a dozen such people. I told them that I was staunchly pro-vaccine, but this wouldn’t be a takedown piece. I wanted to produce an ethnography of a position I didn’t really understand.

The people I spoke with were all under 50. A few of them self-identified as Republican, and none of them claimed the modern Democratic Party as their political home. Most said they weren’t against all vaccines; they were just a “no” on this vaccine. They were COVID-19 no-vaxxers, not overall anti-vaxxers.

 

Quote

Many people I spoke with said they trusted their immune system to protect them. “Nobody ever looks at it from the perspective of a guy who’s like me,” Bradley Baca, a 39-year-old truck driver in Colorado, told me. “As an essential worker, my life was never going to change in the pandemic, and I knew I was going to get COVID no matter what. Now I think I’ve got the antibodies, so why would I take a risk on the vaccine?”

Some had already recovered from COVID-19 and considered the vaccine unnecessary. “In December 2020 I tested positive and experienced many symptoms,” said Derek Perrin, a 31-year-old service technician in Connecticut. “Since I have already survived one recorded bout with this virus, I see no reason to take a vaccine that has only been approved for emergency use. I trust my immune system more than this current experiment.”

 

Spoiler

Others were worried that the vaccines might have long-term side effects. “As a Black American descendant of slavery, I am bottom caste, in terms of finances,” Georgette Russell, a 40-year-old resident of New Jersey, told me. “The fact that there is no way to sue the government or the pharmaceutical company if I have any adverse reactions is highly problematic to me.”

Many people said they had read up on the risk of COVID-19 to people under 50 and felt that the pandemic didn’t pose a particularly grave threat. “The chances of me dying from a car accident are higher than my dying of COVID,” said Michael Searle, a 36-year-old who owns a consulting firm in Austin, Texas. “But it’s not like I don’t get in my car.”

And many others said that perceived liberal overreach had pushed them to the right. “Before March 2020, I was a solid progressive Democrat,” Jenin Younes, a 37-year-old attorney, said. “I am so disturbed by the Democrats’ failure to recognize the importance of civil liberties. I’ll vote for anyone who takes a strong stand for civil liberties and doesn’t permit the erosion of our fundamental rights that we are seeing now.” Baca, the Colorado truck driver, also told me he didn’t vote much before the pandemic, but the perception of liberal overreach had a strong politicizing effect. “When COVID hit, I saw rights being taken away. So in 2020, I voted for the first time in my life, and I voted all the way Republican down the ballot.”

After many conversations and email exchanges, I came to understand what I think of as the deep story of the American no-vaxxer. And I think the best way to see it clearly is to contrast it with my own story.

My view of the vaccines begins with my view of the pandemic. I really don’t want to get COVID-19. Not only do I want to avoid an illness with uncertain long-term implications, but I also don’t want to pass it along to somebody in a high-risk category, such as my grandmother or an immunocompromised stranger. For more than a year, I radically changed my life to avoid infection. So I was thrilled to hear that the vaccines were effective at blocking severe illness and transmission. I eagerly signed up to take both my shots, even after reading all about the side effects.

The under-50 no-vaxxers’ deep story has a very different starting place. It begins like this:

The coronavirus is a wildly overrated threat. Yes, it’s appropriate and good to protect old and vulnerable people. But I’m not old or vulnerable. If I get it, I’ll be fine. In fact, maybe I have gotten it, and I am fine. I don’t know why I should consider this disease more dangerous than driving a car, a risky thing I do every day without a moment’s worry. Liberals, Democrats, and public-health elites have been so wrong so often, we’d be better off doing the opposite of almost everything they say.

Just as my COVID-19 story shapes my vaccine eagerness, this group’s COVID-19 story shapes their vaccine skepticism. Again and again, I heard variations on this theme:

I don’t need some novel pharmaceutical product to give me permission to do the things I’m already doing. This isn’t even an FDA-approved vaccine; it’s authorized for an emergency. Well, I don’t consider COVID-19 a personal emergency. So why would I sign up to be an early guinea pig for a therapy that I don’t need, whose long-term effects we don’t understand? I’d rather bet on my immune system than on Big Pharma.

For both yes-vaxxers like me and the no-vaxxers I spoke with, feelings about the vaccine are intertwined with feelings about the pandemic.

Although I think I’m right about the vaccines, the truth is that my thinking on this issue is motivated. I canceled vacations, canceled my wedding, avoided indoor dining, and mostly stayed home for 15 months. All that sucked. I am rooting for the vaccines to work.

But the no-vaxxers I spoke with just don’t care. They’ve traveled, eaten in restaurants, gathered with friends inside, gotten COVID-19 or not gotten COVID-19, survived, and decided it was no big deal. What’s more, they’ve survived while flouting the advice of the CDC, the WHO, Anthony Fauci, Democratic lawmakers, and liberals, whom they don’t trust to give them straight answers on anything virus-related.

The no-vaxxers’ reasoning is motivated too. Specifically, they’re motivated to distrust public-health authorities who they’ve decided are a bunch of phony neurotics, and they’re motivated to see the vaccines as a risky pharmaceutical experiment, rather than as a clear breakthrough that might restore normal life (which, again, they barely stopped living). This is the no-vaxxer deep story in a nutshell: I trust my own cells more than I trust pharmaceutical goop; I trust my own mind more than I trust liberal elites‪.

So what will change their minds?

I cannot imagine that any amount of hectoring or shaming, or proclamations from the public-health or Democratic communities, will make much of a difference for this group. “I’ve lost all faith in the media and public-health officials,” Myles Pindus, a 24-year-old in Brooklyn, said. “It might sound crazy, but I’d rather go to Twitter and check out a few people I trust than take guidance from the CDC, or WHO, or Fauci,” Baca, the Colorado truck driver, told me. Other no-vaxxers offered similar appraisals of various Democrats and liberals, but they were typically less printable.

From my conversations, I see three ways to persuade no-vaxxers: make it more convenient to get a shot; make it less convenient to not get a shot; or encourage them to think more socially.

1. Try something like “DoorDash for vaccines.”

To get people to participate in an activity they don’t really care about, you make it as easy and tantalizing as possible. Some people have already suggested offering money, free food, or even lottery tickets in exchange for vaccination. But one source who asked to remain anonymous suggested that state health departments should offer something like DoorDash for vaccines.

With any new technology, the early adopters are the ones most willing to tolerate glitches and a bad experience. That’s fine when supply is limited, but as you try to get to mass market, you need to perfect the product and experience.

All of which to say: Cities should start to roll out a vaccine in-home service, which people can book on short notice. Providers come to you, and maybe bring you some sort of gift along with the vaccine. Cities should have enough capacity and staff to do that at this point, and a service such as this would be key to getting young people in particular to take it.

2. Make it suck more to not be vaccinated.

Governments and companies may find that soft bribery is the best way to get the no-vaxxers to the clinics. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, for example, has linked her state reopening policies to progress in shots, letting restaurants and bars increase their occupancy once 60 percent of the state has been vaccinated, and promising to lift mask orders when 70 percent of Michiganders have received both doses.

Millions of people want to go to sporting events, attend concerts, or travel internationally. If those who cannot prove that they’ve been vaccinated are denied service, I expect that some will sign up for shots purely as a means of reengaging in their favorite activities. “If all or most countries instituted vaccine passports, that might change [my mind],” Younes, the attorney, told me.

But the cultural backlash against domestic restrictions could be prodigious. If blue-state governors and sports stadiums deny economic activities to the unvaccinated while red-state stadiums allow anybody to sit at a bar or in the bleachers, it will deepen the culture-war tensions between scolding liberals and accommodating conservatives in a way that might not be good for Democrats politically, even if they have the upper hand in the public-health argument.

3. “What if natural immunity isn’t enough to protect your grandmother?”

The most common argument against the vaccines is: My immune system is good enough for me. One counterargument is: That’s right, but the vaccines are even better at protecting others.

Even for people who have already recovered from COVID-19, getting fully vaccinated strengthens the antibody and T-cell protection against the disease and likely provides superior protection from variants that can pierce our natural immunity.

Why do more levels of protection matter? Because the vaccines aren’t just about building a defensive wall around safe young bodies. We’re also collectively building a wall around the more vulnerable members of society. And little holes in the wall can lead to unnecessary deaths.

In April, the CDC reported that an unvaccinated health-care worker set off an outbreak in a mostly vaccinated Kentucky nursing home. Several vaccinated seniors got sick and two vaccinated residents died. To be absolutely clear: The vaccines worked to protect most residents. But no vaccine is perfect, and the COVID-19 vaccines won’t stop all infections, especially for some people with weak immune systems.

I made this case to several no-vaxxers: Your grandparents, elderly neighbors, and immunocompromised friends will be safer if you’re vaccinated, even if you’ve already been infected. I played with the “COVID is no worse than driving” metaphor that many of them offered. I agree that driving is acceptably safe for most people, I said. But imagine, I added, if you could have a forward collision warning system installed in your car for free? An already-pretty-safe activity would become an even safer activity; and what’s more, you’d be protecting other people on the road at minimal cost to yourself.

I can’t tell you this argument got a lot of people to drop the phone, sprint to a vaccine clinic, and sign up for a Fauci tattoo on their arm. The truth is that I’m not sure that I changed anybody’s mind. But I can honestly say that this argument gave several no-vaxxers a bit of pause. They responded by talking about chains of transmission throughout the community, rather than focusing on their own immune system. Several of them asked to see evidence of my position so that they could examine it for themselves.

The United States suffers from a deficit of imagining the lives of other people. This is true of my side: Vaccinated liberals don’t take much time to calmly hear out the logic of those refusing the shots. But it’s also true of the no-vaxxers, who might reconsider their view if they grasped the far-ranging consequences of their private vaccination decisions. Instead of shaming and hectoring, our focus should be on broadening their circle of care: Your cells might be good enough to protect you, but the shots are better to protect grandpa.

 

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Neonmoon

Neonmoon 38,130

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Just now, DaysOff said:

Why do these fucking idiots keep saying it's not FDA approved? Would it be going in arms if it wasn't. EUA is still takes FDA approval.

People will latch on to any reason to support their own side. 

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gyroprotagonist

gyroprotagonist 2,595

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2 minutes ago, DaysOff said:

Why do these fucking idiots keep saying it's not FDA approved? Would it be going in arms if it wasn't. EUA is still takes FDA approval.

Quote

What is an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA)?
An Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) is a mechanism to facilitate the availability and use of medical countermeasures, including vaccines, during public health emergencies, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic. Under an EUA, FDA may allow the use of unapproved medical products, or unapproved uses of approved medical products in an emergency to diagnose, treat, or prevent serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions when certain statutory criteria have been met, including that there are no adequate, approved, and available alternatives. Taking into consideration input from the FDA, manufacturers decide whether and when to submit an EUA request to FDA.

Once submitted, FDA will evaluate an EUA request and determine whether the relevant statutory criteria are met, taking into account the totality of the scientific evidence about the vaccine that is available to FDA.

What are the plans for continued monitoring of COVID-19 vaccines authorized by FDA for emergency use?
FDA expects vaccine manufacturers to include in their EUA requests a plan for active follow-up for safety, including deaths, hospitalizations, and other serious or clinically significant adverse events, among individuals who receive the vaccine under an EUA, to inform ongoing benefit-risk determinations to support continuation of the EUA.

FDA also expects manufacturers who receive an EUA to continue their clinical trials to obtain additional safety and effectiveness information and pursue licensure (approval).

 

because it did not go through the standard process, i guess?  this is from the FDA.gov website

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Anastasis

Anastasis 23,483

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Posted (edited)

An EUA is technically not an approval.  But that is just a terminology semantical thing imo.

 

Looks like FDA is going to authorize use for PFE shot down to 12 years old within the next week or two.  Got absolutely zero problem with anyone that puts their kid in line for that as soon as it rolls out, but we will be hanging back with our 12 year old until at probably early August at the earliest.  The real inflection point in terms of mortality risk is ~15. 

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JimmyJames

JimmyJames 12,271

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3 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/05/the-people-who-wont-get-the-vaccine/618765/

 

 

 

 

  Hide contents

Others were worried that the vaccines might have long-term side effects. “As a Black American descendant of slavery, I am bottom caste, in terms of finances,” Georgette Russell, a 40-year-old resident of New Jersey, told me. “The fact that there is no way to sue the government or the pharmaceutical company if I have any adverse reactions is highly problematic to me.”

Many people said they had read up on the risk of COVID-19 to people under 50 and felt that the pandemic didn’t pose a particularly grave threat. “The chances of me dying from a car accident are higher than my dying of COVID,” said Michael Searle, a 36-year-old who owns a consulting firm in Austin, Texas. “But it’s not like I don’t get in my car.”

And many others said that perceived liberal overreach had pushed them to the right. “Before March 2020, I was a solid progressive Democrat,” Jenin Younes, a 37-year-old attorney, said. “I am so disturbed by the Democrats’ failure to recognize the importance of civil liberties. I’ll vote for anyone who takes a strong stand for civil liberties and doesn’t permit the erosion of our fundamental rights that we are seeing now.” Baca, the Colorado truck driver, also told me he didn’t vote much before the pandemic, but the perception of liberal overreach had a strong politicizing effect. “When COVID hit, I saw rights being taken away. So in 2020, I voted for the first time in my life, and I voted all the way Republican down the ballot.”

After many conversations and email exchanges, I came to understand what I think of as the deep story of the American no-vaxxer. And I think the best way to see it clearly is to contrast it with my own story.

My view of the vaccines begins with my view of the pandemic. I really don’t want to get COVID-19. Not only do I want to avoid an illness with uncertain long-term implications, but I also don’t want to pass it along to somebody in a high-risk category, such as my grandmother or an immunocompromised stranger. For more than a year, I radically changed my life to avoid infection. So I was thrilled to hear that the vaccines were effective at blocking severe illness and transmission. I eagerly signed up to take both my shots, even after reading all about the side effects.

The under-50 no-vaxxers’ deep story has a very different starting place. It begins like this:

The coronavirus is a wildly overrated threat. Yes, it’s appropriate and good to protect old and vulnerable people. But I’m not old or vulnerable. If I get it, I’ll be fine. In fact, maybe I have gotten it, and I am fine. I don’t know why I should consider this disease more dangerous than driving a car, a risky thing I do every day without a moment’s worry. Liberals, Democrats, and public-health elites have been so wrong so often, we’d be better off doing the opposite of almost everything they say.

Just as my COVID-19 story shapes my vaccine eagerness, this group’s COVID-19 story shapes their vaccine skepticism. Again and again, I heard variations on this theme:

I don’t need some novel pharmaceutical product to give me permission to do the things I’m already doing. This isn’t even an FDA-approved vaccine; it’s authorized for an emergency. Well, I don’t consider COVID-19 a personal emergency. So why would I sign up to be an early guinea pig for a therapy that I don’t need, whose long-term effects we don’t understand? I’d rather bet on my immune system than on Big Pharma.

For both yes-vaxxers like me and the no-vaxxers I spoke with, feelings about the vaccine are intertwined with feelings about the pandemic.

Although I think I’m right about the vaccines, the truth is that my thinking on this issue is motivated. I canceled vacations, canceled my wedding, avoided indoor dining, and mostly stayed home for 15 months. All that sucked. I am rooting for the vaccines to work.

But the no-vaxxers I spoke with just don’t care. They’ve traveled, eaten in restaurants, gathered with friends inside, gotten COVID-19 or not gotten COVID-19, survived, and decided it was no big deal. What’s more, they’ve survived while flouting the advice of the CDC, the WHO, Anthony Fauci, Democratic lawmakers, and liberals, whom they don’t trust to give them straight answers on anything virus-related.

The no-vaxxers’ reasoning is motivated too. Specifically, they’re motivated to distrust public-health authorities who they’ve decided are a bunch of phony neurotics, and they’re motivated to see the vaccines as a risky pharmaceutical experiment, rather than as a clear breakthrough that might restore normal life (which, again, they barely stopped living). This is the no-vaxxer deep story in a nutshell: I trust my own cells more than I trust pharmaceutical goop; I trust my own mind more than I trust liberal elites‪.

So what will change their minds?

I cannot imagine that any amount of hectoring or shaming, or proclamations from the public-health or Democratic communities, will make much of a difference for this group. “I’ve lost all faith in the media and public-health officials,” Myles Pindus, a 24-year-old in Brooklyn, said. “It might sound crazy, but I’d rather go to Twitter and check out a few people I trust than take guidance from the CDC, or WHO, or Fauci,” Baca, the Colorado truck driver, told me. Other no-vaxxers offered similar appraisals of various Democrats and liberals, but they were typically less printable.

From my conversations, I see three ways to persuade no-vaxxers: make it more convenient to get a shot; make it less convenient to not get a shot; or encourage them to think more socially.

1. Try something like “DoorDash for vaccines.”

To get people to participate in an activity they don’t really care about, you make it as easy and tantalizing as possible. Some people have already suggested offering money, free food, or even lottery tickets in exchange for vaccination. But one source who asked to remain anonymous suggested that state health departments should offer something like DoorDash for vaccines.

With any new technology, the early adopters are the ones most willing to tolerate glitches and a bad experience. That’s fine when supply is limited, but as you try to get to mass market, you need to perfect the product and experience.

All of which to say: Cities should start to roll out a vaccine in-home service, which people can book on short notice. Providers come to you, and maybe bring you some sort of gift along with the vaccine. Cities should have enough capacity and staff to do that at this point, and a service such as this would be key to getting young people in particular to take it.

2. Make it suck more to not be vaccinated.

Governments and companies may find that soft bribery is the best way to get the no-vaxxers to the clinics. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, for example, has linked her state reopening policies to progress in shots, letting restaurants and bars increase their occupancy once 60 percent of the state has been vaccinated, and promising to lift mask orders when 70 percent of Michiganders have received both doses.

Millions of people want to go to sporting events, attend concerts, or travel internationally. If those who cannot prove that they’ve been vaccinated are denied service, I expect that some will sign up for shots purely as a means of reengaging in their favorite activities. “If all or most countries instituted vaccine passports, that might change [my mind],” Younes, the attorney, told me.

But the cultural backlash against domestic restrictions could be prodigious. If blue-state governors and sports stadiums deny economic activities to the unvaccinated while red-state stadiums allow anybody to sit at a bar or in the bleachers, it will deepen the culture-war tensions between scolding liberals and accommodating conservatives in a way that might not be good for Democrats politically, even if they have the upper hand in the public-health argument.

3. “What if natural immunity isn’t enough to protect your grandmother?”

The most common argument against the vaccines is: My immune system is good enough for me. One counterargument is: That’s right, but the vaccines are even better at protecting others.

Even for people who have already recovered from COVID-19, getting fully vaccinated strengthens the antibody and T-cell protection against the disease and likely provides superior protection from variants that can pierce our natural immunity.

Why do more levels of protection matter? Because the vaccines aren’t just about building a defensive wall around safe young bodies. We’re also collectively building a wall around the more vulnerable members of society. And little holes in the wall can lead to unnecessary deaths.

In April, the CDC reported that an unvaccinated health-care worker set off an outbreak in a mostly vaccinated Kentucky nursing home. Several vaccinated seniors got sick and two vaccinated residents died. To be absolutely clear: The vaccines worked to protect most residents. But no vaccine is perfect, and the COVID-19 vaccines won’t stop all infections, especially for some people with weak immune systems.

I made this case to several no-vaxxers: Your grandparents, elderly neighbors, and immunocompromised friends will be safer if you’re vaccinated, even if you’ve already been infected. I played with the “COVID is no worse than driving” metaphor that many of them offered. I agree that driving is acceptably safe for most people, I said. But imagine, I added, if you could have a forward collision warning system installed in your car for free? An already-pretty-safe activity would become an even safer activity; and what’s more, you’d be protecting other people on the road at minimal cost to yourself.

I can’t tell you this argument got a lot of people to drop the phone, sprint to a vaccine clinic, and sign up for a Fauci tattoo on their arm. The truth is that I’m not sure that I changed anybody’s mind. But I can honestly say that this argument gave several no-vaxxers a bit of pause. They responded by talking about chains of transmission throughout the community, rather than focusing on their own immune system. Several of them asked to see evidence of my position so that they could examine it for themselves.

The United States suffers from a deficit of imagining the lives of other people. This is true of my side: Vaccinated liberals don’t take much time to calmly hear out the logic of those refusing the shots. But it’s also true of the no-vaxxers, who might reconsider their view if they grasped the far-ranging consequences of their private vaccination decisions. Instead of shaming and hectoring, our focus should be on broadening their circle of care: Your cells might be good enough to protect you, but the shots are better to protect grandpa.

 

Sounds like that dude had a conversation with a bunch of trolls and wrote an article about it.

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Captainant

Captainant 27,775

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12 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Today on Fox:  Biden is now an anti-vaxxer who does not believe in science, while Trump was in support of mask wearing, getting the population vaccinated and followed the science:

 

 

 

It's completely unsurprising how the DT thread is just an echo of whatever the fox news talking points of the day are

  • Hook 'Em 2
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Neonmoon

Neonmoon 38,130

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DT is just a revolving door of reverse engineered reasons not to get vaccinated or not wear a mask. Sometimes they use half-truths, parts of scientific studies misused by Fox News, Prager U videos, other random “studies” funded by right wing think tanks. 

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jimmyjazz

jimmyjazz 46,134

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1 minute ago, Neonmoon said:

DT is just a revolving door of reverse engineered reasons not to get vaccinated or not wear a mask. Sometimes they use half-truths, parts of scientific studies misused by Fox News, Prager U videos, other random “studies” funded by right wing think tanks. 

I listened to a bit of the Buck Sexton Conspiracy Hour the other night.  Holy smokes, the lengths to which alt-righters will go to justify not doing anything that smacks of intelligent behavior is mind-boggling.

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