Sunday, July 18, 2021

Vaccine hesitancy is "well-informed"

One of the people I know who's most opposed to the jab is also one of the smartest people I know.

But most vaccine skepticism, if by that we mean reluctance, is not based on conspiracy theorizing — it’s based on risk-benefit calculations. You may think it’s an innumerate calculation. But when you look at patterns of uptake in the United States, two factors stand out, factors that are larger in their effect than partisanship: age and density. The older you are and the denser your community, the more likely you are to be vaccinated. The younger you are, and the more rural your community, the less likely you are to have gotten it. This reflects the real facts about the risk of death from COVID. People may be wildly overestimating their risk from the vaccine and underestimating their risks from COVID — but they have the directional thinking correct. Those who are in less danger, act like it.

The absolute risk reduction for me if I get the jab is less than 1%.  

LESS THAN 1%.

Why would I take the risk of all the negative side effects for a less than 1% absolute risk reduction?  But when you start talking actual numbers, you get called everything but a white boy.  By idiots and morons who trust the government.  Yeah.

2 comments:

Jeb said...

“If you look at the people that are being admitted to hospitals, over 95 percent of them are either not fully vaccinated or not vaccinated at all,” DeSantis said Wednesday. “And so these vaccines are saving lives. They are reducing mortality.”

“Folks [are] supposed to have common sense,” Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey said on Thursday. “But it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks. It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/25/republicans-unleashed-deadly-vaccine-skepticism-can-they-now-contain-it/

Ragin' Dave said...

#1 - anytime the Washington Compost is quoting Republicans in a favorable light, you need to check behind the curtain to see what they're pushing.

#2 - the Delta variant, while more contagious, is less deadly. So just cherry picking quotes doesn't help your argument.

#3 - those democrats from Texas who caught the Kung Flu delta variant? ALL VACCINATED. The "White House Staffer" who caught the coof from the Texas democrats? VACCINATED. Huh. I wonder what might cause people to doubt the efficacy of the non-vax.