A Somewhat Charitable View Of Vaccine Refusers
In my last three posts I examined David Brooks’s theory that vaccine refusal is is one result of the rejection of his version of the epistemic regime of the his version of the creative class, and with it the expertise and knowledge claimed by scientists, academics and other experts. He relies in part on Jonathan Rauch’s book The Construction Of Knowledge. Brooks is just wrong; here’s what Rauch actually says.
I don’t think people reject the scientific method or the epistemic regime under which it operates. I don’t see anyone saying physicists are wrong about quantum mechanics, or that antibiotics don’t work. People go to the doctor when they’re sick in the same numbers as always.
I think the actual problem with vaccine resisters is that they think that whether or not to take a Covid vaccine is a political issue or a social issue about which they are entitled to have an opinion, instead of public health problems firmly in the realm of professional expertise.
To explain this further, here are some of the factors that governed my decision to get the vaccine. I did my own research. I knew most vaccines are made from attenuated viruses or inactivated viruses. Covid vaccines use a different technique. Here’s the New York Times description of the mechanism. Here’s the Wikipedia entry for mRNA vaccines. Here’s a comprehensive description of the construction of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Here’s a comprehensive description of the manufacturing process for the mRNA vaccines.
This research raised questions I cannot answer. For example, are there proteins in a normal body shaped like the spike protein and is that a problem? I have to rely on experts on that question. But is the FDA so politicized it would approve a dangerous vaccine because Trump interfered?
I talked to a friend, a health care journalist, about the issue of politicization of the FDA. He seemed confident that the FDA was safely independent. One of my brothers has worked on getting FDA approval for drugs for serious diseases, and he explained their procedures. He was also confident about FDA independence.
In the Fall of 2020, my extended family got into an email discussion of the vaccines. One of my nieces is a virologist who is working on a monoclonal antibody treatment for Covid. She told us to take whatever vaccine we could get the day we could first get it.
I knew I wouldn’t be in the first wave of people getting vaccinated. That maeant there was an even bigger trial out there, all those people ahead of me.
In sum, I did my own research, but other factors were vastly more important than my understanding of the vaccine. I have no way to assess the accumulated stores of scientific knowledge that led to the vaccine, or any way to evaluate the clinical trials or the data they generated. All I can hope to do is come to a rough understanding, and perhaps come up with a question about the applicability to my personal situation.
This is true of all scientific matters. Mostly it doesn’t matter. My computer works. I don’t have to understand it. I just have to learn how to use it for my own ends. I use a several drugs to protect my eyes from further damage. I checked, and I can vaguely understand how the experts think they work, but really, I just take my doctor’s advice.
So far I’ve only looked at knowledge about the physical world. The problem is different in the social world. For example, I pay attention to politics, and I think I have a reasonable set of principles and priorities that govern my political views. I can evaluate political issues by comparing them to what I personally observe, what I see in the media, and my principles and priorities. But I’m fully aware that most of my thinking comes from reading the views of other people, and trying to incorporate them into a coherent picture with other things I think.
In my last post I quoted Rauch talking about the importance of family and tribe in making decisions. I agree with him that on a wide range of life issues the decisive factors are our family, our tribe, and the people and groups with which we generally agree. One of the very few exceptions is our specific efforts to increase human knowledge, where we stick closely to Rauch’s reality-based epistemic regime. We all depend on others in making decisions about everything, not just our layman’s understanding of scientific matters.
I assume other people operate about like I do. They listen to family, tribe, trusted people, and read stuff on the internet. Then they test that information against some internal standard, and either accept or reject it. Most people across all divides in our society think they are capable of doing this accurately. This idea has its roots in a view of human beings and in the ideology of individualism. It’s at the heart of neoliberalism, which says we can always figure out what we want and need. I don’t think so. I agree with C.S. Perice that all we really want to do is avoid the unpleasant feeling of doubt by coming to any firm belief.
So what we have with the vaccine refusers is a category error. If this were a straight issue of scientific knowledge, most people would realize they cannot evaluate it and are dependent on professionals.
The Trumpified Republicans and their media and armed wings amplified the idea that the pandemic and Covid are political issues. Because the government and politicians were out front in dealing with Covid, people were primed to think of Covid as a political issue. Too many people tried to evaluate vaccines and public health measures as political issues, which led them to listen to their usual political sources, right-wing media and politicians, and their friends and trusted groups.
Their confidence was buoyed by the availability of information from the internet. But they weren’t looking at the information in the links I put above. They were listening to intentional liars, Qrazies and anti-vaxxers. Social media algorithms probably amplified this disinformation.
People tried to construct a mental picture taking their new information into account without upsetting too much of their general world view. That didn’t work, because there was too intense a conflict between the reality of the pandemic and the views they were getting from their preferred sources. So we hear people denying that Covid is a real thing and constructing detailed theories about conspiracies between Doctors and Big Pharma to make tons of money. We get theories that vaccines and masks are government efforts to control our lives. For the larger number of people who don’t follow closely, this becomes confusing and vaguely scary. In the end, we as a nation are no where near the necessary number of vaccinations.
This explanation doesn’t justify anything or anyone. You have to be sunk in stupidity to think that a vaccine is a political or social issue. You have to be a piece of human garbage to encourage people to reject vaccines against a dangerous disease. But it’s hard to blame low-information people for being worried about this ginned-up controversy.
It’s really maddening.
Kos has been running a series derived from SorryAntivaxxer and HermanCainAwards web sites. What strikes me is the sheer lack of any empathy by our villains for their fellow souls, including those who cannot get vaccinated. It seems to me that this is an expected evolution of the MAGA cult’s release of restraints on being arschlochs combined with the fundamental premise of the prosperity gospel favored by the Dominionists. It is also interesting to see just how deep the cult is in denial about COVID and what they should be doing for the good of all of us.
WWJD? Well, we know (from His response to someone asking about how they should honor Him, paraphrased):
‘When you have done well for the least of my brethren, you have done it for me’.
FWIW, there is Gospel and Ante-Nicene references to those who show their faith flagrantly on their sleeve (I think it was in response to the Pharisees and Sadducees of His time): they’re hypocrites.
Per above “I assume other people operate about like I do. They listen to family, tribe, trusted people, and read stuff on the internet. Then they test that information against some internal standard, and either accept or reject it. Most people across all divides in our society think they are capable of doing this accurately.” There are others that don’t believe that is the controlling process. They believe that the brain is structured and ordered in a certain way to not automatically test feelings or emotions or beliefs or they believe people are much more conditioned to accept rather than to think critically. People may be capable of doing self-testing accurately but there are powerful blocks to that process. B F Skinner, Stephen Pinker, and Daniel Kahneman are some examples of those schools of thought. I’ve referenced Mr. Kahneman a couple times before and his book Thinking Fast and Slow. I would recommend you read it as well as Mr. Pinker’s book Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language.
I find it much easier to understand the anti-vaxxers through those books. Indeed one of Mr. Kahneman’s chapters is “How Judgements Happen”. Reading those books also leads to other books which help explain how people and their thinking can be manipulated by individuals such as Trump who intuitively and ferally (gifted in that respect) understand just how to manipulate people that don’t think critically in a certain direction. I find it the essence of Fox News’ popularity and a defining characteristic of the far right. Again, Jennifer Merceica’s book Demagogue for President is a truly great example of that manipulation process in terms of Kahneman’s explanations (and a great primer for debaters).
I disagree that a vaccine in a pandemic is not a social issue, if I understand your complaint. A vaccine in a pandemic serves two equal purposes: protection for the individual and protection for others around the individual. Protection for others answers one of the great bible and social questions: “Am I my brother’s keeper”. A pandemic vaccine is aimed specifically at making sure one is a brother’s keeper. The answer by the anti-vaxxers is they are not their brother’s keeper, that is they don’t believe in a defining purpose of our Constitution, “…promote the general Welfare” and probably a critical component of their religion if they worship. Stupid, maybe: anti-social, definitely.
1. These descriptions don’t tell us who the brain is wired to accept judgments from. That’s the point I’m making. If the problem is science, why would you listen to some right-wing ranter or your preacher? And if you do, that’s on you.
2. Of course vaccines have the social effect you describe. But the problem for each of us is whether we protect ourselves from a deadly disease. And on that issue so many people listen to Tucker Carlson?
In both cases what we have is a total failure of the entire point of having a brain: survival.
I’d be interested to know if you think your version offers some path forward towards getting people to do the jab.
As humans, we’re supposed to be able to have an actual concept of a time horizon in our brain; I.e. we are not simply prisoners of the moment. The rise of performative narcissism (a predicted result of capitalism run amok) has shortened the time horizon that conservatives can handle (thinking, as they do, in binary terms). Yes, there are some ‘liberal’ anti-vaxxers, but they are also ‘suffering’ from the short-term time horizon that their narcissism fosters.
The brain is wired to accept from judgements from the brain itself. It isn’t listening as you think it is. Part of the brain’s processing, according to Kahneman System 1 designation, doesn’t direct attention and access memory as happens in System 2. Per Kahneman it is more primitive. It continuously monitors what is going on inside and outside the mind, and continuously generates assessments of of various aspects of the situation without specific intention and with little or no effort. These basic assessments play an important role in intuitive judgement because they are easily substituted for more difficult questions. It also allows transfer of values across dimensions, e.g. If Ed were as tall as he is intelligent, how tall would Ed be?
Kahneman includes highlighting points at the end of each chapter. One here of System 1 thinking is “The punishment won’t feel just unless its intensity matches the crime. Just like you can match the loudness of a sound to the brightness of a light.” You can read the comments and reactions on another Emptywheel post about the acquittal of Mr. Rittenhouse to see that example of System 1 thinking in action versus bmaz’s reactions with System 2 thinking.
Re: the follow-on to your second point, I taught behaviorally challenged special ed students for a period of time. I can tell you from that experience that the point of having a brain isn’t always survival in a social or future physical sense. You shouldn’t believe me, however. You should volunteer or sub in some large city special ed program, behaviorally oriented if possible, to see if brain usage matches your preconceptions. I think what you will find is the domination of system 1 thinking.
You obviously love economics. Kahneman has a Nobel prize in economics and you would be rewarded by reading his book Thinking Fast and Slow. I think it would affect your thinking on epistemology also.
Ed, If you do read the book please let me know. I will make observations about anti-vaxxers and the Rittenhouse jury related to the book’s explanations that you would find interesting. They would make no sense to you unless you read the book.
I got the book. It’s in line behind Graeber’s new book, The Dawn Of Everything.
Interesting analysis, Ed.
I am familiar with several people, active-left politically, with huge dislike of Trump and his policies. They are vegetarians, eat organic food, and attracted to using herbs sold at “organic” markets to heal. I notice a sort-of rigidity. (Note that I try to buy “organic” veggies or grown my own, don’t eat meat/pork unless someone made an extra-special dinner just for me, etc.). The woman I most have in mind took a tincture made from concentrated THC after some youngish stranger with alcohol/drug problems touted it, in hopes to help her depression/loneliness. She had to be ambulanced to the hospital cause her strong, stable heart went off the charts and she could have died. She won’t get vaccinated. She has to keep herself pure. (She’s a college graduate.)
My sense is when people are stressed and feel alone, there’s a tendency to be attracted to others in similar situations. Logic and book-learning gets thrown out the window. There are all types of cult stories we all know about. How the hell does someone who seems/ed smart get pulled in to group-think? Is it a type of herding, where you throw out the brain and follow the leader?
People with dementia are like this.
My contact in the antivax world seems to hold “sovereignty over your body” as a necessary and absolute right for a free society. Then they talk of a friend, who believes that she had (and may have had), negative reactions to previous vaccines, and who will soon lose their job as it is mandated that she get vaccinated if she wants to continue.
My contact gets increasingly emotional if I talk about conflicting rights and social obligations with them.
Quarrantine facilities, vaccine distribution and injection programs, health messaging to mainstream and minority groups – all this would have been planned for, tested harshly, and effectively delivered when the pandemic hit, in a well functioning society.
Looks like the massive freedom from consequences given to us by our civilization resulting in hard lessons being missed, an increasing absence in cultures of internalized social obligations, widespread ignorance of both relative risk and what is needed to make competent judgements in complex fields, and the lack of coherent leadership, aren’t a good mix and have “dementia-level” decisions be made by many individuals and groups.
If this was a localized phenomenon I’d leave.
The vaccine skepticism of people who could fit in this group has been interesting to me for a while. As a scientist, I’ve tangentially run into the vaccine/autism “debate” professionally, and it is frustrating.
The most compelling explanation I’ve heard – I wish I could remember where – is that skepticism of authority, conventional wisdom, and large corporations is common among among people with a generally “left” perspective. This often serves them, myself included, well, but can lead people astray when it comes to the covid vaccines, and healthcare more generally. As an aside, would this be less of an issue if healthcare wasn’t such a big business?
Anyhow, I think this idea fits well with the idea raised by Epicurious (I hope I am not misconstruing your point) that our brains use shortcuts to make decisions, and the observation that people misclassifying the covid vaccine decision as a political one.
Thanks as always for the thought provoking post and discussion.
Eastman, You certainly got my point correct. As you are a scientist I believe reading the book by Kahneman – Thinking, Fast and Slow – would be educational. Chapters are brief and concise so you don’t have to take a vacation to read the book.
I believe getting the vaccine is a probability enhancer, i.e. one’s probability of survival re: this virus is raised tremendously while allowing more social contact (who said it’s the economy, stupid!?). Someone not taking the vaccine is like getting a sure way to win at the Vegas tables and ignoring it. Aaron Rodgers fascinates me because the Packers have a good chance of getting home field advantage in the playoffs and a great way to the SB and he chose the irrational path of jeopardizing those chances by not vaccinating. It’s pretty much the same as doing something probably prohibited by his contract, say skiing or sky diving, or leading his best receiver into a massive collision with a pass in the middle of the field and putting the receiver on IR. He flips in and out of “rationality”, I think for reasons cited in the book.
Perhaps the best way to think about it is your “The most compelling explanation I’ve heard…..” The book is fond of saying the person we most deceive is ourselves but we are just unaware we are doing it. The first few chapters would make you laugh. So what is compelling to you may not be compelling to the majority of people not getting the vaccine simply because their associations and biases aren’t yours.
Anyway thanks for remembering me!
That is so correct as to Rodgers though. It is really hard to comprehend.
There’s a spectrum of anti-vaxxers out there, not all of them “low information people” (in the traditional sense). Case in point: a friend’s step-daughter (50 years old), a licensed acupuncturist and herbalist (and supplementing her income with MLM vitamin sales) and someone who has always identified with Bernie-style progressive politics, is nonetheless a staunch anti-vaxxer. I haven’t talked to her personally, but the report is she believes anecdotal reports of people dying as a result of taking the vaccine. Of course, her 2 minor kids are unvaccinated as well. Her family has been healthy throughout the pandemic.
So there’s kind of a “horseshoe” among those in the wellness and alternative medicine industries (and who participate in MLMs) who have previously identified as politically “progressive”, but who are actually (in my opinion) a different kind of “low information” person.
Yes, maddening…
Yes, anti-vaxxers do include a number of wellness types, and other groups. Perhaps that general attitude rules out or minimizes input from normal scientific research. Or maybe they fall into the groups Epicurus describes: pre-wired judgment. I certainly hope they aren’t trying to push their nonsense to other people.
Or maybe the human species is just to stupid to survive once it reaches a certain level of population.
“I certainly hope they aren’t trying to push their nonsense to other people”.
Don’t be naive – they are! One example from a “free birth” (a subset within the wellness universe) advocate :
https://conspirituality.net/transmissions/from-costa-rica-yolanda-norris-clarke-free-births-covid-news-about-hellscape-of-canada/
There is an irony in how many politically progressive people can be so conservative in their attitudes about medicine. The identities and lifestyles of many people in the alternative medicine tribe are informed by a deep, and to a certain extent justified, skepticism of western medicine.
In that world, tradition (real or imagined) and tribal anecdote take precedence over statistical data, at least on issues of health and well-being. The tribe’s predisposition (a.k.a. pre-wired judgment) against COVID vaccines springs from a predisposition against all vaccines that goes back generations. That predisposition is based in part on claims (often zealously propagated) of resulting autism, infertility, death, etc., not to mention that western medicine eats into the tribe’s revenue stream.
I have many loved ones in that tribe. Yes, maddening.
The vaccine -> autism link, propagated by Dr. Andrew Wakefield in the ’90 has since been thoroughly discredited. But, it lives on the hearts and minds of many in the wellness community.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield
Especially sad about the Wakefield example is that he was a scientist, a licensed physician who claimed to be a whistleblower.
Yep. And as it turns out, the “autism warning” from him, IIRC, was a ploy to stop the combined MMR vaccine from being accepted, because he had developed a single-vaccine for measles that he was applying for a patent on. Wakefield sued the Toronto Star reporter who published this account for libel, but wound up dropping the case and had to pay legal fees to the defendants.
But, to this day, doctor-dude Wakefield still has many supporters and now produces anti-vax content for various media outlets…
It’s worth noting that some doctors and nurses refuse to get a COVID vaccine.
Per Ed, “maybe the human species is just to[o] stupid to survive once it reaches a certain level of population.”
Friend of mine recently went for a standard yearly checkup with his doc of 6 years. Has been perfectly happy with him all this time. The doc asked him if he’s been vaccinated and the answer was yes. Doc told him something like “Oh well, too bad. Would have recommended Ivermectin if you hadn’t been.” I told my friend to start looking for a new doctor…he agreed.
Kudos to your friend!
Anecdotal evidence is, well, anecdotal, but in conversations with nursing friends (to be clear, with VACCINATED nursing friends), what they were hearing from co-workers fell roughly into these categories.
Some of them were pregnant, and were concerned about the effect of being vaccinated while pregnant. Most of these folks have heard enough about pregnant women either dying with their fetus, or dying after their baby was delivered by c-section and handed to the father, that this doesn’t seem as common now as it did six months ago.
Some of them – and actually, a lot of healthcare workers in hospitals – had already had CoViD-19, and survived that experience, so assumed they were either immune or had significant immunity, and didn’t need to be vaccinated to be immune. Certainly, early on, we didn’t understand that as well as we do now. Press reporting in Houston about the hospital dismissing unvaccinated healthcare workers and the subsequent legal battles was roughly at the beginning of the Delta wave, which has made people who were relying on “natural immunity” a lot more aware of reinfections and breakthrough infections.
Bluntly, a lot of them were physically and mentally exhausted, sleepwalking through their brutal shifts and going home to collapse. This has only gotten worse during the Delta wave. Getting vaccinated seems obvious to us, but these folks were just too tired to pay their bills, much less try to fit anything else in. If they leave healthcare completely, that stops being an explanation – but then we’re talking about people who are no longer healthcare workers.
Ed mentioned talking with a family member who was a virologist. I did that, too, and got the same “get any vaccine you can, the second it’s available” advice. I suspect that there are two kinds of people – those who are virologists, virologist-adjacent, or epidemiologists, and those who are not.
My prayer is that we all become more aware of reality, and not just about vaccination.
Thank you for that.
Healthcare workers are underappreciated heroes. They have difficult jobs made much more so by the pandemic.
I still find it hard to believe that, at the peak of the Delta surge, about 30% of healthcare workers in hospitals remained unvaccinated.
Yep. And as it turns out, the “autism warning” from him, IIRC, was a ploy to stop the combined MMR vaccine from being accepted, because he had developed a single-vaccine for measles that he was applying for patent on. Wakefield sued the Toronto Star reporter who published this account for libel, but wound up dropping the case and had to pay legal fees for the defendants.
But this doctor-dude still has supporters and produces anti-vax content for various media outlets…
Even after he lost his medical license, he’s still pushing his discredited theories.
And acupuncture and much “traditional medicine” is woo with *only* anecdata to back it. (Once it’s tested and found to work, it’s medicine. Acupuncture has already failed.)
Like everything else in the Trump era, grifters abound. And if they can make money from this situation, regardless of ethical considerations, they will. Add homeopathy and ayurveda to that list. There are alternative medicine practitioners who believe in vaccines, but greedy brethren within the wellness world are currently making their life difficult.
The NIH and health departments around the world use the term complimentary medicine.
Messing with public health communication has negatives – as can be seen with antivaxers.
https://www.nccih.nih.gov/
Acupuncture may be woo — I have friends who are flakey and swear by it — but if I try acupuncture at least my choice doesn’t hurt anyone else. Dealing with a contagious disease, those people who don’t vaccinate their kids are inflicting measles outbreaks on immunocompromised kids and babies and similarly not trying to help stop an epidemic that has killed millions is anti-social.
Placebo or no, acupuncture helped me recover from a nasty bout of shingles by drastically reducing the pain.
I’ll walk a country mile for a pain relieving placebo. And many doctors aim for a placebic attitude. Consumers (and to a lesser extent practitioners) are concerned overwhelmingly with effect – debates about mechanism are of secondary import. Which needs to all be swept aside for serious illnesses. There were fools who thought their esoteric practices protected themselves and their sexual partners from HIV infection. They didn’t and people died.
I have come to believe that there is no assertion so absurd and so incorrect that someone somewhere sometime is nevertheless not capable of believing it. The human brain can produce the stuff of elegance, and lots and lots of weird nonsensical shit in between
I’m becoming agnostic on the question, “Does intelligent life exist on earth?”
Clever, yes. No doubt in my mind. Instances of intelligence, sure. Vaccine developers. Marcy Wheeler. Einstein, albeit he spent the last forty years of his life being proved wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong yet again by his peers on each and every one of his attempted refutations of quantum uncertainty stuff (that I can’t even begin to understand.)
Our problem and natural state is our wide spectrum of mental capacity from individual to individual across the species. But then again, if we were all like Spock (Star Trek) where would the sane find laughter? Most of our laughs arise from some harmless stupidity we observe in real life or encounter in creative fiction.
But stupidity can and does rise to the level of really, really fucking irritating. On my to-do list is to read for second time the recent Harper’s Magazine piece The Third Force (On stupidity and transcendence). Author Garret Keizer’s irritation with stupidity laid bare is both funny and irritating at the same time.
NPR radio had a really interesting piece awhile back about the problem of breaking through to the vaccine hesitant. In the end they actually did achieve a (very small) measure of success when Chris Christie spoke to a small group of skeptics about his experience and others in the Trumpian world who’d had either a very bad experience with Covid or who had died from it. Definitely overall I am not a fan of that guy, but in this one instance he was being straight up honest with this small group of skeptics, and for several of them, since he was part of their tribe, his talk was all it took to change a few minds to go get vaccinated. The audio of that I suspect is still available online. That was how I listened to it.
My apologies if this shit don’t make no sense. I attribute my runaway keyboard to after basketball beers. Usually I am quieter, and just read what the rest of you all have to say.
“I’m becoming agnostic on the question, ‘Does intelligent life exist on earth?’”
Which you then follow with quantum uncertainty. IMO it answers the question: [empty set]. Yup, there’s something there, it occupies time and space. But measuring a vacuum is difficult and what is the unit of measure?
BTW – there are how many species of beetles and how many like us? Evolution favors quantity over quality – lots of little laboratories trying new forms and functions (and loss of function too) is how diversity develops. That nonsense outnumbers sense by orders of magnitude should be an expected outcome.
It’s a shame the Quers co-opted that phrase ~ “did the research” ~ leaving me and no doubt many others reluctant to use it. As one who interacts daily with a wide variety of medical doctors and their support I’ve found “done the reading” an adequate though not entirely accurate replacement. Have actually had this conversation with a medical doctor ~ “what’s the better phraseology, one that doesn’t get you looked at cross-eyed?”
Otherwise you hit all of this long-time lurker’s “research”; though two years to the day ago I came down with something I only determined in April & May of this year experiencing the after-effects of the vaccines (and recently booster) was the real deal; then got hit with the Darwin variety in July. Which is moot to my comment … we need to find a way to reclaim “did the research”.
Re: Darwin variety – I’m not sure whether that was an intentional or accidental reference to Delta, but if it’s a reference to Delta, you win the Internet for the week. That’s PERFECT.
Alas Darwinian principles don’t work on diseases that kill the middle aged and old. Reading about these anti-vaxxers dying of COVID — most of them seem to be leaving 4, 5, 8 etc kids behind. They already spawned and more than reproduced their kind. How many smart socially responsible people do we know who have 8 kids in 2021?
When I was a kid, two of my best friends were brothers in a family with nine kids. But they made it work, and I used to love going over to their house. I honestly don’t think I have known anybody with more than three in decades.
My husband is from a family of 8 — 7 who grew up. Many of their peers in this very Catholic community had up to 12 or 13, but that was then. In the next generation his brothers and sisters had from 1 to 3 kids. And in the current generation approaching middle age, most of them don’t yet have kids and many won’t and the biggest family is 2 kids.
What people did in the 40s and 50s including having large families was not seen as socially irresponsible. To have 8 kids now, just is. And it is of course the most irresponsible who are having the big families.
Infant and child mortality was still rather high in 1940s-50s post-WWII. We also had a sizeable family farm population which needed labor. Not at all the same now.
Ten Bears, comment more often, don’t lurk. And welcome to Emptywheel.
I figured out A. Rodgers was full of crap and lying when he said he did his “research”. The “not gonna criticize” others for “their choice” thing was confirmation.
Here’s another somewhat charitable take on vaccine refusers from Australia: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/20/how-do-you-argue-with-anti-vaxxers-who-believe-theyre-on-a-noble-mission.
I liked how Bartlett ended the article:
On the vaccine development level we “scienced the sh!t” out of COVID19. On the public education level, it seems to me we didn’t even try.
There are only a few things you can do when herd animals confront a novel and lethal virus. Nobody with a public platform drove those ideas home and now we will have, probably, an endemic virus if we ever get out of the pandemic stage.
I thought someone somewhere with a megaphone would be saying, when jigsaw puzzles were all the rage, that the most important jigsaw puzzle was how the COVID19 spike engaged with the ACE-2 protein. It would and should have been a chance to do a k-12 and all interested parties public education adventure where we all work together against a society-wide threat.
But we don’t have a society or a public any more as Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Reagan taught their followers so well.
I don’t think even that would have worked – there were enough anti-vax lies out there a year and a half ago that getting people to mask was all but impossible.
Whether it would have worked or not is a question I am not addressing. The fact that public education about the very few things a herd animal can do to confront a novel virus wasn’t even attempted or BEING attempted now (to any great extent from my perspective) is the point I was trying to make.
The issue of masks was politicized by the three-year-old wetting his diapers in the Oval Office every fucking day and lots of stupid people bought it. By extension, when you lose the next election and all that matter is to seize power by any means necessary, you politicize the vaccines.
Murderous Republican governors now plan a coordinated campaign against vaccine mandates, thereby guaranteeing the killing of many of their constituents.
May their constituents survive them.
Worse, they’re starting to push against *all* vaccines. That way lies high mortality rates, of the kind not seen in a century.
Once we get rid of vaccine mandates for kids/schools, we can move on to removing all regulation of the water supply and get rid of those pesky sewers and sewage treatment plants and be back to the public health delights of the middle ages.
I’m concerned about “I did my own research” if that is taken to mean “On the basis of my investigation of source material I reasonably concluded …”. Although maybe it just means “I kicked the tyres, glanced under the hood and it all looked good”.
Humans are great at selecting info that confirms their biases. Witness the fantasies that the antivax crowds’ investigations result in.
COVID vaccines are the product of a vast system of knowledge creation composed of many separate but interdependant disciplines each with complexities and nuances of judgement that an outsider is almost always blind to. I’ve only got a basic biological science degree and have followed a couple of areas of disputed science (HeLa contamination of cell lines and the OPV-AIDS hypothesis), neither of which inspire confidence. I saw the actions of hyper-pro-vaccination activists pre-COVID (ie httpsLINKBREAK://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Brian_Martin_%28social_scientist%29&type=revision&diff=704087416&oldid=694429871 ) and read a vaccine researcher who described these activists as producing a climate of fear that biased researchers against publishing normal criticism of any vaccine research. I’ve got a well connected doctor doctor professor professor aquaintance and he seemed sceptical of COVID research conclusions. And a friend of my nephew’s spouse died from a COVID vaccine. If I had a bias against vaccination I could easily have decided that the little information that I had was in fact in critical areas and sufficient for me to conclude that the COVID vaccinations are not safe.
Instead, I’ve got a pro-vaccination bias, and a high degree of trust in most science, and weighed the evidence from my happenstance gathered selection of data against the stamp of approval given by multiple reputable national health science bodies and got vaccinated and continue to encourage people to get vaccinated.
I doubt that more than a handful of humans on the planet could meaningfully “do their own research” on COVID vaccines, anymore than they could meaningfully do their own research on the safety of their upcoming international domestic passenger flight. How do you find out if the tarmac temperature at BKK for the landing will result in problems? I suggest that relying on approval/certification (or the lack of it) by reputable authorities is the reasonable way forward in modern highly regulated, complex situations.
Ed, you say you don’t see anyone saying that physicists are wrong, or that quantum mechanics don’t work, or that antibiotics don’t work. You obviously haven’t visited a Flat-earther or young Earth site or forum lately. And some of the “wellness influencers” (god I hate that term) who claim that the proper combination of essential oils will fix anything from cancer to your cracked driveway. I’m not recommending that you do so. It would make you very sick to your stomach, once the rage subsides.
I have done organic gardening for years in the past, and am aiming at that here, once I get my garden site free of several layers of buried household trash. For years, as part of my business, I custom blended organic fertilizers for other organic gardeners. Although there have always been a few loonies in that community, most strong believers and practitioners were reacting to the corporatization of the food, pharmaceutical, and medical care industries, and the incestuous relationships that were growing between them. I’ve also watched as a number of those organic warriors from the 50’s-70’s found themselves suffering and dying from the same dread diseases as their inorganic neighbors. Of course, their skepticism was warranted, as ours today is even moreso. But there are people who are committed to healthy living and eating, and there’s the “wellness community.” It is now dominated by people who are there strictly for the profit motive, some of whom are outright grifters, and MLM is the name of the game. Many of these people who are crusading against the vaccines are as cynical and sociopathic as the Orange Tantrum–they don’t care who has to die, as long as they have their daily dose of attention and adulation.
I agree with all the theories about vaccine resistance and vaccine skepticism. There is one factor that I haven’t seen discussed much in this thread, and another, not at all. One of Donald Trump’s most enduring traits, according to those who have known him most of his life, is his complete intolerance for being told bad news. If you tell him what he wants to hear, you’re brilliant, wise, and trustworthy; if you don’t, you’ll be killed in the same dungeon as the other messengers. This is normal for him, and as a result, he reacts the same way with everyone else he encounters. He knew “this was a bad one,” according to Bob Woodward, but he told the public it was a Democrat hoax. When asked why he did this, he didn’t have to think. He said he didn’t want to worry anyone, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Because, to him, it is. Sadly, as he got further and further into politics, he found he was able to draw in many, many people who had that same mental characteristic, and, even more sadly, he was able to appeal to their worst nature, which our society had been insisting they keep hidden. Now, I seriously doubt there is anyone here in this group who want there to be a deadly pandemic. Many of us, for instance, wear masks only because we fear the consequences of not doing so. I know I hate ’em, but I’d hate being in a hospital, unable to breathe or to see my loved ones, far worse. Of all the things it is, covid is also a bummer. But these people heard someone incredibly powerful and smart (he’s rich, so he must be, right??) telling them “it’s a hoax, drummed up by my political enemies,” which was exactly what they wanted to hear. And for most of them, from that day till this, they seek out and pay attention to only those voices who agree with that. They’re skeptical to the point of unbelieving about anything serious done to combat the pandemic, because, even now, deep down they just know their dear leader has told them it’s a hoax, and it will miraculously go away, in April 2020, or the day after election day, or whenever.
The other group is similar in that they don’t want there to be a viral pandemic, or any special, inconvenient measures, but who among us doesn’t have those feelings? Their primary motivator, however, is that no one is going to tell them what to do. They get up and go to work, go to visit the in-laws, and usually pay taxes, all onerous duties, and shouldn’t that be enough? These are people committed to doing just what they please, unless and until the consequences of not doing so are laid right in their laps. They haven’t had a vaccination since eighth grade. Masks are for halloween parties. Most of these people listen to Alex Jones or watch Tucker Carlson just for entertainment, and for the newest arguments against doing what they didn’t want to in the first place. Many are also Trump supporters, but only because his life is also an exemplar of one man only doing what he wants, from not paying taxes to grabbing attractive women in untoward places. A few people I know in this group have become believers after losing parents or other loved ones, or after having covid go through their own homes and families like a plague. But almost any of them, even those completely untouched by the disease, will be the first to tell you they’ve already had covid and are immune, if you bring up vaccination. I have several close friends in this group, and have told them almost to a person, sometime in the past eighteen months, to just drop the arguments, say “I don’t want to,” and leave it alone. Anyone who has raised teenagers will recognize that tactic, but maybe it took a pandemic for us to realize how many teenagers walk among us.
Ed, you say you don’t see anyone saying that physicists are wrong, or that quantum mechanics don’t work, or that antibiotics don’t work. You obviously haven’t visited a Flat-earther or young Earth site lately. And there are some “wellness influencers” (god I hate that term) who claim that the proper combination of essential oils will fix anything from cancer to strep throat to your cracked driveway.
I have done organic gardening for years in the past, and for years, as part of my business, I custom blended organic fertilizers for other organic gardeners. Although there have always been a few loonies in that community, most strong believers and practitioners were reacting to the corporatization of the food, pharmaceutical, and medical care industries, and the incestuous relationships that were growing between them. I’ve also seen some of those organic warriors from the 50’s-70’s suffering and dying from the same dread diseases as their inorganic neighbors. Of course, their skepticism was warranted, as ours today is, even more so. But there are people who are committed to healthy living and eating, and then there’s the “wellness community,” which is dominated by people who are there strictly for the profit motive, some of whom are outright grifters, and MLM is the name of the game. Many of these antivax crusaders are as cynical as the Orange Tantrum–they don’t care who dies, as long as they have their daily dose of attention and adulation.
There are some good theories here about vaccine resistance skepticism. There is one factor that I haven’t seen discussed much in this thread, and another, not at all. One of Donald Trump’s most enduring traits, according to those who have known him most of his life, is his complete intolerance for bad news. If you tell him what he wants to hear, you’re brilliant, wise, and trustworthy; if you don’t, you’ll be killed in the same dungeon as the other messengers. This is normal for him, and typically for any human being, he thinks it’s normal for everybody else. He knew “this was a bad one,” according to Bob Woodward, but he told the public it was a Democrat hoax. When asked why he did this, he said he didn’t want to worry anyone, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Because, to him, it is. Sadly, as he got further and further into politics, he found he was able to draw in many people who had that same mental characteristic, and, even more sadly, he was able to appeal to their worst nature, which our society had been insisting they keep hidden. Now, I doubt there is anyone here who wants there to be a deadly pandemic. Many of us, for instance, wear masks only because we fear the consequences of not doing so. I know I hate ’em, but I’d hate being hospitalized, unable to breathe or to see my loved ones, far worse. Of all the things it is, covid is also a bummer. But these people heard someone incredibly powerful and smart (he’s rich, so he must be, right??) telling them “it’s a hoax, drummed up by my political enemies,” which was exactly what they wanted to hear. And for most of them, from that day till this, they seek out and pay attention to only those voices who agree with that. They’re skeptical to the point of unbelieving about anything serious done to combat the pandemic, because, even now, deep down they just know their dear leader has told them it’s a hoax, and it will miraculously go away, in April 2020, or the day after election day, or whenever.
The other group is similar in that they don’t want there to be a viral pandemic, or any special, inconvenient measures. Their primary motivator, however, is that no one is going to tell them what to do. They get up and go to work, go to visit the in-laws, and usually pay taxes, all onerous duties, and shouldn’t that be enough? These are people committed to doing just what they please, unless and until the consequences of not doing so are laid right in their laps. They haven’t had a vaccination since eighth grade. Masks are for halloween parties. If these people listen to Alex Jones or watch Tucker Carlson it’s just to get the newest argument against doing what they don’t want to. Many are also Trump supporters, but because his life is an exemplar of one man only doing what he wants, from not paying taxes to grabbing attractive women in untoward places. Some in this group have become believers after losing parents or other loved ones, or after having covid go through their own families like a plague. But almost any of them, if you bring up prevention, will be quick to tell you they’ve already had covid and are immune, if you bring up vaccination. I have started telling friends in this group to just drop the silly arguments, say “I don’t want to,” and leave it alone. Anyone who has raised teenagers will recognize that tactic, but maybe it took a pandemic for us to realize how many teenagers walk among us.
Hey Leoghann — you have two nearly identical comments posted here. Please tell me which of them you would rather leave posted: the 1:40 am or the 2:11 am version. I need to remove one of them as they run well over 800 words each. Thanks.
Ugh, that may be my fault.
Wait, what? They aren’t identical; let me assume one or both got hung up in auto-mod because of their length?
I dunno, but there was one in pending and I just approved it without realizing the other one was there. Leoghann is very decent chap, so I just didn’t look.
” … how many teenagers walk among us”
Many cultures have done a lot of work to lift their members out of childhood into adulthood. We see a union card and a wedding coat as a minor tragedy and wish each other “May you stay forever young.
Maybe that this anti-vaccine stuff could be more fruitfully analysed and addressed at the level of culture/s rather than using an approach which further entrenches individualism.