> No doubt this will be the case for some. So, you've found a logical flaw in people's stated reasons for not wanting a vaccine. How does that help anything? In these kinds of debates, the actual goals or beliefs of both sides often differ from what they say.
This line of thought leads to the sentence immediately following the one you quoted: if there are a large percentage of people who were hesitant due to sincere safety concerns, the mountain of data showing that the vaccines are low-risk will translate into more of them getting vaccinated but if they're motivated by factors which are not affected by scientific data then the primary mechanism for ending the pandemic will be the kinds of requirements which are made possible by full approval. That either gets people vaccinated or removes them from many contexts where they pose risk to everyone else.
Right now there are a lot of concerns raised about vaccine safety on political and social media. Some of those are devout anti-vaccination activists but I believe that they are still a relatively small fraction of the hesitant. When not being vaccinated comes with a direct personal cost we'll see how sincere those beliefs are.
>Some of those are devout anti-vaccination activists but I believe that they are still a relatively small fraction of the hesitant. When not being vaccinated comes with a direct personal cost we'll see how sincere those beliefs are.
I have a friend in this group. There was no logical reason to not get vaccinated, her parents just kept regurgitating all the blatantly false conspiracy theories they were reading on the internet. The amount of times I heard "I'd get it if Bill Gates weren't involved, he's trying to track us" made my head spin.
Now work is requiring it to stay employed, so she's getting it. I'm both sad that's what it took, and happy that it was enough to overcome irrational fear mongering on the world wide web.
I think you can also be glad that someone changed their mind and got vaccinated, however reluctantly, and simultaneously be uncomfortable with that sort of coercion.
Telling someone you'll fire them if they don't get a shot isn't quite holding them down and jabbing them but it's not really a free personal choice either. Many people aren't in a position to just hop down the street into a new job.
This line of thought leads to the sentence immediately following the one you quoted: if there are a large percentage of people who were hesitant due to sincere safety concerns, the mountain of data showing that the vaccines are low-risk will translate into more of them getting vaccinated but if they're motivated by factors which are not affected by scientific data then the primary mechanism for ending the pandemic will be the kinds of requirements which are made possible by full approval. That either gets people vaccinated or removes them from many contexts where they pose risk to everyone else.
Right now there are a lot of concerns raised about vaccine safety on political and social media. Some of those are devout anti-vaccination activists but I believe that they are still a relatively small fraction of the hesitant. When not being vaccinated comes with a direct personal cost we'll see how sincere those beliefs are.
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