Not that this is a silver bullet that automatically leads to peace and harmony, but it's a step in the right direction.
A lot of things, but just the top two would be enough:
1) Being able to sue. If you can sue J&J for baby powder, should be able to sue Pfizer for vaccines if anything goes wrong.
2) Falsifiability in government actions. Many rights have been taken away (some permanently) by saying "we just need to do this and then it will all be over" like "a few weeks to flatten the curve", "the last lockdown", and "x% vaccinated and we'll be back to normal".
But when they don't work, the people are blamed, more rights are taken and more restrictions imposed. It's never that the actions were wrong.
I expect something like if "70% of people are vaccinated then we expect no more than 5000 cases per day" and if the statement turns out to be false there will be no more vaccine impositions because it clearly will have turned out to be wrong.
If something doesn't work you shouldn't double down.
You cannot, with 100% accuracy, model a virus that is mutating in a population that includes the entire planet. We have things we know worked in the past, we try them, and we then modify our next move based on the results. We don't say "well we got that one wrong so now we're just not going to try anything". If every scientist took the approach you're suggesting we'd still be eating raw meat and living in caves.
Why is suing vital? What's insufficient about the existing National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program? https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/index.html (I'm genuinely unfamiliar with any flaws it might have)
> Many rights have been taken away (some permanently)
What rights have been permanently removed? For that matter, what RIGHTS have been even temporarily suspended?
I could say I have a right to breathe air and someone would probably come around and tell me I'm wrong, but most people have some intuition for what a "natural" right is, and bristle when something encroaches on those.
Max compensation is $250k. Life insurance values my life far more. Documents are under seal. Payouts are paid by the tax payer, not the manufacturers. Cases are heard by HHS and defended by DOJ (more taxes footing the bill). HHS has repeatedly refused to add certain injuries to their compensation tables even after CDC directed research indicates that such injuries have been proven to be causal (eg: motor tics in those that received thimerosol containing vaccines). Most cases now go years before any decision is made when the original stated purpose of the program was speedy settlements (6 months or less). The only expert witnesses that might be allowed to speak in secret vaccine court will likely be the scientists that were paid to design the vaccine in question by industry. Doctors that have testified against industry in this court (and others like it in other nations) have had their careers destroyed by retaliatory tactics.
I find it quite funny and sad that you need to ask “what’s wrong with this special, secret court?” What’s NOT wrong with a special, secret court designed to protect a massive industry? NO PRODUCT CLASS should be protected in this manner.
Understanding that base fear will help bridge the divide between groups.
- Fear, hesitancy about potential long term risks.
- Resistance to government mandating a vaccine (freedom, low trust in government, other options not being considered)
- Resistance to the cultural paradigm of "un-vaccinated = bad/deplorable person"
- Belief that the risk of COVID is already low (at least for them)
By the time group 2 catches up (because years have gone by of the vaccine not causing widespread problems) the threat is gone. Meanwhile the animosity has not truly been diminished because the first group will feel the second is responsible for insert issue pertaining to millions of people willingly not getting vaccinated that caused them pain/suffering.
It's almost like many people are "worried" about "long term effects" as just a smoke-screen to run out the clock on the issue...
When it comes to the vaccine, I got the first shot (Moderna) and had such a terrible week following it that my doctor was fairly convinced I probably already had COVID. Everyone I know had a much stronger reaction to the second shot than to the first, so I've opted to remain partially vaccinated.
With Delta in full swing, I'm now reconsidering that, but am making arrangements in advance to be out of work for another week or two, as that's my expectation going in.
All of that said, the folks I know who are unvaccinated have either already had COVID, so they're just trusting their immune system, or they are in a relatively low-risk group, and are concerned about long-term vaccine side-effects. All of them are fully vaccinated in all other regards, just not with COVID. Make of that what you will, but very few of them fall into the caricatures I see bandied about in the comments here.
Incidentally, I'm also concerned about long-term side effects, but I figure at this point, we'll have to solve that problem as a society, if they ever show up enmasse.
Counter-anecdata: everyone I know (in the UK[1]) had a much milder reaction to the second than the first - first one knocked most people out for a day or two; second one was half a day in the worst cases, couple of hours in the main.
[1] Which means AZ or J&J, I think, not Moderna. But it's anecdata, it's never going to be 100% helpful.
What the question your parent poses can do is get to the root of the objection your conversation partner has. "What would make you change your mind" forces the conversation in the direction of uncovering the true source of the disagreement. It helps to avoid talking about "symptoms" or issues that you might find important but are not important to your partner. It helps avoid talking past each other. It helps identify what issues are important to the other person.
If there is nothing that will change one's position, it's not worth engaging because the outcome is set.
Sounds like you should take a look at Street Epistemology. It is a modern version of the Socratic method that asks questions similar to that. The goal is not to make your interlocutor change their mind necessarily, but instead to explore the reasons for the beliefs they hold and whether they may be sufficently justified or not.
I hope that this latest change sways some people but I don't think it will be a lot.
Unless you’re dealing with an extraordinary individual or the issue is relatively trivial then you won’t be told sufficient reasons. A lot of what motivates us is deep down and dumb and we rarely want to admit it even if we’re aware of it which is even rarer. I find that examining reasons to change my own mind is much more fruitful because it’s harder to lie to myself albeit still far too easy.
These are too sophisticated reasons. More realistic renditions might be “that other tribe gets vaccinated loudly therefore I won’t” and “I’m strong, only the weak get vaccinated.” Of course the same in-group dynamics etc motivate the vaccinated and we’d be lying to ourselves if we thought our actions are purely rational and charitable.
For me number one would be: if the CDC starts tracking re-infection rate in the non-vaccinated, and puts that data front and center as key KPIs on all their releases.
Yes, so we can deduce remaining susceptible.
The basic model in a pandemic is SIR. Susceptible, Infected, Recovered. Vaxed is a secondary factor.
We live in crazy land when I have to explain why we should be tracking Susceptible (computable when you know number infected and reinfection rate). (not to pick on you, just speaking about general trends I'm seeing)
Imagine if in computing someone asked, "why should we measure RAM usage?"
It's like, the very very basics.
Without that, you cannot accurately model and forecast the pandemic. And you can see for yourself how poorly the CDC is still modeling this when they said "vax work great! no masks!" and then "shit! vax don't work as great as we said, masks back on!" It's like they are pretending that natural immunity without a vax does not exist. One of the very basics in epi, both theoretically and empirically from mountains of data. It's crazy town, I tell you.
At the individual level you should know this to make the proper conditional decisions. There is scant benefit to be had from the vax if you were infected and recovered naturally (and yes, I've read the Kentucky study, and if that's someone's main argument they're a moron).
The moment you start talking about techniques you've already objectified the person across you to something to be finessed over, and as such less than a full person.
So many of our recent social-media extremized public debates escalate to the point of denying or diminishing the other side's personhood. They are an "obstacle" to overcome for some greater purpose, and thus we "must" manipulate, coerce or the very least impress conclusions down their throats.
The meta-context is that today we are all more psychologically fragile and the breadth of data points we have to reconcile gets wider (in no small part thanks to engagement metrics optimizations). We all turn into fanatics of some sort or other, fueled by this anxiety, including that of self-doubt. At no point we are incentivized to participate in the process of rationality together, we're only incentivized to willfully assert our own conclusions.
I see most of the "resistance" as an acting out as a protest for having been left out of this process, including having been honored in anxieties. Notice I have said nothing about the truth value of conclusions, nor am trying to draw a false equivalency of "all-sides-ism", because the sense of participation, or lack thereof, is orthogonal to the truth of content, but hurts just as much when neglected.
We've forgot how to be a fellowship of people who share similar fates and see each other as such, we've turned into mere proposition debating machines.
There's nothing about any sort of technique that is inherent to objects and not people. Techniques are something used to achieve a goal, and if a person is involved in that goal, there's nothing wrong with using that sort of verbiage.
>thus we "must" manipulate, coerce or the very least impress conclusions down their throats.
You've made any attempt to change someone's mind out to automatically be something that's naturally evil. Ridiculous.
That’s what turning a person to an object is; to reduce them to something to achieve your goal over/with/through.
> You've made any attempt to change someone's mind out to automatically be something that's naturally evil. Ridiculous.
Ridiculousness is originating from your misframing which ignores the condition of participation vs instrumentalization I’ve laid out.
To give an example to non-objectifying persuasion; people pay money to get their own minds changed through therapy and it still takes years with no guaranteed success. This is obviously not “evil” (at least not inherently) because it is participatory and comes from a place of love and growth and alleviation of suffering.
Because it's not like they live in a representative democracy, right?
I agree, engaging people is a good way to go. I don't know any anti-vaxxers personally, so I have to actively work to remind myself they might not all have the same reasons as the ones I know impersonally (who all happen to be full of misinfo, like Eric Clapton, et al.).
There are no silver bullets that lead to peace and harmony, obviously, but a greater understanding of each other is good for many reasons.
It boils down to a really muddy mix of small things that all sum up to a decision against it.
For instance, I'm not the risk group and, due to being super medically conservative for _everything_ (to a fault!), I tend to not take medical interventions I don't strictly require.
I think that the vaccines are overwhelmingly safe from an absolute risk perspective, but among the least safe things we've deployed into wide usage from a relative risk perspective. It's tough for me to convince myself to take an intervention I don't need. Stack onto this things like the PREP act, guaranteed orders, big pharma's history, this being the first mRna vaccine to get through Phase III, and more hesitancy gets added on my side. As data from other countries rolls in, the efficacy side is also interesting, but that's a different topic.
Finally, there's just general disposition. Whether lockdowns, restrictions, or vaccinations, people seem to fall into one of two groups: those who favor public heath above all else, and those who favor personal liberty above all else. Due to some wrongthink, I fall into the latter camp. The behavior of those in the former camp pushes me away from my medically hesitant "wait and see" position, into one of, frankly, staunch dismissal out of pure curiosity to see how willing society is to marginalize those who made a 'wrong' medical decision.
Also, do keep in mind the premise here is that if enough of us get vaccinated as fast as possible, we can, among possibly other things, stop the spread of the disease, stop variants from forming and also lighten the load of hospitals so they can treat more people, including those without COVID. I'm all for curiosity, but is it worth it in this case? Also, you can still observe other peoples' behaviors if you get the vaccine. Even if you want to just observe the people you're close with interact with you directly, you can get it and not tell them.
Eric Clapton took both doses. He suffered some severe adverse reactions. What’s the misinfo?
I haven't had the second jab. I've had nothing but pressure from almost everyone I know to get the second shot, and am still on the fence.
Instead, they are treated as if they are a threat. As if they are the ones who are overstressing the health care systems. When often instead they are the frontline workers these systems depend on. Many give care in nursing homes and at hospitals (in the case of nurses, a large percentage of whom still refuse the vax).
How many health care resources does the average unvaxxed healthy 26 year old consume? A lot less than the chronic smoker, the morbidly obese, the elderly, etc.
I'm sorry that people in your family are being treated like a threat. Can you elaborate on that? I also feel for those if there are issues at work, and I really think US should mandate paid leave to take the vaccine (at a minimum), but that's another discussion. :)
This report details the findings of a case-control evaluation of the association between vaccination and SARS-CoV-2 reinfection in Kentucky during May–June 2021 among persons previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 in 2020. Kentucky residents who were not vaccinated had 2.34 times the odds of reinfection compared with those who were fully vaccinated
I've been living normally without lockdowns or masks for about 18 months now. So has the rest of my country Sweden. So excuse me if I'm not running around fearing for my life anymore. I'm pretty much convinced we all have natural antibodies by now.
What convinced you? Because the upward trend of new cases worldwide (including Sweden) doesn't convince me.
A vaccine that (1) did not use cell lines from aborted fetuses at any point in its discovery, development, testing, or production, and that (2) has been studied for 10 years to determine long-term safety and efficacy like we would do with any other vaccine.
What would it take to change your mind?
In general terms, I would need the society at large to get off the moral high horse and engage in an honest cost/benefit analysis of all covid measures.
Isn't it hypocritical that people accuse the young not taking the vaccine of being selfish, while hoarding the vaccines away from vulnerable people in poorer parts of the world?
It can only hypocritical if it is the same people making both arguments.
That said, I'm absolutely getting _my_ booster as soon as I'm eligible. That isn't hypocritical; at that point the decision was made and if I don't take the booster it won't be sent to sub-Saharan Africa.
