{"id":74369,"date":"2021-07-18T06:58:35","date_gmt":"2021-07-18T10:58:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=74369"},"modified":"2021-07-18T06:59:50","modified_gmt":"2021-07-18T10:59:50","slug":"why-is-vaccine-hesitancy-even-being-questioned-when-the-cdcs-vaers-data-shows-11000-deaths-48385-serious-injuries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=74369","title":{"rendered":"Why is “Vaccine Hesitancy” even being questioned when the CDC’s VAERS data shows ‘11,000 Deaths & 48,385 Serious Injuries’?!?!?!<\/i><\/b>"},"content":{"rendered":"

MIT Study: Vaccine Hesitancy Is \u2018Highly Informed, Scientifically Literate,\u2019 and \u2018Sophisticated\u2019<\/strong><\/h1>\n

By Rick Moran<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n

Vaccine hesitancy is a big problem, according to the Biden administration.\u00a0 Less than half the public is fully vaccinated while about 56 percent have received at least one jab.<\/p>\n

The goal of fully vaccinating the American public appears to have stalled. This should not surprise us. When the vaccines were first approved for emergency use back in December 2020,\u00a040 percent<\/a>\u00a0of Americans expressed skepticism about the vaccine.<\/p>\n

Trying to shame the holdouts has failed spectacularly. Insulting and degrading them as \u201cmorons\u201d or \u201cignorant\u201d has resulted in a vicious pushback and a hardening of positions on getting vaccinated.<\/p>\n

The administration\u2019s plan of sending people door to door to vaccinate them only feeds anti-vaccine skepticism. Trust in authority is at an all-time low, which makes a government-sponsored vaccine program suspect.<\/p>\n

Still, most experts agree that some people who should be getting vaccinated aren\u2019t doing so. But the root cause isn\u2019t ignorance or a belief in conspiracy theories. An MIT study on the problem revealed some surprising results.<\/p>\n

NRO:<\/a><\/p>\n

Proponents of the vaccine are unwilling or unable to understand the thinking of vaccine skeptics \u2014 or even admit that skeptics may be thinking at all. Their attempts to answer skepticism or understand it end up poisoned by condescension, and end up reinforcing it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The condescension is political in nature and crosses party lines. Sometimes, arguments against vaccination are mistaken for irrational thinking.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the perception of irrationality is almost accidental, because arguments are usually social interactions, not strictly logical exercises. A vaccine skeptic may brush off a proponent by saying, \u201cIt\u2019s approved for\u00a0emergency use only<\/em>; it\u2019s not FDA-approved. I don\u2019t think we should require it.\u201d The skeptic is beginning with a fact that\u2019s easily established and shareable. But when pressed, they might reveal that their line of thinking is elsewhere: \u201cThere are no long-term studies, and I\u2019m worried about possible long-term effects.\u201d Because the two objections aren\u2019t exactly logically connected, the proponent concludes it is irrationalism all the way down.<\/p>\n

But\u00a0a study done at MI<\/a>T<\/a>\u00a0showed that a substantial portion of public-health skepticism was highly informed, scientifically literate, and sophisticated in the use of data. Skeptics used the same data sets as those with the orthodox views on public health.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The study\u2019s lead author, Crystal Lee, says those same exact data sets can be used by either side to marshal arguments.<\/p>\n

MIT News:<\/a><\/p>\n

The researchers combed through hundreds of thousands of social media posts and found that coronavirus skeptics often deploy counter-visualizations alongside the same \u201cfollow-the-data\u201d rhetoric as public health experts, yet the skeptics argue for radically different policies. The researchers conclude that data visualizations aren\u2019t sufficient to convey the urgency of the Covid-19 pandemic, because even the clearest graphs can be interpreted through a variety of belief systems.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cA lot of people think of metrics like infection rates as objective,\u201d says Crystal Lee. \u201cBut they\u2019re clearly not, based on how much debate there is on how to think about the pandemic. That\u2019s why we say data visualizations have become a battleground.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, because of the data sets being used interchangeably, vaccine skepticism becomes logical and rational.<\/p>\n

But most vaccine skepticism, if by that we mean reluctance, is not based on conspiracy theorizing \u2014 it\u2019s based on risk-benefit calculations. You may think it\u2019s 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 \u2014 but they have the directional thinking correct. Those who are in less danger, act like it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is why vaccine choice is so important. Why have the same mandate for someone who lives in New York City and someone who lives in rural South Dakota?<\/p>\n

A more holistic approach to vaccine skepticism is needed if we are to get everyone who needs to be vaccinated protected. Allowances must be made for the legitimate concerns of citizens who, for their own reasons, don\u2019t want to get jabbed. But if indeed, individuals are doing their own risk-benefit calculations, it would help enormously if the Left would refrain from their sickening condescension toward those with serious, legitimate questions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

___
\nhttps:\/\/jamesfetzer.org\/2021\/07\/mit-study-vaccine-hesitancy-is-highly-informed-scientifically-literate-and-sophisticated\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MIT Study: Vaccine Hesitancy Is \u2018Highly Informed, Scientifically Literate,\u2019 and \u2018Sophisticated\u2019 By Rick Moran<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74369\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}