Sure, some of the people who’ll refuse this vaccine are the same people who refuse any vaccine. But I feel the need to push back against this idea that it’s typical antivaxxers. You wouldn’t have 40% refusal for a chickenpox vaccine from hospital staff.
Good point. I think we can say there are broadly 3 groups; the debate is how big each group is and how much overlap there is between them:
- Generic / typical antivaxxers.
- Politically-motivated refuseniks / COVID deniers / CT adherents
- Fearful of new relatively untried vaccines.
I have no data to rank order those, but my total WAG is the rank by headcount goes 2, 1, 3.
I also think that group 3 should be declining in number over time from whatever baseline it’s at now At least barring a nasty surprise in the future.
It’ll be 15 years before anyone can honestly say we know the 15-year side effects of, e.g., the current Pfizer COVID vax. But for sure we know the 1- to 2-month side effect data a LOT better than we did 1 or 2 months ago when there was only Phase III trial data and not multiple national deployments underway.
As well, side effects that are long-term dormant but then manifest above the noise floor are pretty darn rare in medical history. Which loops back to the general attitude of some folks wanting extraordinary proof of these things when they’ve never wanted the same degree of extraordinary proof from similar things in the past.
Lots of folks seem very interested in crowbarring the slightest crack of incomplete data or statistical uncertainty into a Grand Canyon sized gulf of scary unknown unknowns which they assert must be assumed to be worst case.
A Pew poll from 2015 showed about 83% of Americans thought the measles vaccinne was safe, 9% unsafe with no partisan bias.
It’s already happening in the UK. This is a policy change from a few days ago.
With the start of the roll-out of the COVID‑19 vaccine, we [Saga] have once more reviewed our health and safety procedures to ensure we are providing the safest possible cruise experience.
We have taken the decision to introduce the requirement that all guests must be fully vaccinated. This means that guests must have received their full two doses of the COVID‑19 vaccination at least 14 days before travelling with us…
…The latest government guidance suggests that the roll out will be well progressed for our planned return to service, but if for any reason you need to change your cruise plans, we will offer you a different date or a full refund.
My bold. Saga is a company specialising in cruises for over-50’s, so it’s no great surprise that they are in the vanguard on this. It will be interesting to see how other companies (and for that matter holiday destinations, restaurant chains…etc) do the same, and what affect it has on vaccine hesitancy rates.
j
Extra congrats - my Baby Surprise (born after infertility treatments and adoption) is off at college! Some super fertile people can plan pregnancies to not be eight months pregnant in July, most of us take what we get.
While it may help the economy to open up some stuff to only people who have been vaccinated, I would feel ill served if the only reason I am denied certain stuff is because I am low on the list of recipients, rather than distrusting the vaccine. Especially since I would then be wondering if people were gaming the system to jump ahead of me in line for that reason.
But I’d still be more up to that than to relaxing less formalized events and places to the vaccinated. The refusers would simply pretend that they had been vaccinated in order to not wear masks and enter restaurants.
I think Saga’s reasoning is that, as they restrict their holidays to older customers, then by the time they restart cruises (pretty much) everyone they cater to will have had the chance to be vaccinated. and the third para I quoted was the “If this goes wrong…” clause.
I haven’t tried marrying up vaccination priorities, age groups and restarted cruise operation dates, but I don’t think they were excluding anyone who would not have been excluded by their age policy anyway.
j
Re your second point, see Q1 in this link. It relates to what Saga are doing, but the idea could be applied more generally.
On the general subject of a vaccination passport, there has been …speculation in the UK. Two months ago the UK government were denying that there were any plans. I don’t remember hearing much from them since then.We’ll see.
This is worth a read:
j
If you know you’re super fertile. DH and I stopped using birth control right after he got back from Iraq in very late December, 2006, thinking, based on our friends’ and relatives’ experiences, that we might be pregnant around May. This was our first child, and I’d never been pregnant before.
I had a positive pregnancy test before January was over.
So I got to be in my third trimester over a very hot summer. That was fun.
There’s a big debate going on in my professional community about whether we should get vaccinated because our group is up in our state, or whether we should stand back and let front line workers, teachers, elders, and others get the shots 1st since many of us have the privilege of being able to work remotely.
I think we can say that your perspective is too narrow, or perhaps even sheltered, if you think it’s those three groups and those three groups only that would account for a fraction on the order of one-third who aren’t just lining up at the first opportunity to get vaccinated. I’d say you’re missing one really, really huge category, easily bigger than any of the three mentioned, and another one that I know is big but I don’t know how big. Any chance you could use your imagination to think of two other categories?
I posted a link showing 9% of people think the measles vaccine is unsafe. I think it’s fair to guess those people (antivaxxers) are indeed a good fraction of current refusers just by themselves.
With all due respect, I hate this kind of coy teaser. If you think there are two other groups, why not just tell us which groups those are? And if you know one of them is big but not how big, why not do a little research first so you can give us that info, too?
Several very good friends are state workers and despite them working from home are considered to be essential workers and eligible for jabs. These 40 something people consider themselves to be not at risk because they don’t see people face to face and are careful when out. They have chosen to not get jabbed at this time because there isn’t enough vaccines to go around and they feel safe enough to wait so more of us old fucks can get jabbed and start going out and spending money.
And I’m still waiting in suspense. Is there a reason you choose not to share what you think this huge category is? It makes discussion difficult when you keep it a secret.
The really big category is people who’ve already been naturally infected and survived.
The other category is people who don’t fear covid any more than they fear the flu that they don’t take a vaccine for.
We’re blending together vaccine refusers with vaccine delayers in this thread, so it’s not always clear who’s arguing what. For people who already had COVID, I can see a large number of them delaying the vaccine until others have it or it’s more thoroughly tested in their eyes. But to flat-out refuse it, I think they have to at least dabble in one of LSLGuy’s categories.
For those who refuse because they don’t think COVID is dangerous, I think those fit into the “politically-motivated refuseniks / COVID deniers / CT adherents” group.
Well, that itself seems like an ideologically driven point of view. As I mentioned in the beginning, it’s a narrow perspective, not at all open-minded. It smacks more than a little of paranoia.
What exactly are you advocating that people be open-minded about? That science is incorrect? That the deaths are faked?
COVID is more dangerous than the flu. This is a scientific fact, not ideology. If you have science that demonstrates otherwise, then show it. Otherwise, I will give your ideologically-driven point of view all the attention it deserves.