Nope, just the science, man. Just the sheer, raw data. There are millions and millions and millions of people who look at the data and realize the threat to them is comparatively minor. If a young person believes that, it’s because they know the facts, not because they’ve been blinded by politics. That you cannot recognize this, or that you think their reading of the statistics is wrong, speaks volumes.
Maybe you’re right. The people I know generally think beyond themselves and understand that COVID represents a significant risk to a large part of the population, even if their personal risk is relatively minor. I have trouble imagining a large number of people who would ignore that science and pay attention only to science that directly impacts them. A few people? Sure. People using that as an excuse to justify their political ideology? Most definitely.
But maybe you run with a different crowd.
Have you MET people?
Sure, some–a relative handful–are smart, altruistic, and far-seeing. The overwhelming majority of people are at best 2 out of the 3. Most people are some combination of stupid, selfish, and stubborn. Most people either don’t care how their actions may affect others, or else don’t think far enough ahead for that to even enter their brains.
Maybe I just know more about human nature. I definitely don’t see the world through the political lens that you do. I try to understand how people think, not how my politics tells me they must be forced to think, by politics they must be forced to have.
Time was, half the population didn’t even vote. This idea that broad swaths of the public let their raging ideology blind them to obvious threats to their physical wellbeing is – well, the most generous way I can put it is ‘extraordinarily naive’. It certainly doesn’t pass for mature or sober analysis, that’s for sure.
This is…well, this is something. As above, I’ll give this equal consideration to your views on COVID.
Did you look at the data you just linked to? The data that says that if you get infected with corona you’ve got a one in twenty chance of ending up in hospital?
Because in the crowd I run with “sick enough to need hospitalization” is kind of a big deal. Far as I remember, last time I was in a hospital for actual illness was when I was eight.
I think you’re off by a bit. I’m reading the chart as saying 40M infections amongst 18-49 yr olds, 1M hospitalized. 2.5%. Probably quite a bit below that for a 20 year old.
I was looking at the headline number - overall hospitalisations. So … behaviour of an average person, not assuming anything about age.
Honestly, that hospitalisation rate was much higher than I actually thought it was going to be (estimating asymptomatic infections as only about 15% of the total? That’s really surprising to me - my memory was that estimates were closer to 50/50)
But you can’t look at the top line number. If we are wondering why some people might not be scared of covid, you simply can’t ignore the age disparity. It’s a big part of the reality of covid.
Right. Which is exactly what seems to be missing with @LSL’s suggestion of three categories of people who aren’t highly compelled to seek a vaccine. There is not one single bit of scientific data you can find, or slice in a creative way, that won’t arrive at the same conclusion that morbidity and mortality are most closely correlated with age.
My views are that young people are not especially at risk, or at least not more so than from any number of other diseases (that they don’t either stop down lives or seek vaccines for). Not that they are sinful, or Republicans (they’re not). That they’re just not especially at risk. If your views hold otherwise, then your views are dangerous.
Are these 20-year-olds who don’t know anyone over 50? My kids are in their 20s and they see older people all the time – in stores, at work, me, their grandparents (well, they don’t see their grandparents now, of course). Are these just psychopaths who don’t give a crap about anyone older than them? Don’t they want the lockdown to end? That’s affecting them, too.
ETA more ranting – don’t these young people want to go out to bars again? Back to school? Get jobs in service industries? This pandemic totally sucks for everyone. Anyway, I doubt they are a big part of vaccine refusers because most of them aren’t even in line yet.
I have no idea of the numbers but inevitably some young people simply won’t bother to get the vaccine. Short sighted and/or lazy, sure. Not sure I’d leap to psychopath.
But regardless, I doubt they make up much of any initial refusers. Hospital staff and emergency services tend to be a little older.
Take that up with @SayTwo then – they’re the one who seems to be claiming that young people are a significant chunk of refusers.
I don’t know with any certainty that young people as a bloc are likely to refuse the vaccine. What I do feel confident in claiming is that any analysis of why people don’t want the vaccine that excludes a category for those who simply don’t feel threatened enough by the virus is an analysis that is either willfully blind, itself promoting an agenda, or both.
The language being used here – ‘refuser’ – speaks to an agenda to vaccinate everyone that, as far as I can tell, is not yet official public policy. By that I mean, I haven’t heard yet about official requirements for ‘vaccine passports’ to travel and the like. The word ‘refuse’ indicates an assumed base state of acceptance. The issue might look a slight bit different if they were called ‘polite decliners’.
Well it may be true they’ll be more likely to refuse, I am looking at a Pew poll done in November that doesn’t seem to show 18-29 yr olds being a huge outlier for intention to get a vaccine.
18-29 @ 55%,30-49 @ 53%,50-65 @ 60%
I assume those numbers are up since the vaccines got approval.
As I said, I never made any claim that young people as a whole are or will be less likely to seek a vaccine. I claimed that one reason people might not seek a vaccine – any people – is that they don’t perceive themselves to be particularly at risk of grave illness or death. And among that group, those who don’t perceive themselves to be under any great threat, you will find lots of young people. You won’t only find young people, but you’ll find lots of them.
The EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) has enabled a potentially giant loophole in any employer mandate that workers get vaccinated against Covid-19: “sincerely held religious beliefs” against vaccination.
Antivaxers have long promoted this dodge, despite the fact that no major religion forbids vaccination.
Nice reference. The most interesting table, I think, was " About a quarter of U.S. adults are very concerned about getting a serious case of COVID-19" (about half way down, no table numbers).
Re the question “Are you concerned about getting a serious case of COVID”, responses across the age groups varied surprisingly little. Percentages answering YES were as follows:
18-29 18%
30-49 23%
50-64 24%
65+ 25%
-which to my mind squares well with the surprisingly similar hesitancy/rejection rates reported between youngest and oldest age groups.
Here are another couple of papers which show not much variation in attitude between youngest and oldest groups:
A global survey of potential acceptance of a COVID-19 vaccine
(see Table 2; youngest/oldest ratio 1.73)
Attitudes towards vaccines and intention to vaccinate against COVID-19: Implications for public health communications
(see Table 3 - if I understand this correctly, age 18-29 are somewhat more likely to be “undecided” or “unwilling” than 65+, but in neither case are they the most negative age group.)
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Something that may influence refusers to get vaccinated is if businesses in travel and hospitality that run the airlines, buses, bars, hotels, etc, where people gather in groups, start requiring their customers to have vaccinated status.
This very likely to happen either for straightforward business reasons eg. insurance liability, safeguarding employees or the desire to attracting clients who may feel vulnerable and need reassurance that they are not at risk from other customers. Or it could be a legal requirement imposed on businesses by governments for public health reasons.
Get vaccinated or no summer holiday for you!
That would nudge many of the young immortals who consider themselves invulnerable by appealing to their self interest. It may become like showing some ID to get into a bar. International travel is already restricted in this way by the requirement to have a negative test before being allowed to fly, proof of vaccination will be a simple extension of that.
Vaccine refusers may find themselves limited in their travel and many other options. They will have to decide whether that is price worth paying.
But talk of vaccine passports poses a lot of difficult questions when developing a policy. Also the big political pressure at the moment is to ensure there is enough vaccine to meet demand. This is causing a big political storm in Europe at the moment where the policians are under pressure to deliver immunisation programs as quickly as possible and the vaccine companies can’t keep up with demand so there is a lot of angry finger waving. They are calling this the rise of ‘vaccine nationalism’, which is a whole can of worms.
Dealing with vaccine refusers is understandably way down the list of political priorities.