Well, I suppose, instead of a “you must be vaccinated to work for the feds, or a Federal contractor”, we could have had a “you are not eligible for monoclonal antibodies unless you’ve been vaccinated, and hospital beds and other scarce resources must be allocated first to the vaccinated, and the unvaccinated can only be treated if there are resources remaining”.
That would result in a higher death toll than a vaccine mandate. And I don’t think it would go over super well politically, either.
Actually, the US vaccines are very safe. The most common reason doctors recommend against vaccination for covid among those for whom the vaccines have been approved is “you had monoclonal antibodies in the last 90 days, so you still have enough antibodies knocking around that your immune system may not react to the vaccine. You need to wait to clear them to be vaccinated”. If you just have an allergy, you can take a different vaccine, instead.
So what do you think, Ted? What do you wish would have happened with this family? I know you’re not happy with this result because you’re not a cruel and heartless person. I’m sure you would prefer that they had gotten vaccinated and lived out their natural lives.
We tried characterizing them as part of the “typical right-wing, batshit crazy crowd”. That didn’t work.
When they expressed concerns about how data and information was being presented, we dismissed those concerns as “crazy anti-vaxxer claims” and insinuated that any hesitancy to taking the COVID vaccint is aking to being against vaccines for things like the measles and polio. Turns out that didn’t work either.
We approved when major media outlets marginalized their concerns as “disinformation” and we assured them that there was nothing Stalinist about this approach. It’s quite common in a free society to silence critics that way. For some reason that did not pursuade them.
We tried a heavier hand by pressuring employers to fire the non-vaccinated, and in some parts of the country told them they were no longer welcome to participate in society. We even sometimes float the idea of prioritizing healthcare based on vaccination status, ignoring obvious slippery slopes with that idea. Did it work in any sort of meaningful way? Or did it just prod a few people who were already leaning towards getting vaccinated and harden the positions of everyone else?
Ted, what is your advice on an approach to getting families such as this vaccinated that doesn’t involve killing 60% of them as a persuasion technique?
While I definitely agree, I did look closely at the data the FDA released in the emergency approval for < 11 year olds which analyzed the balance of risks between a rare heart issue with protection against COVID. It’s a battle of small numbers really, since the COVID risk for 11-17 is so low and the heart risk is so low.
I was pretty indifferent on getting my 6 year old vaccinated and might have even held off if she was a boy (the heart risk was much higher for boys) until the FDA fully approved it. In the emergency approval they’d created simulated data based on a few assumptions derived from the 11-17 year old dataset (not much different from something I might do with insurance data) and that seemed a bit bold to me for medical data. Alas my 6 year old got vaccinated during emergency approval regardless as the societal benefits outweighed the tiny risk anyway.
My MIL claims her doctor said not to take the vaccine because she’s allergic to bees 
The risk of myocarditis from covid is much higher than the risk of myocarditis from the vaccine. If covid were a rare disease, it would make sense to avoid vaccinating people at higher risk of complications from the vaccine. But it’s so common that you can be pretty certain your kid will eventually be exposed.
Now, maybe the risk of myocarditis is lower with omicron. Time will tell. I think the data I saw was dominated by alpha, but it might have been delta. I forget. But I don’t think you should regret your kid’s vaccination, especially since I gather they didn’t get myocarditis from it.
(and the reason the kid’s dose is so small is because Pfizer was trying to minimize the side effects.)
You MIL should get a better doctor.
She’s just a narcissistic liar is all, she never received that advice.
Who said you had to have an approach? This boils down to people being selfish and stupid. You’re not going to fix that, and I don’t know why you would try. Worse, any type of conversation like that just starts with them defending their position and trying to convince YOU to not get the vaxx.
They’ll figure it out when they start losing their jobs and/or become deathly ill, or people around them suffer these consequences. At that point they’ll either figure it out, or not.
Don’t allow them to participate in society where they can spread covid. Don’t let them work in places where they can spread covid and deny them unemployment benefits. Allow employers to fire unvaxxed without consequence. All stick, no carrot this time is fine with me.
And when they get covid, they get the same medical treatment as anyone else. That’s not really up for debate IMO.
I believe it was excess myocarditis, although in fairness I’m not sure if that contemplates risk of it from them getting COVID anyway?
The key thing I thought was a bit bold was the myocarditis risk is highest of those tested for those 12-17 years, and then in the simulated data they assume the myocarditis risk would be the same for those 6-11, but it seems tempting to think maybe it’d be higher than those 12-17 (as it’d follow from 12-17 being higher than those older)? Or maybe there’s some new issue specific to 6-11 that we don’t know about yet and will discover in the testing? I’m all for vaccines but I just didn’t feel rushed to do it when the COVID risk was low and the FDA didn’t have sufficient actual data to fully approve it yet. Once it’s FDA approved then fair enough.
On rereading, I might not have been clear. The risk balancing process between vax/no vax decision should take into account personal characteristics. If that balance of risks shows vax is safer, and you still refuse, how do you accept the consequences? Society shouldn’t deny care due to vax status. I am asking how a person who wants agency can maintain integrity by their own actions. How does one avoid the “privatize benefits, socialize costs” problem in a no vax decision that isn’t supported by risk analysis?
Of course, even though limited information earlier means the error bars were larger, and there will always be a degree of uncertainty, for most people it is now pretty clear. It is also now clear that the vaccines are very safe.
RW asks how we should try to convince skeptics like the ones TH knew to voluntarily get vaxxed. I wish I knew. Was it a problem with a simplified message, versus a more nuanced one? Was it hearing “vax!” from people they distrusted while ones they regarded highly gave the opposite one? How do you defeat cognitive bias (is that what you call refusing to accept info that contradicts currently held ideas)? Seems that one family member still won’t change their position, while the other did.
Yes, the end goal should be to preserve lives and health. So even if black helicopters full of vaccinators descending on the unvaxxed could achieve 100% vax rate, that wouldn’t be preferable since war would result. The carrots and sticks must be carefully chosen to minimize harm.
I think mine is taking new patients!
They died so their strategy to avoid vaccination sucked. Their “concerns” were pointless since they are dead due to those concerns. Should have listened. Their fault. No real sympathy here. The vaccine was so easy to get and they passed.
You might need to check on the mandate thread but many of us are not-mandate (or pro Twitter-bans for that matter).
We can all be pretty sad about this stuff without it being about the toxic politics.
People are trapped in an echo chamber when they are simultaneously being told to do their own research on vaccines while also being told to be skeptical of big government and the major media outlets and really anyone who speaks to the benefits of vaccines. You can be critical of how people responded and tried to convince them to get vaccinated, but you blow right past the real problem that is causing them to make suboptimal decisions assuming their goal is to not die from COVID.
Steve, you may be convinced that the vaccine case has been made, but it is clear that others are not yet convinced. Your actions may be well-meaning, but if those actions drive the unvaccinated further away from getting the vaccine (a case which I’d argue can be made), do you share any of the responsibility?
Suppose we accept the “accept responsibility” argument for “requiring scare resources”. You and I can agree that the argument is limited in scope to this group of vaccines. But we’ve also been around long enough to realize that no argument, once accepted, stays limited in scope. Are you ready to decline care to people who make decisions contrary to other cases that have “been made”?
Ted is not cruel and heartless. He doesn’t want his old classmates to die if it can be avoided.
A lot of that going around.
Yes, that’s why we really can’t go that route. (although some states do use it in a limited fashion for allocating transplant organs, fwiw.)