You might want to state them again, as I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who has lost track of any positive suggestions you might have made.
I’m pretty sure I disagreed with everything you presented. Not disagreed as in “I dislike that idea” but disagreed as in “there’s no way that’s going to increase vaccination rates”. But as I said, I have given up. I have compassion fatigue. I no longer feel bad when antivaxxers get sick or die. I realize that makes me a worse human being, but at some point, it’s not my problem. I will do my best to take care of myself and my loved ones, and to avoid people who prefer spreading covid to accepting a miraculously successful vaccine.
So I have a personal vaccine mandate. You can’t interact with me in person in any meaningful way unless you are vaccinated. And that’s not an attempt to encourage anyone to get vaccinated. It is purely an attempt to protect myself.
You’re not required to feel bad when anyone gets sick or dies. Less “compassion” on the part of do-gooders would be a positive move. If you want a short-term solution, do what you’re already doing and ramp up the intense persuasion. If you want a long-term solution, back off. As we’ve established, you really don’t know any vaccine-hesitant people, so your opinion on how they react to the current approach does not hold much weight.
As for me interacting with you in person, I appreciate the invitation, but no thanks.
You’re the one who seems worried that Facebook will limit your access to that kind of story. So I think it’s you who is encouraging that kind of thought.
But in all seriousness, time isn’t what makes people feel comfortable with something new. People who don’t know how to swim, and wait and wait to attempt it are less comfortable in the water, not more comfortable. Same with people who are slow to learn to drive. Same with kids who aren’t encouraged to try novel foods. The way people get comfortable with novelty is to embrace it – often with strong encouragement. No, it doesn’t help to be thrown into the pool. But having all your friends swim away from you as you are left alone on the beach DOES lead people to learn to swim. So does being left out of the birthday party because the other kids will be swimming. So does being offered swimming lessons.
I think it’s really unlikely that vaccine hesitancey works fundamentally differently from hesitancey around other novel situations.
I don’t care about that kind of story. If that’s what someone wants to believe, let them. But it’s not the sort of story being suppressed by the online media companies which helps lead to vaccine hesitancy.
People aren’t going to get vaccinated because you won’t invite them to your birthday party. Some might. They’re probably already vaccinated.
Perhaps that’s true within your social circle. Are we talking about your social circle?
No, of course now. But they may get vaccinated because their employer doesn’t invite them to the office.
I was attempting to compare children learning to swim to adults being vaccinated.
You think that people in your social circle are fundamentally difference from most people in most other situations? Because you are suggesting your social circle is full of people who just aren’t comfortable with the vaccine, yet. And I’m saying that that’s now how typical people work regarding any other novel situation. Not “people I know”, but “people in general”.
I’m saying that however groups normally work in “novel situations”, that path has been completely derailed. You were happy to wait until you were comfortable with it, but you weren’t willing to let others do the same.
It is, and I’ve given examples of other areas of life where my belief holds. I think you are embracing a fantasy if you think that people just become comfortable with novelty over time, without any interaction with it.
Fair enough. And I actually did consider taking a very part-time job as a health care aid to become legally eligible to get vaccinated. I decided it didn’t pass the newspaper test.
Vaccine hesitant social circles have created echo chambers of vaccine hesitancy. Mandates could finally break that, because people might actually do real research or call their doctor once faced with a mandate, and as people within that circle become vaccinated, the remainders in that circle will lose their echo chamber.