Antivax Memes
Antivax Memes
Based on various sources, including the recent NY Times podcast with interviews of vaccine resisters/hesitant, here’s my list of common elements.
1. Assuming the sole criterion for whether to take the vaccine is its effect on your own health—not taking into account whether you may infect someone else. Antivax people nearly always justify their choice in terms of their perceived risk of getting Covid and the personal risk posed by the vaccine and not in terms of the vaccine’s potential role (or lack of it) in reducing the extent and duration of the pandemic.
2. Bodily violation: resistance to accepting a foreign substance into their body. Also resistant to pressure from others, such as employers and government, to allow this substance to cross the “skin line”.
3. Personal responsibility for health. Some antivax people think that how sick you get from Covid depends on your general state of health, itself perhaps the result of the measures you’ve taken to protect it. If you stick to what you think is a healthy diet, if you work out, or if you just think you just have “good genes”, you do not think you are at risk and need to vaccinate against it. Some strands of alternative health are strongly invested in the view that there is no randomness to disease: if you get sick it’s because you failed to cleanse, build up your immune system, tune your energy or otherwise do what you should have done. Conversely, if you’ve followed the program you’re not at risk and don’t have to vaccinate.
4. Apparent inability to think probabilistically. A common remark is that you can get Covid even if you’re vaccinated, so what’s the point? Risk is perceived in binary terms: it exists or it doesn’t.
5. Fatalism. Whatever happens happens. There’s no point to getting vaccinated; you’ll get sick and die sooner or later anyway.
6. Distrust. These are experimental vaccines that haven’t been approved by the FDA yet. And even when the FDA says it’s OK, who believes them? The government and the media lie with abandon. The vaccines are also being pushed by corporations that just want to make as much money as they can.
Efforts to persuade people to drop their resistance to the vaccines need to begin by listening to them and communicating with them where they are.
Sorry, I have heard them all and from family members despite a sibling dying of Covid at 57–she had a bad immune system, we all die sometime, etc. IMHO they are weak minded morons who believe everything they hear from Republicans and Fox News and nothing that is inconsistent with those talking points. More than anything else it is denial. It sure does not help when our supposed leaders like Congressmen Banks and Grothman put their heads in the sand and say they will not presume to advise their constituents on vaccines because they are not doctors. Of course, that never stops them from ordering women what to do with their health care needs. I am done with all of them. I will try to protect my health—I will get a booster as soon as I can, wear a mask, avoid crowds and Florida and to hell with the morons and Republicans, but I repeat myself.
@ Peter,
Excellent summary! Each infected person is a viral feedlot from which could emerge the next variant. I’m glad there are folks with the patience to talk these people out of their denial and get them to accept that getting vaccinated not only protects them but protects everyone. I lack that patience.
Joel:
Has there been data from reputable sources concerning the longevity of the Covid vaccines? I have not seen much documentation other than innuendo being spouted and then carried forward by doubters of the vaccine validity.
It would also seem to me, taking the dosage every six month (if this is a reality?) is still far better than dying from Covid or being permanently injured from having it.
There is little talking deniers out of avoiding vaccines. They seem stubborn right up to the moment they die in some cases or finally admit they shoulda got in line for the vaccine. We have examples of such here. Their support just feeds the flames of doubt.
Possibly but that is a lot to crank into a person that already had the disease and survived it without issue, which seems to be what mandates and very severe status segregation intend to do. I would also suggest that repetitive requirements is a real risk to any private entity that decides to mandate the vaccine for employment or to enter your business (restaurant, gym, whatever). The idea that these steps will hold up for long is a fantasy if boosters are clearly needed on a sub-annual basis. Which employer is going to dedicate their HR to a continuous role in this? One and done is sort of okay, but over and over is going to fail and when if fails, well some of the people you disciplined at the start are going to file suit claiming it was not about health because if it were, you would still be doing it. This is why I think a lot of businesses are going to go slow until the issue of “is it just a one-time thing or is it an unending commitment” is clearer.
An HR department that wants to keep its employees working.
A lot of HR departments enforce periodic requirements. Some require medical checkups. Some have weight and strength mandates. Some require updated education. Some require vaccinations. Some require drug tests. You can always change jobs if you don’t like the requirements.
“…Which employer is going to dedicate their HR to a continuous role in this?…”
https://news.yahoo.com/companies-requiring-proof-of-vaccination-from-employees-185710054.html
…Requiring a vaccinated workforce
San Francisco Bay Area Boys & Girls Clubs of the Peninsula
Delta Air Lines new hires
Michelin-starred New York City restaurant Eleven Madison Park
The Broadway production of Hamilton
Houston Methodist Hospital network
Lastique International Corp., a raw plastics distributor and recycler in Louisville, Kentucky
New York City department store Saks
Senior assisted living facilities Sunrise Senior Living, Enlivant, and IntegraCare
Facebook employees at U.S. campuses
U.S.-based Google employees
Employees of The Washington Post
New York City-based Morgan Stanley employees
CNN employees
Chicago-based Fifty/50 Restaurant Group
Le Bernardin, a Michelin-starred New York City restaurant
Twitter
Asset manager BlackRock
All office-based employees of Lyft
Private healthcare network Ascension Health
Cast and crew of U.S. Netflix productions
San Francisco city employees
Real estate firm, the Durst Corporation, is requiring all employees to be vaccinated or they will face termination.
Corporate and management-level staff of Walmart must be vaccinated by October 4
Norweigan Cruise Lines crew
Employees and crew members at all U.S.-based Walt Disney parks
In September, Microsoft will require vaccinated employees, vendors, and visitors to its U.S. offices
Office-based Uber employees
Financial services company Jefferies Group will only allow vaccinated employees back into its offices
Food provider Tyson will begin a phased mandate for a vaccinated workforce beginning October 1, subject to union negotiations
Tech-real estate company Redfin
Politico employees
All employees of long-term care facilities in Massachusetts
U.S.-based contractors and employees of Pfizer
Virginia state employees will be required to get vaccinated or submit to weekly Covid testing beginning September 1
All U.S.-based employees of United Airlines
California health care and long-term care workers must be vaccinated beginning September 30 or submit to weekly COVID-19 tests
Corporate office employees of Walgreens
Salesforce
New York City-based members and employees of Equinox fitness centers
DoorDash corporate employees
Cisco
Anthem health insurance company
Frontier Airlines employees beginning October 1
U.S.-based Ford employees that travel overseas
Employees and contractors of Gilead Sciences beginning October 1
Kudos
https://news.yahoo.com/companies-requiring-proof-of-vaccination-from-employees-185710054.html
With regard to point #4, yes the vaccines do operate on probabilistic principles. But if the consensus seems to be forming that the vaccines effectiveness at preventing infection and transmission is lower than thought back a few months ago, why would this be the time to begin a heavy push to mandate or otherwise figure out ways to socially punish unvaccinated individuals? Every unvaccinated person’s contribution to the collective “harm” is diminished relative to the baseline where no mandates or segregation were being installed, because the risk from the vaccinated is what has changed here. When we thought these were nearly silver bullets, why if you didn’t want them, okay, but now the silver is a bit tarnished and we are supposed to hate on people who took up Joe Biden on his “no mandate” malarkey? I’m vaccinated but know a lot of unvaccinated. Drop all the coercion and even discussion of coercion and it will be an improvement. So what exactly is the point of the Times article in the first place anyway? To devise better communications to encourage vaccinations? Heck, no. It is to give their mostly intolerant audience some “idiocies” to cackle over.
Christ sakes.
Is that supposed to be an argument?
Yes, the argument is it is a really dumb moment to push for mandates and segregation if the news is also that the vaccines are not as good as believed in curtailing transmission, which is exactly the source of public benefit. Not getting really sick is specifically great for the individual and not being part of the transmission cycle is good for the public. If it was an okay personal choice back in April, May and June when that public good was thought to be really good, how is not okay in August when the public benefit is seen as weaker? And that is what the preponderance of the news has been, both in the US and places like Israel. I’m vaccinated and think it is ridiculous to try to beat down the unvaccinated with penalties and insults, which seems to be the intent of at least a loud slice of the vaccinated. It is like a crazy house where the vaccinated fear the situation way more than the unvaccinated, but in that case, who is crazier?
Eric,
“…It is like a crazy house where the vaccinated fear the situation way more than the unvaccinated, but in that case, who is crazier?”
[Easy question. No one likes the disruption to business and ordinary social life, but only the unvaccinated are unwilling to take all the steps necessary to end the disruption. If we had been successfully containing Covid-19 without the vaccine, then that would be different. Check out where the US stands among countries at the link below.]
https://www.endcoronavirus.org/countries
Some are winning – some are not
which countries do best in beating covid-19?
@Run,
I’ve been in the Moderna phase III trial for one year, and I was one of the earliest enrollees in the phase III trial. There were, of course, people in phase I (safety) and phase II (initial efficacy), but those numbers were small, and thus the numbers from those trials who have only recently been infected is very small. To be able to make any sort of plausible assessment of durability of protection requires both time and numbers. It appears that those criteria have been met for the six month time-span and the news so far is good.
” . . . the durability of the immunity induced by mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines remains a major unknown.
Both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have reported a protective immunity of around 90% lasting for six months following a second vaccination.”
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210706/Modernae28099s-COVID-19-vaccine-elicits-durable-T-cell-memory-and-antibody-responses.aspx
Joel:
Exactly, we are still awaiting additional data to support, to support either claim. That is enough for me. I look at the numbers of shots I have had to be in the service, travel abroad, and what I obtain annually for flu, etc. My Yellow Card is full.
Eric:
Then why did you get inoculated? If you are sure it is a hoax, or you believe you are resistant, etc. , then do not go further. Get out there and mingle, drink your WI brandy, and party on.
It appears you are on safe ground since you were inoculated. You can deny all you wish to. And if you mouth-ings are not true; you can always say . . . “oh well, I was wrong!”
You have nothing to support your claims against vaccination except supposition, conjecture, innuendo and the loon “Ron Johnson.”
Correlation is not causation, it is said,
but a whole lot of antivaxxers are Trump fanatics.
Delta variant surges in Midwest as Trump Country rejects vaccines
Top Trump supporters keep casting doubt on Covid-19 vaccines.
The Red/Blue Divide in COVID-19 Vaccination Rates is Growing
Hmmm. If you choose to refuse
the Covid shots, you don’t have
to be a Trump supporter, but if
you are Trump supporter, you do
have to refuse the shots, it seems.
Party affiliation – Gallup
Those who affiliate with GOP have increased their number since last month, to 26%.
The percentage affiliated with Dems has recently declined slightly, to 27%.
The percentages are similar however, ranging from 25%-30%
for Dems, 24% to 29% for GOP – this year.
Most are still ‘independent’, from 41% to 50% this year, currently 43%.
My easily-remembered Rule-of-thumb
of ‘22% GOP; 33% Dem; 44% Ind’ is much
influenced by dwelling in Massachusetts
where to be with the GOP is quite rare.
The GOP controls 16.5% of seats in the MA legislature.
(18.75% of the House, 30 of 160 seats;
0.75% of the Senate, 3 of 40 seats.)
Err: GOP controls 7.5% of MA Senate seats.
Fred,
All of my wife’s siblings voted for Trump twice. All of my wife’s siblings have been vaccinated for Covid-19. They are from CT, which may make them more compulsive Republicans than white supremacists.
Mark Evanier remarked of a friend, a heavy drug user but anti-vax, that he had finally found one drug that he wouldn’t put into his body unseen.
“…4. Apparent inability to think probabilistically…”
[Probably one more word than necessary.]