Office Hours: Do you know people who still refuse to get the Covid vaccine?
Let's talk about why they're still refusing
A year ago, Donald Trump tested positive for coronavirus and was airlifted to Walter Reed Medical Center for emergency treatment. After months of his blatant disinformation and deadly incompetence, it felt like poetic justice.
America is unquestionably in a better position now that vaccines are widely available, and since we elected a president who believes in science. But the long tail of this pandemic drags on. People are still dying, and too many people are still unvaccinated.
So let me ask you: do you know people who still refuse to get the Covid vaccine and how are you dealing with it?
And of course please feel free to ask me anything.
I’ll be online from 10-11am PT/1-2pm ET responding to your comments.
I pulled a few community norms from an old syllabus. Please keep them in mind:
— Practice civility. Civility is not about agreeing. It’s about how we disagree. Let’s avoid the nastiness that has come to dominate so many of our online conversations these days.
— Assume positive intent. Try to understand what others are getting at.
— Be open-minded about dissenting views. The best way of learning anything is to talk to somebody who disagrees with you.
— Reach out. I hope that Office Hours can be dialogue not only between you and me, but also among one another.
I'm just getting the hang of this, so I'm not sure exactly how to respond to all these many good and thoughtful messages. Let me start by restating something I just wrote in response to Theorem, who provides a particularly thoughtful explanation of why they're not going to be vaccinated. My point is that Theorem doesn't quite fully assess risk. The fact is, getting vaccinated greatly reduces the risk that you'll get the virus. As a result, if you're vaccinated you're far less likely to infect others than if you remain unvaccinated.
So in reality, getting vaccinated does protect others, and remaining unvaccinated increases the risk that others will become infected.
One other thing that's very important to keep in mind: This virus keeps mutating. The more human bodies it can infect, the more likely it will eventually mutate into a new form that resists the vaccines we have available. So every person who decides they don't want to be vaccinated is not only raising the risk to others of being infected directly, but also indirectly raising the risks of other human beings on the planet that the virus will mutate in ways that are more difficult (or impossible) to stop.
I appreciate this may be a tough call for Theorem and for others.
Folks, I have to go tend to a few other things right now, so that has to be all for today. Thanks for your very thoughtful comments and questions. Hope this newsletter and these chats continue to be useful to you. I'm enjoying them a great deal.