Are you willing to get the Covid vaccine when offered? (16 Viewers)

Will you get the covid vaccine when offered?

  • Yes

    Votes: 278 73.2%
  • No

    Votes: 106 27.9%

  • Total voters
    380
Well, first, you hadn't asked that question. Which was probably for the best, because it is, frankly, a stupid question.

But since you apparently need an answer, I asked my five year old, and he says cars are machines and have wheels, and vaccines are a little jab that keeps you healthy.


Accusing others of that which you are guilty is a bad faith response.


You're confusing choosing not to engage, in much the same way someone might choose not to engage with a person who stumbles up to them in the street and demands to know if they're one of the lizard people, with 'dodging'. Not really the same thing.

But since other people - albeit apparently not you, because if you'd really wanted to know, you could easily have found out - might be genuinely interested in what happened: there was no substantial need for it prior to the 1980s in the US, because people weren't wildly suing vaccine manufacturers for vast sums for anything that happened to occur to their child on a date after they got vaccinated.

"Only one such case was filed in 1978, whereas 73 were filed in 1984. During the seven-year period from 1978 to 1984, the average amount claimed per suit has risen from $10 million to $46.5 million." Hinman AR. DTP Vaccine Litigation. Am J Dis Child. 1986;140(6):528–530.

Why? Substantially, the anti-vaccine movement, driven by a scaremongering 1982 TV documentary 'DPT: Vaccine Roulette'.

That caused manufacturers to halt or restrict sales, causing a shortage: "Earlier this year, Wyeth Laboratories of Radnor, Pa., said it was halting production because of rising litigation costs. A second company, Connaught Laboratories Inc. of Swiftwater, Pa., said this week that it was accepting no new orders for the vaccine because it was unable to obtain liability insurance at a satisfactory cost. A company official has said that Connaught was filling only a handful of remaining contracts." New York Times, Dec. 14, 1984.

That left just one manufacturer, Lederle, a continuing shortage, and greatly increased costs; in 1982, one dose of DPT vaccine was 10-12 cents, by 1984 it was $2.80.

That was bad, because whooping cough is highly contagious and highly dangerous in infants. Pre-vaccination, it killed thousands of young children in the US every year. "For example, from 1926 to 1930, there were 36,013 pertussis-related deaths in the United States. The average death rates from 1940 to 1948 per 100,000 population per year were 64 in children less than 1 year old, 6.4 in those 1–4 years of age, and 0.2 in those 5–14 years of age. More than 90% of the reported pertussis cases occurred in children less than 10 years of age, with about 10% of those in children less than 1 year of age." James D. Cherry, Historical Perspective on Pertussis and Use of Vaccines to Prevent It, Microbe Magazine, March 2007.

The crucial thing is, the alleged condition, 'pertussis vaccine encephalopathy', wasn't actually a thing. It was an unrelated condition, infantile epilepsy. But proving the negative, that a rare condition is unrelated to a vaccine, is highly complex, requires a lot of time and data to fully establish, and, in the context of a civil court, isn't guaranteed to succeed (and I should add, the opposite can also be true, showing that a rare reaction was caused by a vaccine can be hard to establish).

So without passing the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, the US would have been facing at best continued shortages and high costs, or at worst a cessation of manufacturing altogether, and would not have been able to keep up their high level of DPT vaccine uptake. Which would likely have resulted in the 10 to 100 times higher case incidence that occurred in countries that were unable to maintain high vaccine coverage when it was compromised by anti-vaccine movements (Gangarosa, Eugene J., et al. "Impact of anti-vaccine movements on pertussis control: the untold story." The Lancet 351.9099 (1998): 356-361.). Which, again, would have been bad.

The same thing that happened with the DPT vaccine can happen with any vaccine in principle. As we all know, the anti-vaccine movement isn't limited to just that one vaccine. It's easy to attribute a rare condition that happens to occur after vaccination to the vaccine, regardless of whether it's actually related or not, and when you are trying to vaccinate virtually everybody, there will inevitably be unrelated, rare, conditions occurring in the time frame after vaccination. Which is why the principle applies beyond just the DPT vaccine.

And, just to be completely explicit, none of that scenario is applicable to cars.
 

During the early months of Covid-19 vaccinations, several major demographic groups lagged in receiving shots, including Black Americans, Latino Americans and Republican voters.

More recently, the racial gaps — while still existing — have narrowed. The partisan gap, however, continues to be enormous. A Pew Research Center poll last month found that 86 percent of Democratic voters had received at least one shot, compared with 60 percent of Republican voters.

The political divide over vaccinations is so large that almost every reliably blue state now has a higher vaccination rate than almost every reliably red state.

Because the vaccines are so effective at preventing serious illness, Covid deaths are also showing a partisan pattern. Covid is still a national crisis, but the worst forms of it are increasingly concentrated in red America.
 
Yeah, it's about as surprising as water being wet imo. That said, I do think there are some who are finally getting the message and getting vaccinated, but often what prompts that is seeing close friends and family dying from Covid. I'm actually mildly surprised that 60% are vaccinated. I do know numerous Rs who have been vaccinated here in VA. It feels like most people here have gotten vaccinated, but I think that's a byproduct of where I live. I'm sure rural Virginia is much different.
 
Yeah, it's about as surprising as water being wet imo. That said, I do think there are some who are finally getting the message and getting vaccinated, but often what prompts that is seeing close friends and family dying from Covid. I'm actually mildly surprised that 60% are vaccinated. I do know numerous Rs who have been vaccinated here in VA. It feels like most people here have gotten vaccinated, but I think that's a byproduct of where I live. I'm sure rural Virginia is much different.
Yeah, I would expect larger cities have much greater vaccination rates than rural America (regardless of blue or red state).
 
Yeah, it's about as surprising as water being wet imo. That said, I do think there are some who are finally getting the message and getting vaccinated, but often what prompts that is seeing close friends and family dying from Covid. I'm actually mildly surprised that 60% are vaccinated. I do know numerous Rs who have been vaccinated here in VA. It feels like most people here have gotten vaccinated, but I think that's a byproduct of where I live. I'm sure rural Virginia is much different.

I suspect part of the rate that strikes you as higher than expected is the number of older Americans that identify as Republican. From the beginning, Covid took a heavier toll on older Americans, so the calculus of risk is more compelling - regardless of their politics. I think also older Americans are (1) more likely to be in regular contact with physicians who recommend the vaccine and (2) more likely to trust companies like Pfizer and J&J because they're likely on other medications as part of their daily lives. I think the vaccination rate for older Americans is just high all around.
 
I suspect part of the rate that strikes you as higher than expected is the number of older Americans that identify as Republican. From the beginning, Covid took a heavier toll on older Americans, so the calculus of risk is more compelling - regardless of their politics. I think also older Americans are (1) more likely to be in regular contact with physicians who recommend the vaccine and (2) more likely to trust companies like Pfizer and J&J because they're likely on other medications as part of their daily lives. I think the vaccination rate for older Americans is just high all around.
Indeed, good point. I also think the effects on older people being more obvious and dramatic had a big impact. Those older folks often have friends who were in the nursing homes that got hit so hard by Covid. Seeing the body counts from that, I have to imagine it made the pandemic more real to them.
 
Indeed, good point. I also think the effects on older people being more obvious and dramatic had a big impact. Those older folks often have friends who were in the nursing homes that got hit so hard by Covid. Seeing the body counts from that, I have to imagine it made the pandemic more real to them.
As a certified older American, I agree.
 
I suspect part of the rate that strikes you as higher than expected is the number of older Americans that identify as Republican. From the beginning, Covid took a heavier toll on older Americans, so the calculus of risk is more compelling - regardless of their politics. I think also older Americans are (1) more likely to be in regular contact with physicians who recommend the vaccine and (2) more likely to trust companies like Pfizer and J&J because they're likely on other medications as part of their daily lives. I think the vaccination rate for older Americans is just high all around.
Mostly right, especially up north.

But a few pockets of really low rates.

Screenshot_20210927-233428_Samsung Internet.jpg


Some of those under 60% regions are like 35-45% vaccinated seniors.
 
Yeah, it's about as surprising as water being wet imo. That said, I do think there are some who are finally getting the message and getting vaccinated, but often what prompts that is seeing close friends and family dying from Covid. I'm actually mildly surprised that 60% are vaccinated. I do know numerous Rs who have been vaccinated here in VA. It feels like most people here have gotten vaccinated, but I think that's a byproduct of where I live. I'm sure rural Virginia is much different.
Lifelong R here. I was one of the first to get vaccinated; caveat - my spouse works in health care.
Also, I consider myself a moderate R. That's all I'll say on it as I don't want to get overly political. ETA: Actually I've been considering leaving the R and going independent for awhile now. Just haven't gotten around to changing anything yet.
 
Lifelong R here. I was one of the first to get vaccinated; caveat - my spouse works in health care.
Also, I consider myself a moderate R. That's all I'll say on it as I don't want to get overly political. ETA: Actually I've been considering leaving the R and going independent for awhile now. Just haven't gotten around to changing anything yet.
Yep, a lot of similarities here. :9:
 
Actually this made me remember I was going to do the change so I just filled out the paperwork (NJ doesn't make it easy) and have it in the envelope to mail off. So now I guess I'm an "I".
Here in Virginia, you don't even declare a party affiliation. But if they did I'd be "I" as well.
 

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