Brwned
Have you ever been in love before?
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2008
- Messages
- 50,913
I'd be curious to know the anti-vaxxer rate in the at-risk segment. I think we're in a bit of a "no atheists in foxholes" moment, and I am curious to know if there are that many people 60+ who'd refuse the vaccine.
There’s two big factors to consider there. The first is that America is a relatively old and unhealthy nation. 53m people 65+ and an incredible 100m people at risk, according to CDC analysis. So just due to the sheer number of people it would be very unlikely that millions of the vaccine hesitant people don’t overlap with those groups. It’s also the case that vaccine hesitancy among the black population has been substantially higher for a long, long time for very legitimate reasons, and they also are more likely to have some of the health conditions putting them at risk.
The other thing is there has been a lot of data collected on the subject all saying essentially the same thing. Vaccine hesitancy has fallen as the likelihood of a highly effective vaccine has gone up, and people most at risk of the virus are most likely to take it. But there are still a substantial proportion of people in those groups that say they wouldn’t take it. Donald Trump so far seems to be the poster boy of that, and people will follow his lead, guaranteed. This is the best data on it:
https://www.pewresearch.org/science...n-research-and-development-process-increases/
It’s a pure trend from a properly random sample of the populations and a large sample size. The problem is the only data you can get on intent to do something comes from surveys, and self reported data on intent to do things is inherently unreliable. We are bad at predicting our choices in situations that still feel quite distant from us. But if you accept the general pattern rather than the specificity of the data, a good chunk of 65+ are not sure they will take the vaccine when offered.