This story makes sense for describing how people might believe conspiracy theories because they oppose lockdowns, but I don’t think a similar story would apply for opposition to vaccines. Following this line of thinking, I think the sequence of events is:
Disease breaks out.
Public health authorities respond to the disease with high-cost preventative measures.
People respond to those preventative measures by becoming hostile to public health measures.
People’s hostility to public health measures oppose vaccines even though they’re much lower cost and much more effective than the measures that led to them becoming hostile to public health measures in the first place.
Similarly what I have seen from by my friends and acquaintances is.
Disease breaks out.
Public health authorities/pharmaceutical companies push a new vaccine and claim it is X% effective/prevents the spread.
Later it is found to be less effective than initially promised/new variants make it less effective and boosters are now announced as needed.
People feel lied to, believing they were originally told vaccine was more effective than evidence shows it is/the fact that restrictions are still in place with the vaccine makes reduces its credibility in their eyes.
Opposition to vaccines comes in various gradings and flavors. I think it’s pretty clear that initial vaccination has positive expected value for almost everyone. But it’s much less clear if a booster shot can claim the same value proposition: it has a much smaller direct benefit to the bostee, so the argument for it is mostly based on solidarity. Is that enough to make it mandatory?
You can also be pro vaccines but against public policy about them. There has been some amount of goalpost shifting, e.g., in the scope and duration of covid passes. In some places, there was an implicit deal on the table: get vaccinated and you will be allowed to visit restaurants and bars. But a few months later this was changed to requiring recent vaccination (4 months instead of 12). Regardless of whether you think that’s a good motivation to get vaccination, the promise has clearly been broken.
This is exactly right. By the time the vaccine became widely available, resistance to public health measures was already baked in and broke down along culture war lines, so nothing else really mattered at that point.
We live in in a roughly Dunbar-sized group. If no one died of Covid in your group but one or two people were hurt by vaccines, you will be scared of vaccines.
If you compare deaths to harms, you can end up scared of vaccines or Covid, depending on which you compare. If no one died of a vaccine in your group but one or two people were hurt by Covid, you will be scared of Covid. The question is, where does the framing come from? If no one died of Covid or a vaccine in your group (which seems to be the most likely case for a given group), which do you become scared of, and why?
Let’s say you are a man in his 20s. in USA You believe (perhaps mistakenly) that if you get sick with covid, the government will foot the bill. On the other hand, if you get the rare myocarditis from the vaccine, you will be stuck with the bills. Does this create a weird incentive for a young man to avoid vaccination on the grounds of financial risk of ruin?
This story makes sense for describing how people might believe conspiracy theories because they oppose lockdowns, but I don’t think a similar story would apply for opposition to vaccines. Following this line of thinking, I think the sequence of events is:
Disease breaks out.
Public health authorities respond to the disease with high-cost preventative measures.
People respond to those preventative measures by becoming hostile to public health measures.
People’s hostility to public health measures oppose vaccines even though they’re much lower cost and much more effective than the measures that led to them becoming hostile to public health measures in the first place.
Similarly what I have seen from by my friends and acquaintances is.
Disease breaks out.
Public health authorities/pharmaceutical companies push a new vaccine and claim it is X% effective/prevents the spread.
Later it is found to be less effective than initially promised/new variants make it less effective and boosters are now announced as needed.
People feel lied to, believing they were originally told vaccine was more effective than evidence shows it is/the fact that restrictions are still in place with the vaccine makes reduces its credibility in their eyes.
Opposition to vaccines comes in various gradings and flavors. I think it’s pretty clear that initial vaccination has positive expected value for almost everyone. But it’s much less clear if a booster shot can claim the same value proposition: it has a much smaller direct benefit to the bostee, so the argument for it is mostly based on solidarity. Is that enough to make it mandatory?
You can also be pro vaccines but against public policy about them. There has been some amount of goalpost shifting, e.g., in the scope and duration of covid passes. In some places, there was an implicit deal on the table: get vaccinated and you will be allowed to visit restaurants and bars. But a few months later this was changed to requiring recent vaccination (4 months instead of 12). Regardless of whether you think that’s a good motivation to get vaccination, the promise has clearly been broken.
This is exactly right. By the time the vaccine became widely available, resistance to public health measures was already baked in and broke down along culture war lines, so nothing else really mattered at that point.
We live in in a roughly Dunbar-sized group. If no one died of Covid in your group but one or two people were hurt by vaccines, you will be scared of vaccines.
If you compare deaths to harms, you can end up scared of vaccines or Covid, depending on which you compare. If no one died of a vaccine in your group but one or two people were hurt by Covid, you will be scared of Covid. The question is, where does the framing come from? If no one died of Covid or a vaccine in your group (which seems to be the most likely case for a given group), which do you become scared of, and why?
Let’s say you are a man in his 20s. in USA You believe (perhaps mistakenly) that if you get sick with covid, the government will foot the bill. On the other hand, if you get the rare myocarditis from the vaccine, you will be stuck with the bills. Does this create a weird incentive for a young man to avoid vaccination on the grounds of financial risk of ruin?
Why would you believe that?
Long-COVID can give you long-term medical costs that are very unlikely to be paid for by the state.
How long is that long term? We don’t know yet but it could be fairly short compared to a condition that can permanently damage one’s heart.
i’d bet at at least 1:20 that lung scarring and brain damage are permanent.