Please, read this: America Is Getting Unvaccinated People All Wrong

[herding cats]

This isn't everyone, but it's enough of us to matter. We're broad brushing everyone as the same, and we're making a mistake by doing such. This excludes the "owning the Libs" people, obviously. But, if you know anyone who you think might fall into this category, reach out to them.

Ed Yong: You recently spoke with people in southern Georgia who had many lingering questions about vaccines. On Twitter, you said, “Every question they asked was legitimate and important.” Tell me more about the event and the questions you were getting.

Rhea Boyd: It was a tele-townhall, and around 5,000 people participated. I would have imagined that people who stayed on would be unvaccinated, but the people who asked questions were a mix. I had one gentleman who was vaccinated with Johnson & Johnson and he asked, “Did I get a safe shot?” We affirmed for him that this far after his vaccination, he’s likely safe, but that opened my eyes. If you’ve heard about that serious side effect and are worried if you’re at risk, you’re probably not encouraging the people around you to be vaccinated.

Yong: That’s fascinating to me. There’s a tendency to assume that all vaccinated people are pro-vaccine and all unvaccinated people are anti-vaccine. But your experience suggests that there’s also vaccine hesitancy among vaccinated people.

Read: America is now in the hands of the vaccine-hesitant

Boyd: Yes, and we tend to hear similar questions among people who are unvaccinated. They may also have heard common threads of disinformation, but they’re still asking basic questions. The top one is around side effects, which are one of the main things we talk about when we give informed consent for any procedure. If people aren’t sure about that, it’s no wonder they’re still saying no.

A lot of vaccine information isn’t common knowledge. Not everyone has access to Google. This illustrates preexisting fault lines in our health-care system, where resources—including credible information—don’t get to everyone. The information gap is driving the vaccination gap. And language that blames “the unvaccinated” misses that critical point. Black folks are one of the least vaccinated groups, in part because they have the least access to preventive health-care services.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/07/unvaccinated-different-anti-vax/619523/

[uriel1972]

1. Talk to those who will listen,

The othets will have to learn the hard way.

[Treefrog]

2. This.

As I’ve posted before, my neighbor is an AA nurse who has not been vaccinated. No one in her family is. They’re Dems.

[herding cats]

4. This is the types I'm speaking of here and the article is about.

Reach out where and when we can with facts for the actual vaccine skeptical in our lives. Don't shame them, just talk. Person to person and listen to their fears, then offer facts kindly and gently. Don't be a militant or prejude them. Be a human being and respect they're one also.

[Celerity]

7. Yes it amazes me how often the two meta groups who are the least vaxxed

(Latinx and then the lowest, African Americans) are forgotten or left out of the equation when so many say (or imply if not directly stated) fuck all the wilfully non-vaxxed, let 'em die.

[CrackityJones75]

24. What are we supposed to do?

We have spent months pounding it into their head. Pleading. Begging. Offering rewards for doing it. And they still won’t do it. If they won’t do it that is THEIR choice. The problem is they are forcing others to live with THEIR choice.

I don’t care if they are dem, repub, black, latin… Whatever… If they are too damned dumb to listen to reason and help protect their fellow humans… Yeah. Fuck em. Some of them are going to die. Hope they don’t suffer too much.

[lagomorph777]

21. How does a nurse not have access to medical information?

Shouldn't all health care facilities be heavily indoctrinating their employees in the truth about vaccines?

[CrackityJones75]

25. They have all the information.

Their stupidity should be criminal.

[Hugin]

3. These are the people who I still wear a mask and follow the protocols for... n/t

[RockRaven]

5. I'm in a highly vaxxed county in CA. The demographics of the lower-vaxxed neighborhoods in our

county mostly seem to fall into two buckets: one is the rural areas; the other is suburban or urban but lower income, more non-white, more non-English-speaking. The former may be MAGAt idiots, but the latter are likely not. It's worth thinking about when speaking of the unvaccinated. The unvaxxed are not all antivaxx.

The vaccine might be "free" but there are still a variety of barriers to access/availability even when the public health people go to extremes to reach out to everyone. The undocumented have good history-based reasons not to trust interacting with the government, even through a third party. Actually, there are a lot of documented people who feel the same way, also not without good reasons. People without health coverage, whatever the specific circumstance, might be scared of side effects -- because those costs aren't free. People living hand to mouth might be scared of missing even a day or two of work due to side effect -- some people work seven days a week just to survive, some people will lose their shitty job for missing one shift. Distrust of non-standard or provisional medical treatments is also not without historical justification.

OTOH, the death cult MAGAts are going to hide behind these sort of excuses to justify their purposely dangerous vaccine refusals. So we really need to reach out to all unvaccinated people and give them every opportunity to get it, friction-free, whatever their specific hang up is. I don't think we are at the "live and let die" stage yet.

[Withywindle]

8. All of these things are true, and they're real barriers

I remember early on in the vaxx process, a lot of older people who really wanted and needed it couldn't figure out how to get an appointment because they weren't internet-savvy enough to negotiate the process. If they had someone to help them, great. If not, too bad. If there's a language barrier, or fear of dealing with the government because of immigration status or any other problem, then it's that much worse. I knew of someone who was terrified of showing ID because of unpaid tickets and bills (that he could not afford to pay since he'd lost his job)

Rural areas can be a huge problem because what if your nearest access point is 20 miles away and you can't drive? And the missing work thing is really big. There really needed to be a federal mandate for all employers to give workers paid time off to get the vaccine without penalty of any kind.

[lagomorph777]

22. I can stroll into any Walmart or Safeway and get the jab on the spot.

At this point, I am pretty sure it's more about disinformation than access, except perhaps in the remotest rural areas.

[Withywindle]

6. My mom has a friend who's still unvaxxed

She's not a Trumper or right wing AT ALL, and she's highly educated and pretty well off. She works in IT and travels a lot for her job. Her excuse is: "I have a really naturally strong immune system. I never get sick. I eat healthy and exercise" - and that's true, she does. Somehow it's just not sinking in, even after my mom and another good friend of theirs said, "Okay but you're not coming in my house without a mask and I won't ride in a car with you and we can hang out, but only outside." (My mom and her other friend are fully vaxxed, but they're elderly and live with husbands who have health issues and it's just not worth the risk).

She is okay with that, and still being stubborn. I don't understand it.

[Freddie]

10. That's my son-in-law

Healthy guy, works out, etc. He’s not anti-vax but totally convinced he’s immune because he’s been exposed a number of times and not gotten it. Actually I was too (before vaccines) and got mine the minute I could.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

12. Ears closed to people dying of Covid who "eat healthy and exercise and never get sick" . . . nt

[uponit7771]

14. ask her what is the facts behind taking the risk looking at the numbers now? Even if she was

... the best and best healthiest athlete why risk the chance of a high viral load vs getting vaxed.

[Lady Freedom Returns]

9. Just remind them...

It puts the needle in the skin.
Or it wears the mask again.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

11. Many have legitimate questions engendered by ILLEGITIMATE misinformation & media hype

The media rushes to press with every little twitch of side effects of the vaccine, and every one-in-a-million adverse reaction.

It obscures the fact that the virus is a thousand times deadlier and a thousand times more likely to have long term effects. A more exact number should be common knowledge, but the media knows that would reduce controversy and ad sales.

The self-centred hypocritical RepubliQons are no real help either.

[Rhiannon12866]

13. Excellent point. Town halls in low vaccine areas to inform people might actually help

But who would they listen to? Or would it be safer if they had these town halls on TV?

I live in a county that has numerous rural communities and this week there are three mobile vaccine clinics headed to these spots to coincide with local festivities. Sure hope that people turn out...

[yardwork]

15. The only people who seem to be confused about this are the media.

All the health care providers, policy makers, and health-adjacent people I know of have been focused on vaccine hesitancy for a year, working day and night to get accurate information out and encouraging people to get the shot. Plans to roll out the vaccine began literally a year ago.

It's the media who promote this false narrative - fed by the right wing noise machine - that it's all about "owning the libs" on one side and "not understanding why people have reasonable questions" on the other.

The media is most at fault for promoting this lie.

[Alice Kramden]

20. This

We need the Fairness Doctrine reinstated

[jaxexpat]

16. Everything you say is true, however,......

the disinformation which prevents universal clarity about the vaccine is TOTALLY on the intentionally unvaccinated and their loud lying.

[William Seger]

17. But these same people also don't want to wear masks

The rising covid rates mean one thing: on average, each person who gets infected spreads the infection to more than one other person. This thing will not "miraculously disappear" until we get that transmission rate to zero, and wishful thinking will never do that.

Okay, so these people are more afraid of what the vaccine might do to them than they are of convid. Fine; they have the right to be terrible gamblers, but do they have any concern for the rights of others? It must be true that some people who recovered from covid have passed it on to someone who died, which I would have a hard time dealing with, but I still wouldn't deprive these people of their right to refuse vaccination.

HOWEVER, it is then incumbent on them to take whatever other measures they can to help get the transmission rate to zero. If you're more afraid of the vaccine than you are of covid, then you will probably get covid eventually, so at least wear a damn mask when you're around other people. But nope, even that is too much of an inconvenience, too much of an infringement on their freedom to go wherever they want without one, coughing on others.

Society has a right to protect itself, regardless of the reason people aren't getting vaccinated. I don't believe we should mandate vaccination, but we can and should mandate wearing masks wherever we can until we really get this thing under control.

[Scrivener7]

18. Whatever their reasons, Delta will find them.

And if not Delta, then Lambda.

All these people have seen what we have seen.

I still have very little sympathy for them.

[Mr. Ected]

19. I have a co-worker here in NE Georgia that is unvaccinated

She had the virus last year with very mild symptoms and staved it off. She does not want to get the shots because 1) she says her body should now have the antibodies to fight it off; and 2) she does not want to take a vaccine that has still yet to go through the full battery of tests that other vaccines have had in the past, concerned about the long-term side effects. She's not a right-winger, she insists she would get the shot if it was FDA-approved, and she wears her mask as diligently as anyone I know.

I don't think she's nearly as unique a case as many would suggest.

[lagomorph777]

23. Many, including someone close to me, are using the FDA as an excuse.

What the actual fuck is the FDA waiting for? They approve garbage all the time, that's been tested on 1/1000th of the people that the vaccine has now been tested on. Let's get this done!

[CrackityJones75]

26. I only have sympathy for one group.

Those being the people that CANNOT get the vax. Kids and people with conditions that keep them from getting it. All the antivaxers, I can only hope they don’t infect others. Whatevery consequences they suffer is their own choice. Don’t want them to suffer at all but I am sick of their crap.

[Tree Lady]

27. My two grandkids in early 20's and their partners

Are the only ones in family not vaccinated. One is a new mom who is nursing, but I think thats an excuse because her husband won't get one either. My grandson is afraid of lasting effects I guess more than catching it.

My other daughter whose kids are teens got them vaccinated.

I tried to talk to them but mind is firmly made up they are waiting, for what? To get sick or worse?