Not sure why the rest of us should be required to continue to change our lives because of your parents (unfortunately) unfounded, anti-scientific personal views?

That’s fair, my point is just that it’s a valid source of anxiety.

And it’s not just my own parents. Like 30% of the US seems like they are not going to get a vaccine any time soon, and I worry that the guidance critically depends on the assumption that unvaccinated people will still mask up and distance. I don’t think it’s a very good assumption (would love to be proven wrong), and I don’t know what that means for the public health outlook of this new guidance.

Ideas are easy to be against. Right now, covid is just an idea to a lot of people. They don't know anyone who's gotten sick, or worse. It's harder to be against a person. Once a few people in their social circles get the vaccine and live to tell the tale, the hesitance will fall away. Polls are a snapshot and can turn quickly. That's why pollsters keep repeating them.

Your parents are making their own tradeoffs. People need to accept responsibility for the tradeoffs they choose.

Yes, I agree.

The point is, how much does this new public health guidance depend on the assumption that people will accept the responsibility to either mask up or get vaccinated?

The folks who won't do either have likely been doing that for the last year and would thus be already factored in to any case/infection numbers they're evaluating.

I'm not sure the cause of their concern with the J&J being produced with a fetal cell line, but the Catholic Church has some fairly vocal guidance on why the J&J vaccine is acceptable that address this.

Also, for the mRNA vaccine, you may want to emphasize that this is the result of several decades of research, not a one-year crash program in new technology.

> the Catholic Church has some fairly vocal guidance on why the J&J vaccine is acceptable

The Catholic Church's position is that the J&J vaccine is acceptable if it's the only vaccine you can get, but you should not get it if any of the other vaccines are available to you. Your comment makes it sound like they consider it acceptable unconditionally, which isn't the case.

I didn't mean to misrepresent the Catholic Church's position.

I have no idea if that helps the poster's parents decide to get vaccinated, but it's very clear that the Pope wants them to take the J&J shot if they don't have an alternative. And they currently don't have one they will accept.

None of the other vaccines are available to the poster's parents (held up mRNA technology fear, even though they are available via distribution), so the Church's logic should still hold

There's a big difference between "don't have an alternative" and "don't have one they will accept." I don't think the Church means that it's okay to take J&J just because you don't like the others.

Please tell your parents the truth, that the J&J vaccine is not produced using a fetal cell line.

Thanks, but I don’t think that’s actually accurate. AIUI, J&J grow their adenovirus vector using the cell line PERC.C6.

This is a super emotional topic for a lot of people, so it doesn’t really make a difference for them that there are no PERC.C6 cells in the actual vaccine, or that the cell line is from the 80s, or any of that. I can at least understand this hesitancy, unlike the misinformation-fueled notion that the mRNA vaccines will change your DNA or something.

https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-johnson-aborted-id...

https://www.janssen.com/emea/emea/janssen-vaccine-technologi...