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Re:The Coronavirus Is Here Forever by paul_f on Monday August 23, 2021 @03:13PM (#28280588)
I think the issue of vaccine hesitancy is much more nuanced than this. For example, according to the CDC, the population least vaccinated in the US are black. https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/latest-...
Re:The Coronavirus Is Here Forever by xadhominemx on Monday August 23, 2021 @03:28PM (#28280781)
Black people have their own idiosyncratic reasons for vaccine skepticism, unrelated to partisan politics. But anyway, Trump support is still a stronger correlation: https://mobile.twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/14207453318...
Re:The Coronavirus Is Here Forever by paul_f on Monday August 23, 2021 @03:57PM (#28281133)
We should stop with the "it's just the Trump supporters" thinking. Yes them, but various other groups including PhDs. A Carnegie Mellon study identified the groups with the most vaccine hesitancy.

"independent hesitancy risk factors included younger age, non-Asian race, having a PhD or ≤high school education, living in a rural county, living in a county with higher 2020 Trump support, lack of worry about COVID-19, working outside the home, never intentionally avoiding contact with others, and no past-year flu vaccine. " https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.20.21260795v...

Re:The Coronavirus Is Here Forever by tomtung on Monday August 23, 2021 @06:50PM (#28283041)
Anecdotally, my unvaccinated roommate is Chinese, holds a PhD degree in a very difficult field, and works as a researcher in a FAANG company.

I was very surprised to learn that they were unwilling to get vaccinated. They are actually very worried about infection, and have been very careful with wearing masks, disinfecting things, and avoiding in-person contacts whenever possible. They explained that they were mostly worried about the unknown long-term side-effects of the vaccines. Maybe having a PhD degree is correlated with having this kind of caution.

Re:The Coronavirus Is Here Forever by dharma1 on Monday August 23, 2021 @08:17PM (#28283717)
What's his endgame? Buy time until the the pandemic burns out (if it does)? Or until we have better therapeutics?
Re:The Coronavirus Is Here Forever by tomtung on Monday August 23, 2021 @08:44PM (#28283893)
> What's his endgame? Buy time until the the pandemic burns out (if it does)?

Yep that's my understanding. Or if enough time has passed since vaccination to convince them that the vaccines are safe.

Re:The Coronavirus Is Here Forever by jonnycomputer on Monday August 23, 2021 @04:30PM (#28281491)
more than 93% of the faculty, staff and students at my research institute are vaccinated.

Having a PhD is pretty conflated with both race and political affiliations. Who knows what the effect would be after attempting to control for those things.

Re:The Coronavirus Is Here Forever by snikeris on Monday August 23, 2021 @04:26PM (#28281450)
> having a PhD or ≤high school education

This is interesting.

Re:The Coronavirus Is Here Forever by rcpt on Monday August 23, 2021 @05:03PM (#28281893)
Having a PhD seems like a sample size issue
Re:The Coronavirus Is Here Forever by calvinmorrison on Monday August 23, 2021 @05:53PM (#28282457)
More like a polling one. I routinely astroturf all surveys because I hate surveys. I am both a PhD holder, I am under 21 and I am LGBTQ, A veteran, and everything else at once
Re:The Coronavirus Is Here Forever by s5300 on Monday August 23, 2021 @06:52PM (#28283066)
Ahh, I bet you really think you're doing something to the system by being so cool.

No lol, you're flagged and omitted. Do you think everybody is as dumb as you?

Re:The Coronavirus Is Here Forever by calvinmorrison on Monday August 23, 2021 @06:56PM (#28283104)
good. I only do it for required surveys. I dont do other surveys
Re:The Coronavirus Is Here Forever by tcmart14 on Tuesday August 24, 2021 @12:01AM (#28284959)
Being a PhD and researcerh, dont you see surveys as a vital way of collecting data? So why would you intentionally throw off the data many researchers use to reach conclusions?

People wonder why statistics can be so messed up. Some of it is lying with math. But statisticians can't also help when people are being malicious.

Re:The Coronavirus Is Here Forever by ulucs on Tuesday August 24, 2021 @02:32AM (#28285733)
A vital way to collect bad data, as evidenced here. Why would you trust what people say anyway?
Re:The Coronavirus Is Here Forever by tcmart14 on Wednesday August 25, 2021 @07:00AM (#28300034)
I'd love to hear the alternative then? How would you gather data on how people feel about policy without a survey (aka just asking them), as an example?
Re:The Coronavirus Is Here Forever by paul_f on Tuesday August 24, 2021 @07:33AM (#28287405)
You may be right, however one would think researchers at Carnegie Mello would know how to ensure statistically valid results.
Re:The Coronavirus Is Here Forever by pbourke on Monday August 23, 2021 @06:11PM (#28282641)
All PhDs are not the same.
Re:The Coronavirus Is Here Forever by acdha on Monday August 23, 2021 @04:09PM (#28281286)
It’s definitely not just Republicans but note that they’re the only one of those groups with bullion-dollar companies pushing a constant stream of messages downplaying they risk of COVID and hyping any plausible concern about vaccination or masks. If Rubert Murdoch gave the word, the amount of energy pushing antivax messages would go down by an order of magnitude overnight.
Re:The Coronavirus Is Here Forever by rootusrootus on Monday August 23, 2021 @06:41PM (#28282958)
I'm not sure it's a guarantee that the power is flowing from the top down. It seems more likely that the big players are just going where the money is, i.e. where their voters already are.
Re:The Coronavirus Is Here Forever by acdha on Tuesday August 24, 2021 @08:36AM (#28287978)
It’s both: the big finders definitely will embrace any culture war issue which keeps people voting for the politicians who serve their interests but they also reliably push any issue which goes against certain topics relevant to their business. Even if something isn’t their industry they’ll push it if it cuts against the legitimacy of government regulations or is critical about science (e.g. the tobacco companies’ guys like Steven Milloy were trumping up those “DDT bans mean that millions of Africans die of malaria” stories a decade or so back because they wanted to lower trust in the same public health agencies who were leading anti-smoking campaigns).
Re:The Coronavirus Is Here Forever by tomcooks on Monday August 23, 2021 @05:06PM (#28281931)
Please can you explain a non-american what are those idiosyncratic reasons?
Re:The Coronavirus Is Here Forever by 542458 on Monday August 23, 2021 @05:15PM (#28282069)
https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/2021020...

There is a grim history of poor medical ethics surrounding the treatment of African Americans that has resulted in feelings of distrust from some.

https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/history/40-years-human-exp...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/...

Additionally, medical debt is such a massive burden to many lower income households that there’s this additional layer of distrust, a feeling that you should steer clear of any medical establishment otherwise they’ll try to pin something on you and charge you mountains of money (even though the vaccine is free).

Re:The Coronavirus Is Here Forever by kj4ips on Monday August 23, 2021 @05:22PM (#28282143)
We've done some pretty f'd up stuff to folks of color in the past.

One of the most notable examples is that of the Tuskegee study on untreated syphilis, where we denied effective treatment w/o informed consent.

PoC have higher infant mortality rates, and the myth that PoC have more tolerance to pain (and therefore require less anesthesia) is still quite prevalent.

It was bad enough that we had to actually produce a report on what is considered the "bare minimum", but even that has not been totally effective. (https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/belmont-repo...)