I feel so honored that someone is trying to understand me. I feel wanted… validated. Okay, enough bullshit.
This New York Times story is trying to patronize vaccine skeptics like myself into getting vaccinated. Who would have believed I’d be skeptical of this story. They let us know that we’re not stupid.
“The instinct from the medical community was, ‘If only we could educate them,’” said Dr. Saad Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, who studies vaccine skepticism. “It was patronizing and, as it turns out, not true.”
New York Times
Then they throw us a bone by calling us sensitive and liberty oriented.
Dr. Omer and a team of scientists found that skeptics were much more likely than nonskeptics to have a highly developed sensitivity for liberty — the rights of individuals — and to have less deference to those in positions of power.
New York Times
While the above is true it is not the reason why we’re skeptical. I’ll get to that in a moment. They go on to say that we’re really concerned about what goes into our bodies.
Skeptics were also twice as likely to care a lot about the “purity” of their bodies and their minds. They disapprove of things they consider disgusting, and the mind-set defies neat categorization: It could be religious — halal or kosher — or entirely secular, like people who care deeply about toxins in foods or in the environment.
New York Times
This may also be true for some. But again, it is not the reason why we’re skeptical. So first they were nice to us. Then they hit us with the stubborn hammer.
“At the root are these moral intuitions — these gut feelings — and they are very strong,” said Jeff Huntsinger, a social psychologist at Loyola University Chicago who studies emotion and decision-making and collaborated with Dr. Omer’s team. “It’s very hard to override them with facts and information. You can’t reason with them in that way.”
New York Times
We’re so stubborn even with facts and information we can’t be reasoned with. The NYT has a difficult time pinning us down. In the same breath they say skeptics are mostly conservative… but are also liberal or apolitical (everyone in other words).
These qualities tend to predominate among conservatives but they are present among liberals too. They are also present among people with no politics at all.
New York Times
We’re religious rubes (I’m agnostic by the way).
Mr. Delesbore, 26, has seen information online that a vaccine might harm his body. He is not sure what to make of it. But his faith in God gives him confidence: Whatever happens is God’s will.
New York Times
We want to feel in control because we’re so out of control elsewhere.
The vaccines have also raised a fundamental question of power. There are many things in Mr. Delesbore’s life that he does not control. Not the schedule at the warehouse where he works. Or the way he is treated by the customers at his other job, a Burger King.
New York Times
We’re conspiracy theorists.
Conspiratorial thinking is another predictor of vaccine hesitancy, according to the 2018 study. Conspiracy theories can be comforting, a way to get one’s bearings during rapid change in the culture or the economy, by providing narratives that bring order.
New York Times
Distrust in government and political polarization.
The moral preference for liberty and individual rights that the social psychologists found to be common among skeptics has been strengthened by the country’s deepening political polarization.
New York Times
We don’t trust big pharma.
Brittany Richey, a tutor in Las Vegas, does not want to get one of the vaccines because she does not trust the drug companies that produced them. She pointed to studies that she said described pharmaceutical companies paying doctors to suppress unfavorable trial results. She keeps a folder on her computer of them.
New York Times
Enough of this nonsense. Some or all of the above may be true. But they are still not the real reason a real skeptic is holding off on vaccines. Here’s a prime example of “facts and information” directly from the New York Times that shines a light on why I don’t trust the vaccine, I don’t trust the information coming out of the government, and I don’t trust the lockdowns, masks, and distancing protocols.
More than 170,000 migrants crossed the border in March — many coming from countries still grappling with high infection rates — but the Border Patrol is conducting no testing for the coronavirus during the several days that the newly arrived migrants are in U.S. custody except in cases where migrants show obvious symptoms.
The government says it has insufficient time and space to test migrants upon their arrival. So while migrants get a basic health screening, testing is being postponed until their release to local community groups, cities and counties, usually after the new arrivals have spent days confined in tight spaces with scores of strangers, often sleeping shoulder to shoulder on mats on the floor.
Unaccompanied children are being tested, but only after they have spent around three days in custody, just before being loaded onto buses or planes for transport to government-run shelters.
U.S. officials say the challenges to testing all the new arrivals when they are first apprehended are insurmountable.
New York Times
SARS-CoV-2, and all its variants, are so dangerous and deadly that the U.S. government will release 170,000 people into the country without testing or vaccinating them. We have Dr. Fauci on TV daily promoting vaccines, testing, masking, and social distancing for everyone. We are supposedly worried about a new wave of infections from variants and states that are reopening. We’re so worried about all of this but yet the government can release almost 200,000 illegal aliens into the country without testing or mandatory vaccinations.
That’s one small part of the “facts and information” I use to be skeptical. I combine that with the “facts and information” that over 99% of those infected survive, the people most affected are very old, obese, diabetic, or are immunocompromised. Studies showing masks aren’t effective. Studies showing distancing does nothing. Studies showing Ivermectin is an effective prevention and treatment. No studies showing mRNA is safe (the vaccinated are the study) over time.
That’s why I’m a skeptic and will remain so until things make logical sense.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay