Fair. I apologize for over reacting. You are one of the most informative folks that post here- so I was not expecting a conspiracy accusation.
I agree with your entire post here.
Ironically I just got home from getting my haircut -all six of them. The younger girl who cuts my hair is about 30-ish with two small children. She actually brought up the topic totally unsolicited by me and remarked “ I don’t think I’m going to get the vaccine at least not right now “.
so naturally I said well tell me why you feel that way, what have you read what have you heard?
her answer was not bad. She said she really hasn’t heard anything negative about it other than she read that they don’t necessarily recommend it for people with severe allergies. She just felt that it’s a new vaccine and we have had all these other diseases around for years with no vaccine or no cure- and that she wanted to see longer-term what was going on. She also mentioned that she already had Covid as had most of her friends and none of them had any serious problems with it.
That was really all I was trying to say is that it’s not unreasonable for people to think like that without having been provided any false information and even with having read results so far.
She also mentioned that her grandfather who is about 75 and has additional health issues had gotten the vaccine and she was really happy that he did.
I will say that the bolded portion is important. If she's had the virus already, there is less pressure to get the vaccine IMHO because you have some level of immunity to it. We've seen reinfection is possible, but it appears to be very rare.
And again, I'm not saying it's unreasonable or abnormal for people to think like that--I'm saying it's irrational. That's not a criticism. People are irrational.
I said it before that psychologically, there's a very big difference between deliberately choosing to go get yourself injected with something vs catching COVID by chance. If you get COVID and you have a severe case, you can write it off as bad luck. If you choose to get a vaccine and have some really bad side effect, you feel like you've made a bad decision.
We're wired to avoid the latter.
That's why I think it's seen that the people who have done the most thorough research on the vaccine become more likely to want it than less... Because it allows the rational side of the brain to take over and do cost/benefit analysis whereas the emotional side of the brain is simply risk averse.
She sounds like she's done zero actual research. So she's letting her risk aversion drive her more than a rational decision. It's not misinformation and it's a 100% natural way to respond, but it's not necessarily an informed decision or the right one if there's no research.
