It’s all pretty clear cut. People don’t get it, not because they “don’t get it”, because it was never about getting it; but about trying to shout it down. Many people are trying to pretend they want an answer, but really all they want to do is make people go through the effort of discussing it in good faith; only then to deflect, dodge change the subject - or simply pretend that you didn’t answer at all. It happens here all the time, which is odd as you would fully expect people on a debate site to be interested in debate, but I suspect too many people are more interested in trying to feed their own denial.
The vaccines efficacy is currently tracked at around 65%(Pfizer) and 80% (Moderna I beleive) for preventing infection.
What these numbers mean is that if you have a million vaccinated and a million unvaccinated - for each 100 unvaxxed person that get sick, only 35/20 will get sick in the vaxxed group.
For hospitalization and death, the number is 94%.
Meaning that in that same set of groups, for each 100 unvaxxed people that are hospitalized or die, only 4 of the vaxxed group will die.
They should think of it as a new technology in a car that 65% effective and preventing a collision, and 94% effective at preventing you being killed in the accident.
Side effects have been demonstrated to be minimal: you will likely have a generalized immune response - and that response involves arm pain, temperature, etc: but no significant respiratory illness. There are some more serious side effects - such as a small risk of blood clots, and swelling in the heart muscles - the risk actually being substantially lower than the risks of the same thing happening with covid.
So there’s almost no risk in getting the vaccine, and a massive benefit. This is played out in the statistical data in almost every state and countries where vaccine rates are high.
It needs to be reiterated - that vaccines, and vaccine mandates have been unremarkable, and uncontroversial for two centuries; critical tools of public health.
The only reason this is an issue today, now, is that in March last year, there was a major crash in the stock market that made Trump believe that he would lose his economic message and thus the election: mitigating covid and stopping the surge in cases and death has further economic impact: so the messaging was that anything to stop the virus that harmed the economy was bad. As conservatives have been spoonfed a diet of democeatsgungetcha for 30 years now, the best way of selling that was simply to keep yelling about mahrats.
Republicans don’t really care about the vaccine - it’s efficacy or anything. People who are asking with faux furrowed brow why they should be forced to take it, don’t really believe it’s really a big issue of rights; it’s not even about the vaccine at all.
This is just the latest canard in a long list of canards that Trump supporters can digest, parrot and scream so that they don’t have to think about the fact their party and their leaders do not really stand for anything, nor have any policies of note.
All that they really have, is getting people mad, and training them to not listen to information they don’t like.
This is why instead of actually having a discussing about the data, the detail, or the efficacy of vaccines in good faith; you have people attempting to shut down debate by simply pretending you didn’t say any of the things you just did.
