Winning over the unvaxxed
Yes, it is possible to change the minds of the vaccine-hesitant, whether Twitter likes it or not.
If Michael Brendan Dougherty didn’t want to be the target of Friday’s Twitter five-minutes hate, he shouldn’t have written that column saying Bill Cosby did nothing wrong.
Well, no, that’s not what he wrote. Instead he made the shocking suggestion that, instead of screaming at the vaccine-hesitant and insulting them, we might have more luck getting needles in arms by actually trying to persuade them.
Michael, you fool, you didn’t realize what social media platform you’re on. Twitter doesn’t want to cure cancer, it wants to turn people into dinosaurs.
For people who claim to venerate Scienceᵀᴹ, the let-em-die brigade really has a strange idea about how vaccination works. It would be one thing if people who don’t get vaccinated put only themselves at risk. In reality, they’re putting everyone around them - especially children and other people who cannot be vaccinated - in immediate danger, and making it harder for everyone to attain herd immunity.
The real world isn’t like social media, where you can silo yourself off from everyone who doesn’t think like you. We’re stuck with these people and have to change their minds one way for another. As with everything else, we’ll have to use some carrots alongside the sticks.
An article in Healthline, posted in May, makes a similar point. And a new study suggests that, yes, persuasion by friends, doctors and family members, combined with the easing of restrictions for vaccinated people, can indeed change anti-vaxxers’ minds:
Around one-fifth of Americans who said in an earlier poll that they were hesitant or weren’t going to get COVID vaccines ended up changing their minds, according to a recent survey.
A Kaiser Family Foundation poll released Tuesday found that 21% of people who said in January that they were waiting to get shots, would only get vaccinated if required or definitely wouldn’t are now vaccinated. The survey was conducted June 15-23 with a sample size of 878 adults and a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.
Seventeen percent of those who are now vaccinated despite expressing hesitancy in January said they were convinced to do so by a family member, 10% said they were persuaded by a health care provider or doctor and 5% said they were convinced by a close friend.
Sixty-five percent of vaccinated adults, including some who were vaccine skeptics, said in the survey that they have attempted to persuade family members or close friends to get shots.
“Seeing their friends and family members get vaccinated without serious side effects, talking to family members about being able to safely visit, and conversations with their personal doctors about their own risks were all persuasive factors for these individuals,” researchers wrote. “A small but meaningful share also say the easing of restrictions for vaccinated people was a factor in their decision to get a vaccine.”
We can go around looking for converts or we can hunt for heretics. The latter may be more emotionally satisfying, but it won’t do anything to end this pandemic.
I’d like to report a murder.