Quote:
Originally Posted by funwheeldrive
Sounds like how people react to coronavirus 
You would think if anyone had the 411 on vaccines it would be healthcare workers.  |
Not really. 70% of nurses have an associates degree (ASN). Care partners, techs, home health aids, EMTs, etc only need basic certifications/licenses like a 3-6 month class. Technologists like rad techs, CT or US techs just have an associates. At best, they took a microbiology course to prepare them for diseases, which addresses the very basics of vaccines.
Doctors have less than six months (3-4 units) worth of nutritional training. Ask them about nutrition, and you might get nothing to something that sounds like it came from a guru. Sometimes you will get something that is well informed because they had a secondary education or are self-taught.
Similarly, healthcare workers understand diseases, disease processes and the basics of immune pathology at some level. Few were held to high academic standards and few had high level course work in pharmacology, virology, genetics, law, etc, and even fewer enjoy spending their free time researching these things and reading academic papers or researching the federal regulations.
My lead nurse often says we work with educated idiots. This is true. They can still be a victim of propaganda, group think mentality, bias, etc. They are still capable of being a victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
From conversation, the biggest issues that came up were the following:
—Distrust in Trump/this administration: Not in a conspiracy theory way like the government is going to put trackers in the vaccine or some chemical to intentionally kill us, but more about incompetence.
—Speed to market: The process went too fast to be well vetted.
—New Technology: They expressed concern about the novel techniques used.
—Fear of the unknown: What if this causes cancer?
—Indifference and poor risk assessment: I have to wear masks for the long, foreseeable future anyways, as a healthcare worker. Thus, I’m already protected, so I’ll just get the vaccine later once more people have it or when they finally make a second generation of the vaccine.
I was typically able to break each one of these down to convince others their position wasn’t justified.