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Originally Posted by funwheeldrive
It's interesting that an overwhelming majority of healthcare workers seem to fear the potential negative impacts from the vaccine when they have been on the front lines of this pandemic for almost a year. You would think they would be more afraid of getting Covid19. Maybe they realize the virus isn't as scary as politicians and the MSM would like us to believe it is?
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It is an interesting example of cognitive dissonance. Someone will likely write a dissertation on the very phenomenon.
Most of them are very much uninformed. Many of them still believe the propaganda that COVID deaths are over-reported, but when I show them the graph on All Cause Mortality their tune changes, especially when that graph suggest we are under-reporting deaths. Most of them believe 375k deaths are still relatively small numbers because that is only 0.11% of the population and that percentage doesn't create a sense of concern for their risks, but then when I point out that 0.11% is more than 1 in a 1000, or when I point out that the death toll in some areas is closer to 1 in 250, or remind them that those numbers get worse each day, or remind them that the long term effects could be as significant as 1 in 50 or something worse, then their tune can change. Even that number doesn't seem as bad when you say it is just 2%, but 1 in 50 is enough to mean dozens of people you may know at work or in your family could be affected. What is worse is that the 10 year statistics could be like 1 in 5, but time has a way of also diminishing the sense of risk. Denial is powerful too.
What is worse, their experiences may not help them perceive the risks. For example, in the ER, we see all different varieties of COVID patients, but we don't see patients that die before getting to the hospital, and we don't see patients who die days, weeks or months later in the ICU. If we do see someone die or someone who is extremely critical then it is someone who is in that Goldilocks zone on the cusp of death. For nursing homes, these healthcare workers see people die all the time, and they don't see them die, as those people are sent to hospitals. They care for geriatric patients and other people in long term care, so their assessment of the situation is skewed too. They don't see how this could affect them because they are young. Anecdotes about the congressman who died of COVID at 40 or a teacher dying at 33 is easily dismissed, especially if you are a 25 year old care partner. Besides education, age is a big contributor, which is why more doctors are getting the vaccine then care partners.
Then it goes back to the false propaganda, misinformation and fear about the vaccine. The risk of anaphylaxis to the vaccine is around 1 in a million, yet I have consistently heard that people are afraid of that, which is a striking level of cognitive dissonance. Anaphylaxis is a treatable event that is rarely deadly when appropriate care is quickly taken. So far over, 24 million people have been vaccinated worldwide. We have potentially one reported death, which is almost certainly not from the vaccine, yet I guarantee you that people will weigh the risks of getting the vaccine as worse than COVID.
There is fear of the unknown like getting cancer. There is no evidence the vaccines could cause cancer. There may be no mechanism for the vaccines to cause cancer. The risk of long term complications from exposure to COVID could far outweigh someone's likelihood of getting cancer from the vaccine, but people are equally as poor at assessing their risk.
Many healthcare workers might falsely believe they already have had COVID at some point, either asymptomatically or mildly symptomatically. This is what most of my coworkers believe. We all joke around how we all have MRSA, so it is a running joke that we all have had it. If a person believes it is impossible to prevent the inevitable then they already believe they were exposed, and this is amplified if someone cares for COVID patients. The few people who I know who have had COVID via a positive antibody test or PCR test are ironically all getting or have gotten the vaccine.
I could go on. The point is that healthcare workers may not be the most informed or educated individuals to be following their poor example.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/06/healt...ath/index.html
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/c...-distribution/
https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/ar...-about-vaccine