"Vaccine hesitancy" is constantly discussed as a matter of irrational fear or political bias, but some people are just trying to balance costs against benefits. They might be persuaded to change their analysis, but calling them crazy or stupid is bound to alienate them.
Contrary to thinking inside the government and social media bubbles, not all information flows through the Internet. At this point, many people have personal acquaintances who have experienced significant side effects from vaccination, from brief illness to serious reactions.
Some of the "vaccine hesitant" are balancing these costs against the perceived benefits of vaccination - or more precisely, their perception of the risks from not getting vaccinated - and deciding not to get the shots. They made it through the hell year without vaccination.
Those hesitant people might re-evaluate their cost/benefit analysis if perceptions of either change. Vaccination rates dipped quite sharply after J&J had problems. It's not just panic, it's people making adjustments to reasoned calculations in their heads.
Likewise, vaccine hesitancy grows when people think nothing will really change if they get the shots - they still have to wear masks, there will still be social distancing, lockdowns are looming again. Reducing perceived benefits increases resistance.
If people are approached as rational actors with persuasive efforts to change their measurements of cost and benefits, they might be persuaded to adjust their thinking. This would require acknowledging that not all of the data they are considering is scurrilous "misinformation."
It would also require acknowledging that not all vaccine hesitancy is irrational or politicized. Getting them to change their thinking is very different from bullying them into *abandoning* their thinking by insulting them as dupes, stooges, fanatics, and fools.
One other thing: our government and media lack the humility to admit their own culpability in increasing vaccine hesitancy and ruining public trust in authority. That arrogance makes it difficult for the State and its media to approach the hesitant with mutual respect today.
Nobody in the State-Media axis wants to admit they were mistaken, or deliberately lied, during the hell year of Covid. None of them want to admit politics guided their actions more than science. Biden and Harris babbling about their distrust of Trump's vaccines gets memory-holed.
There has been no reckoning, no admission of errors or confession of guilt, so there can be no fresh start. The State has not taken the smallest steps toward rebuilding trust. Now it speaks with rage and threatens those who distrust it, rather than showing penitence and humility.
And the State is STILL acting in bad faith and with blatant hypocrisy, as most recently evidenced by the Covid-riddled Texas Democrat fleebaggers. The privileged elite of the ruling Party still refuse to take the coronavirus as seriously as they insist WE should.
I doubt anyone in the ruling Party has the humility and wisdom to make the fresh start that would be needed to approach the vaccine hesitant with proper respect and persuade them to change their thinking. It's all arrogance, bluster, hypocrisy, and threats. /end
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