Thread by @awgaffney

One reason that people should show more empathy towards unvaccinated people is that many, or most, of them believe — **incorrectly** — that safe and effective Covid vaccines will endanger their health, or that of their children.

Many are wrongly - yet truly - scared.

And likely that stems not just from usual misinfo (e.g. clowns like Alex Berenson), but innumerable heart-felt first-person testimonials/videos shared widely on social media, of individuals describing various horrible symptoms/illnesses they believe vaccine-related.

One problem we face, even putting aside issue of media disinformation, is that emotive testimonials/stories are more persuasive than facts & figures for many. Yelling "correlation is not causation!" does not carry the punch of a tic toc video of someone saying they were...

... perfectly healthy until vaccinated and then X, Y, Z dreadful thing happened. Yes, we can correctly retort, "The vaccines are safe and incredibly well studied, and there's zero medical data supporting a causal link between them and what that you heard," but it's uphill work.

I don't have a solution, but I mention this as one more reason to have sympathy/empathy for unvaccinated people, rather than scorn.

It doesn't mean we shouldn't have vaccine mandates in workplaces: I think we should, because saving lives is paramount.

It doesn't mean we stop trying to increase vaccine uptake — we should being offering vaccines door-to-door, in my opinion; there should be vaccine clinics in schools and workplaces; we should keep trying and informing and persuading and pushing.

But it's important to keep in mind, because we know anger at the unvaccinated is rising — and with it falling compassion, efforts at mitigation, and calls for ridiculous things like rationing care by vaccination status.

We need to stop patient blaming.