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Comment by dimitar | Hacker News Reader

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> People refuse vaccines because they are experimental - will they believe an even newer drug?

They don't refuse vaccines because they are 'experimental'[1] (They are happy to demand vitamin C, or ivermectin, etc, etc, etc.), they refuse them because it's the position their political tribe has adopted.

[1] They've gone through all the same human trials as any other vaccine - it's just that they went through those trials at the same time, as opposed to one-after-the-other.

Vitamin C and Ivermectin aren't experimental. I'm not against the vaccine, but to say that an emergency approved drug is as circumspect as older drugs (e.g. Ivermectin was approved as early as the 1980s) is misleading.

That being said, I still think it's the right move to take the vaccine because the statistics show that it is effective.

>e.g. Ivermectin was approved as early as the 1980

Pretty sure it haven't been approved for covid in 1980

In my anecdotal experience, vaccine hesitancy, or whatever you call it, cannot be attributed to a party allegiance in the US. There are as many if not more liberal vaccine refusers as there are conservative ones

> There are as many if not more liberal vaccine refusers as there are conservative ones

No, there aren't, unless you torture the definitions to the point of uselessness, or unless your personal experience means that you personally know 50 liberals and 5 conservatives (and 6 unvaccinated people, split evenly between the two). [1]

Or, if you have to use your eyes to believe it, look at any vaccination rate map [2], and contrast it to how those states vote.

[1] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2021/10/01/for-covid-1...

[2] https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/vaccine-trac...

> cannot be attributed to a party allegiance in the US. There are as many if not more liberal vaccine refusers as there are conservative ones

Why must there be a single attributable factor? It seems likely that there are multiple. Party allegiance certainly appears to be one of these from numerous polls and analyses [1]. Poverty and insurance status is likely another [2].

[1]: https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/import...

[2]: https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/vaccina...

Reducing vaccine rejection down to "political tribalism" is probably wrong and definitely not helpful. There are people across the entire political spectrum who refuse vaccines, and this is pretty much a global phenomenon.

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