Pre-pandemic cognitive function and Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy: cohort study

This should be self-evident and holds for any correlation of education and trust - people without means receive inferior education (indoctrination?) and tend to mistrust a system that does not value them (or actively harms them). So now let's do the same study but instead of measuring "intelligence", let's measure gullibility.

"If there is hope it lies in the proles" - George Orwell, 1984

I think this study may in fact show that lesser educated people are less susceptible to propaganda, and less likely to be “institutionalized” by society and group-think.

This reminds me of those studies purporting to denigrate the religious by showing they have lower IQs than non-religious people. Yet, some of the biggest minds (John Von Neumann) had some religious leanings:

“ von Neumann, when dying of cancer in the hospital, sought the ministrations of a Catholic priest, Fr. Anselm Strittmatter, O.S.B., to whom he confessed and from whom he received the last sacraments of the Catholic Church. Some explained this as the act of a desperate man who was known to have an unusually great horror of death. On the other hand, that he had some belief is indicated by the fact that he once confided to his mother, “There probably has to be a God. Many things are easier to explain if there is than if there isn’t.” “

So clearly, studies such as the one in the article are not particularly useful, nor enlightening (at least not for the reasons people might think). Any who base their decisions going forward on the results of this study, rather than on their own balanced examination of the facts, is more likely to be cognitively deficient.

So are we saying that cognitive ability CAN be accurately measured with a test?

I've seen people repeatedly claim IQ like tests were invalid.

so this is the next stage of propaganda? pretending people who are hesitant are of lower intelligence?

Interestingly, in Australia, the wealthier suburbs tend to have lower rates of vaccination than the “working class” suburbs.

The people that are most hesitant in France and Germany are African and muslim minorities. Is this study implying they're cognitively weaker? Yikes

I like the use of the word hesitancy. I don't know anyone that is hesitant, it's mostly: "No way in hell".

I've come to a similar conclusion: the people who are vaccine "hesitant" are mostly those who are either a) not smart or b) narcissistic (or both). That's because those who are not smart don't trust studies or generally don't trust authority (as in people who are experts). They trust their gut feeling and trust arguments more that fit in their world view. This goes so far that they trust messages that don't fit together (e.g. "china unleashed it to kill us" vs. "it's just like the flu, no biggy"), for as long as it helps them in justifying and maintaining their behavior.

This leads to my conclusion that most of these people are beyond convincing because a) logic doesn't work and b) empathy doesn't either (at least for the narcissists). What works for some is if they see direct effects in their closest circle, e.g. family dying. However, for many even this is not enough because of so much propaganda and peer pressure. However, I personally have come to the conclusion that a state's responsibility is to protect these people (and everyone else) from themselves and thus a vaccine mandate is appropriate. Obviously, this is a difficult step everywhere but especially so in the US (because of the polarization). Which is why I am happy to live in western Europe.