* Not infecting others who are more at risk or cannot get the vaccine (allergies, age, availability) or are higher risk than you (age, preconditions), including anti-vaxxers (I would be devastated if a beloved family members died even if they rejected the vaccine).
* Doing your part to wipe Covid out so we get back to normal (do you have a better plan?)
* Wiping Covid out so we don't get a worse strain like the delta strain that will affect younger people.
* The lag between a particularly bad strain circulating widely and you finding out about it.
* Long Covid including brain chronic fatigue / brain fog, potential non fatal but still permanent, debilitating lung damage, cardiovascular damage leading to increased risk of strokes later on. Which has been shown to be a risk for young people as well, more than death.
* Avoiding the massive inconvenience of a potential multi week "very bad flu".
* The medical experts (gov agencies, universities, industries) across the world all strongly recommending it. (Have you at least asked your primary care physician if you should get it? Why not?)
* Benefitting from the exemptions granted to vaccinated people such as indoor dining in NYC and entering the US from Europe and vice versa.
* Keeping your job when they mandate it unofficially or officially (I've seen both).
* The demonstrated risk of dying from covid, and even more so the risk of long covid, as a young person still being way higher than the theoretical / non demonstrated risk of the vaccine. Especially since we have already vaccinated >1.5 billion people - if anything should be seriously wrong with the vaccines, fixing that and helping affected people would likely immediately become an important topic of medical research as soon as we find out.
* Fringe benefits like the lotteries for vaccinated people.
* There being clear evidence of covid being downplayed for political reasons, especially in the US and in 2020. But everywhere else and in 2021 as well. Prominent politicians who have downplayed it still having gotten the vaccine (granted, they're all old people, and your question was about young people). The same politicians constantly retreating from one wrong position to another as they are proven wrong again and again. Whereas the "other side" has so far mostly been right on every major topic.
* Political players that normally don't agree on anything agreeing on this - Russia, China and the US all have a vaccine program and recommend vaccination for essentially everyone. Inside the US, the Democrats are obviously in favor of vaccination, but do not forget that two vaccines got emergency approval while the Republicans had control of all three branches.
* Young people being vaccinated and showing up in vaccination stats influencing older people to get vaccinated.
* Last and least all the anecdotes of people who on their deathbed said they should've gotten the damn vaccine.
I hope you understand that we will not be “wiping out COVID” any time soon.
We need long term management strategies that are actually sustainable and protect the most vulnerable. And we probably need to worry less about persuading the die hards and more about things like standing up booster distribution and making ventilation improvements.
And a lot of the die hards will probably come around when the vaccine becomes part of the normal, boring health care routine instead of something they’re being “forced into” in an emergency, You know, you go in to the clinic in the winter with a cold. Doc asks if you’ve had your flu shot. Asks if you’ve had your COVID shot. That’s a much more comfortable context for people, I think.
> And a lot of the die hards will probably come around when the vaccine becomes part of the normal, boring health care routine instead of something they’re being “forced into” in an emergency, You know, you go in to the clinic in the winter with a cold. Doc asks if you’ve had your flu shot. Asks if you’ve had your COVID shot. That’s a much more comfortable context for people, I think.
Have you looked at uptake rates for the seasonal flu vaccine?
> Flu vaccination coverage among adults ≥18 years was 45.3%, an increase of 8.2 percentage points from the 2017–18 flu season and 2.0 percentage points higher than the 2016–17 season.
Well 70% of people adults are already on board, so we don’t need to worry about besting that number. The question is how do reduce resistance. My totally made up theory is that some people are just generally resistant to things being “pushed” from above, and some people are more concerned about new technology than others. Both of those things will probably improve as this cools off and becomes less political. In the mean time, there are other things we could be working on.
I think it's far more likely that the expressed reasons you cite are, for many (I'd bet 15-20% of the population), just rationalizations for the underlying reason which is that being anti-covid-vaccine is now a part of some folks political, cultural, and/or religious identity.
And it is damn tough to break through something like that. That's doubly true when political and religious leaders are actively pushing people to not get vaccinated.
No, I’m not discounting it. That’s what I’m talking about when i refer to people resistant to things “pushed from above.” I’m saying that’s part of the issue, and it’s only going to be solved (if it can be), by depoliticizing the issue and making it a mundane medical concern. And that’s going to take time, and backing off the stick.
Or… you know, just give people 500 bucks (including everybody who already did it.)
* Doing your part to wipe Covid out so we get back to normal (do you have a better plan?)
* Wiping Covid out so we don't get a worse strain like the delta strain that will affect younger people.
* The lag between a particularly bad strain circulating widely and you finding out about it.
* Long Covid including brain chronic fatigue / brain fog, potential non fatal but still permanent, debilitating lung damage, cardiovascular damage leading to increased risk of strokes later on. Which has been shown to be a risk for young people as well, more than death.
* Avoiding the massive inconvenience of a potential multi week "very bad flu".
* The medical experts (gov agencies, universities, industries) across the world all strongly recommending it. (Have you at least asked your primary care physician if you should get it? Why not?)
* Benefitting from the exemptions granted to vaccinated people such as indoor dining in NYC and entering the US from Europe and vice versa.
* Keeping your job when they mandate it unofficially or officially (I've seen both).
* The demonstrated risk of dying from covid, and even more so the risk of long covid, as a young person still being way higher than the theoretical / non demonstrated risk of the vaccine. Especially since we have already vaccinated >1.5 billion people - if anything should be seriously wrong with the vaccines, fixing that and helping affected people would likely immediately become an important topic of medical research as soon as we find out.
* Fringe benefits like the lotteries for vaccinated people.
* There being clear evidence of covid being downplayed for political reasons, especially in the US and in 2020. But everywhere else and in 2021 as well. Prominent politicians who have downplayed it still having gotten the vaccine (granted, they're all old people, and your question was about young people). The same politicians constantly retreating from one wrong position to another as they are proven wrong again and again. Whereas the "other side" has so far mostly been right on every major topic.
* Political players that normally don't agree on anything agreeing on this - Russia, China and the US all have a vaccine program and recommend vaccination for essentially everyone. Inside the US, the Democrats are obviously in favor of vaccination, but do not forget that two vaccines got emergency approval while the Republicans had control of all three branches.
* Young people being vaccinated and showing up in vaccination stats influencing older people to get vaccinated.
* Last and least all the anecdotes of people who on their deathbed said they should've gotten the damn vaccine.