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With how governments have behaved I absolutely understand why people would distrust them and to be honest, I have absolutely zero trust in government right now too. They put politics and driving wedges between people to further entrench their positions (a bunch of provinces and our feds all called snap elections during Covid) over honesty and people. Even now instead of trying to assuage the fears of the vaccine hesitant, they just demonise and threaten them.

Personally, the only trust I have is that a bunch of PhDs making vaccines care about solving a hard problem, so I got the vaccine. Not that I was ever worried about Covid itself, I had Covid during wave 1, had contact with a bunch of Covid positive people in wave 2 without contracting it again, etc...




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This is a complete mischaracterization, and bordering on a lie at this point.

She was very specific about not taking it because President Trump said so (rightly, given Trump's history of promoting improving treatments). But you don't have to take my work for it, read her's:

"If Dr. Fauci, the doctors, tell us that we should take it, I'll be the first in line to take it. But if Donald Trump tells us we should take it, I'm not going to take it."

Only by omitting the first line can you argue that she was going to refuse the vaccine. And that is exactly what many Right-wing outlets have been doing, and that is a lie.


Your characterization is even more misleading than theirs. Do you seriously think Trump created the vaccine himself and it didn't go through the FDA and scientists or anything else?

The mere existence of the vaccine should be enough for her but no if Trump said something she won't take it.


This is an English subtlety. There is an implied negation of the other condition and an implied independence.

“If my wife tells me to eat cauliflower I will. If you tell me to, I won’t.”

A literal interpretation is that if you tell me to eat cauliflower I will avoid cauliflower altogether. The natural English interpretation translates to “Your endorsement of cauliflower will mean nothing to my choice of action”. Funny, eh?


Why would she say anything at all then? It would be impossible for Trump alone to authorize and recommend the vaccines. To many Democrats at the time this statement sowed doubts about the vaccines. My parents said they wouldn't get "Trump's vaccine". What you are failing to acknowledge is that how you understand the statement is not how everyone would interpret it, and many interpreted it as being against the vaccines because Trump was "rushing" them.


I don't hear this being brought up by Democrats at all. And if you look at the statistics by party on who is getting vaccinated I think it is pretty stark that this is not having much of an effect. So even if that caused some Democrats to think that at the time, they seem to have gotten over that.

Looking at the both the statistics, and what media sources are pushing anti-vax sentiments, I don't think your argument has much of a leg to stand on. It is distorting a statement to try and justify a "they are bad", or a "they are bad too" attitude.


Ironically, those PHDs you trust are the most hesitant


That study turned out to be based on unreliable self-reported education level:

https://coronavirus.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-PhDs-are-the-m...


When the study authors themselves say that the results should be taken with a grain of salt because they used a "novel sampling methodology", that's usually a sign that you want to take the results with a grain of salt.


Source please. I know a number of PHDs, and they were all early in line to get vaccines. I have not seen numbers for PHDs (only MDs), but I would be willing to wager that the vaccine rates for PHDs have been high the whole time. Certainly not without notable exceptions, but you get kooks in every group.


Talking about the ones specifically working for the pharmaceuticals. I don't particularly like the companies, but I trust that the smart people working for them want to solve problems.

Don't really care about the opinions of any random PhD (I know a few, most know their field and little else).




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