Recent Covid-19 infections and the unvaccinated

[Stoic]

Or he was lying. Why do you feel the need to defend Fauci at every turn?

Because so many are attacking him for no good reason.

[Sparko]

Because so many are attacking him for no good reason.

Seems like admitting to lying about herd immunity is a good reason.

[Stoic]

Seems like admitting to lying about herd immunity is a good reason.

It wasn't Fauci who characterized it as "admitting to lying".

[Sherman]

I got my second vaccine last month. So I am fully vaccinated. I did it to protect my husband who has had three surgeries.

[TheLurch]

Just back from my first post-vaccine vacation, which is somewhat on topic.

Just to loop back to an argument from while i was gone, it's important not to view "not gotten a vaccine" as a single population. There are multiple contributors to that in the US:

A portion of the population is willing to get it, but can't afford time off work to do so or deal with side effects. Another group is unaware that it's really free, and so is worried about healthcare costs. These two groups are, not surprisingly, low income. That means they're disproportionately minorities, though all ethnic groups are clearly represented here.

Separately, there's a pool of people who are saying they are likely to never get the vaccine. That's a diverse group as well.

Some were committed to an anti-vaccine before the pandemic. These tend to come from the far left and far right extremes (due to being anti-big-pharma and anti-government-program), and typically white.

A number of minority groups have a mistrust in the medical establishment due to historic mistreatment by it, and so are less likely to vaccinate. Obviously, minorities.

And it's clear that vaccine acceptance has become politicized. In the US, the states with the highest levels of vaccine hesitancy are conservative, and the group that drives that (largely white evangelicals) have the highest level of vaccine refusal here (Data from Pew, which is nonpartisan and nonprofit). Those were also the group that was most likely to consider the pandemic a non-threat, so this isn't much of a surprise.

So, like most things in society, it's complicated, and if we generalize, we're going to ignore lots of important exceptions.

In any case, should any of you choose to argue about it again, there's lots of polling data about this, and i'd be happy to dig up some that addresses issues you care about.