#256 A Contagion of Bad Ideas

Even if you accept the worst claims about the risks of the mRNA vaccines, which are almost guaranteed to be false, but even accepting them, the case for getting vaccinated is absolutely clear cut given what else we know about the effects of the vaccines in preventing disease and about the effects of COVID itself.

The vaccine progression from the sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 [virus] in January, January 10th [2020], to the clinical trial, executed and completed in November, and rolling out vaccines, all in a matter of months, is of historic significance ... What we have here is one of the greatest triumphs in biomedicine in history, and it's very sad to see that being compromised by mis- and disinformation.

We're living in the presence of the largest vaccine and disease experiment ever run. We're talking about tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of people, getting the disease under conditions of being vaccinated or not, and the disparity in the results is so clear at this point. And again, even if you take the worst numbers from the most vaccine-avoidant as the ground truth for what these vaccines do to you, it's still an easy decision to get vaccinated to mitigate your risk.

You have many, many millions of people who believe some combination of the following—that the risk of COVID, the disease, has been vastly exaggerated... but the vaccines are scary and dangerous. We have literally tens of millions of people who are totally sanguine about the prospect of catching COVID but really averse to the idea of getting vaccinated for COVID.

2% percent of Democrats say they will definitely will not get the vaccine whereas 23% of Republicans say that.