Coronavirus

[teamsaint]

Isn't a form of "Selection Bias" likely to be at play here? Medical professionals, in the broadest sense, are confronted frequently and forcefully by the consequences of adverse responses to medication and procedures. Being as human as the rest of us, a good proportion are thus likely to intuitively overestimate their risk. It should also be acknowledged that in general there is rather a lot of iatrogenic disease. It's also notable that the effect is less pronounced in Doctors - who on the whole have expended the greatest effort in training themselves to be guided by rational and detached judgements.

It is rather like asking police accident investigators or relatives of victims about road safety. They can tell you a great deal about consequences but are understandably (or not in the case of some of the more ludicrous pronouncements of certain lobbying organisations) irrational when it comes to balanced risk-reward evaluations. Not a popular point of view, but that is also irrelevant.

Hopefully they (the healthcare workers) can be persuaded in greater numbers over time. The data about care workers in particular declining vaccine in significant numbers is very concerning especially given the emerging evidence for efficacy.

Well this is undoubtedly a very complicated area, and one where even highly trained healthcare professionals might struggle to make sense of oceans of data.
You may well be right about selection bias. Another factor that could be in play is an understanding of non specific effects, or that there may be non specific effects . It has to be said that the general public discourse is limited in the main to specific effects, but non specific effects, often beneficial, but sometimes possibly negative, also occur.
At least that is my amateur understanding of it. That it might be a factor in hesitancy among healthcare workers is just my speculation.

[Serial_Apologist]

Trouble I have these days is that what I assume to be sarcasm turns out more and more to be a person's actual view, which I find disconcerting, and the fallout can be less than pleasant . It's one reason why I am selective about online platforms(only two) as there is a chance to get to know a little about how the land lies.
It is easy to dismiss bad decisions as stupidity, and it is the more comfortable stance to take as it implies that there is nothing to be done to remedy the situation.

Voting him or her out would remedy the immediate situation but not necessarily what led to his or her election or appointment in the first place.

[Serial_Apologist]

Well this is undoubtedly a very complicated area, and one where even highly trained healthcare professionals might struggle to make sense of oceans of data.
You may well be right about selection bias. Another factor that could be in play is an understanding of non specific effects, or that there may be non specific effects . It has to be said that the general public discourse is limited in the main to specific effects, but non specific effects, often beneficial, but sometimes possibly negative, also occur.
At least that is my amateur understanding of it. That it might be a factor in hesitancy among healthcare workers is just my speculation.

Effects can only be non-specific as along as they remain unspecified though, surely?

[oddoneout]

Well this is undoubtedly a very complicated area, and one where even highly trained healthcare professionals might struggle to make sense of oceans of data.
You may well be right about selection bias. Another factor that could be in play is an understanding of non specific effects, or that there may be non specific effects . It has to be said that the general public discourse is limited in the main to specific effects, but non specific effects, often beneficial, but sometimes possibly negative, also occur.
At least that is my amateur understanding of it. That it might be a factor in hesitancy among healthcare workers is just my speculation.

There is also the issue that knowing why something should or should not be done doesn't mean that it will be acted on. If it was that simple there would be no overweight, overdrinking, smoking,drug misuse, etc among health personnel. Human nature.

[Serial_Apologist]

There is also the issue that knowing why something should or should not be done doesn't mean that it will be acted on. If it was that simple there would be no overweight, overdrinking, smoking,drug misuse, etc among health personnel. Human nature.

Hmmm... Christian exculpation at work there - displacement thinking.

[vinteuil]

Hmmm... Christian exculpation at work there - displacement thinking.

,,, nothing pertick'ly christian about this observation, surely?

Ovid has "Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor" - I see and approve of the better way but follow the worse.

It's a commonplace of human nature.

.

[Anastasius]

My understanding of the latest position on infectivity, from about a fortnight ago, is that once immunised with Phase 1, a possible "carrier" is extremely unlikely to pass on the virus.

That was my understanding as well.

[Anastasius]

years ago I was warned that sarcasm was wasted on children and Americans - maybe now with greater experience I ought to extend the categories.

Of course I don't believe it but if the OP holds to their belief in the stupidity of the general population what hope is there for democracy to survive - the Trump phenomenon in the US lays bare the utter failure of the American government to address significant social problems caused in the main by globalisation and Reaganite economics (as also waged by Thatcher which compounded by 10years of Tory austerity led to Brexit) - in both countries there is significant bias in the voting system (recall that Trump also had a minority of the popular vote in his first election) compounded by a extremely partisan press/TV/advertising system based on vast amounts of money. In both countries there is poor education in civics together with power being transferred away from local regions which leads to the popular + at times justified belief that their vote doesn't count.

Have you see the film Idiocracy? That is where we are heading, like it or not.

[Anastasius]

I don't think a Health Passport is a solution, though up to date vaccination certificates might be a partial solution. ....

Surely to all intents and purposes they are one and the same ?

[Serial_Apologist]

,,, nothing pertick'ly christian about this observation, surely?

Ovid has "Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor" - I see and approve of the better way but follow the worse.

It's a commonplace of human nature.

.

I fundamentally disagree - however it was with the blithe generality with which odders re-iterated the commonplace cliché of blaming human nature for the world's woes.

Were it to be true, the very instrument of blame must by dint of consistency be untrustworthy in the judging of this matter. The fact is that humans have yet to come up with forms of society which are inclusive and bring out the best and most creative that is within us without these values having to be fought over as scarce opportunities. More constructive, to my mind, is to investigate the very real, readily intelligible motivators of selfish behaviour - including plunging people into life situations set up to make them have to struggle in competition with their fellow humans for the very basics of survival and the means thereto as a main incentiviser, and then providing society with exculpatory belief systems challenging of their inner capacities for keeping up without some outer agency available to dish out "grace" (whatever it means) and the promise thereafter associated but not available in this lifetime. When the hippies tried to do this in the 1960s the state moved in and smashed them and their efforts. We did warn them they were making soft targets of themselves and leaving a crucial formative factor out of the causation equation linkage even as they talked of making the personal the political. Back then the freaks turned to harder stuff that gave lucrative business to drugs barons, whose capacity for operating when they could have been wiped off the map by the same strong state has been a cynical move. Today, now that drugs trade is "acknowledged" as a prime driver of domestic product, (and not just in poor countries such as Columbia), more and more states are legalising soft drugs as a useful safety valve for the overworked suits, one US state even contemplating doing so for the hard stuff.

[teamsaint]

There is also the issue that knowing why something should or should not be done doesn't mean that it will be acted on. If it was that simple there would be no overweight, overdrinking, smoking,drug misuse, etc among health personnel. Human nature.

That might be an issue, but it wouldn’t really explain higher degrees of hesitancy among healthcare professionals than the general population, would it?

[Joseph K]

I fundamentally disagree - however it was with the blithe generality with which odders re-iterated the commonplace cliché of blaming human nature for the world's woes.

Were it to be true, the very instrument of blame must by dint of consistency be untrustworthy in the judging of this matter. The fact is that humans have yet to come up with forms of society which are inclusive and bring out the best and most creative that is within us without these values having to be fought over as scarce opportunities. More constructive, to my mind, is to investigate the very real, readily intelligible motivators of selfish behaviour - including plunging people into life situations set up to make them have to struggle in competition with their fellow humans for the very basics of survival and the means thereto as a main incentiviser, and then providing society with exculpatory belief systems challenging of their inner capacities for keeping up without some outer agency available to dish out "grace" (whatever it means) and the promise thereafter associated but not available in this lifetime. When the hippies tried to do this in the 1960s the state moved in and smashed them and their efforts. We did warn them they were making soft targets of themselves and leaving a crucial formative factor out of the causation equation linkage even as they talked of making the personal the political. Back then the freaks turned to harder stuff that gave lucrative business to drugs barons, whose capacity for operating when they could have been wiped off the map by the same strong state has been a cynical move. Today, now that drugs trade is "acknowledged" as a prime driver of domestic product, (and not just in poor countries such as Columbia), more and more states are legalising soft drugs as a useful safety valve for the overworked suits, one US state even contemplating doing so for the hard stuff.

The state you have in mind is Oregon - which has decriminalised all drugs.

[johnb]

Very true. It is too early to definitely attribute the pattern as being solely due to the vaccinations. Nevertheless it is more or less what one would expect to see as a result of the vaccination programme.

Thanks for the clarification.

On the other hand, neither the confirmed cases nor, in particular, the hospital admissions show any noticeable difference between the rate of decline in the over 60s and in younger people. So who knows what is going on.

Incidentally, should anyone be interested I will be uploading updated versions of the chart to this URL on box.net: https://app.box.com/s/br5zlxi24xumyckw3vb3t9uze52dn6gv

[oddoneout]

I fundamentally disagree - however it was with the blithe generality with which odders re-iterated the commonplace cliché of blaming human nature for the world's woes.

That was not the intention with which I made the observation - because that is what it is, from my experience of people who, with all the facts to hand, still do not act as one might expect or believe they should.

[Serial_Apologist]

That was not the intention with which I made the observation - because that is what it is, from my experience of people who, with all the facts to hand, still do not act as one might expect or believe they should.

That's one thing; putting it down to "human nature" does not automatically follow: explanations are always more complex than the generalisations people so easily grab onto.