Atop Mount Stupid
The Dunning-Kruger effect is killing people.
People are doing their own research and deciding not to get vaccinated.
The Dunning-Kruger effect is a mental error, whereby people with limited knowledge or competence in a given area greatly overestimate their knowledge or competence. The less you know, the more confident you are.
Here is a stylized graph showing the effect. High confidence, low competence.
Refusing to get vaccinated is dangerous. The State of Washington compiled updated data. Among people aged 12-64, the hospitalization rate is five to seven times higher among the unvaccinated than the vaccinated. The people most at risk of bad outcomes are those age 65+, and for them the hospitalization rate is eight times higher and the death rate is seven times higher.
The COVID States Project published a poll examining who believes familiar points of false "facts" regarding vaccines. They asked people if they agreed with the following mistaken beliefs:
1. The vaccine will alter people's DNA
2. The vaccines contain microchips that could track people.
3. The vaccines contain lung tissue of aborted fetuses.
4. The vaccines cause infertility.
People who believe two or more of these misperceptions are people least likely to be vaccinated and boosted. Those who believed two or more of these untrue statements were the group most confident of their expertise. Nine percent thought they had expert knowledge, while 28% said "I know a lot."
There is a rich inventory of cartoons making light of this. Here are three of my favorites:
I think the cartoons are funny. They also contain an element of condescension. Look how stupid they are. Ha ha.
I have written here about my discomfort at feeling moral satisfaction at learning that a stubborn unvaccinated person contracted COVID and got very sick. I recognize that illness and misfortune come capriciously, striking both wise and foolish, both villain and saint. The Germans have a word for it: schadenfreude. The emotion is selfish and unlovely, but it nevertheless persists in the background of my mind. (The stubborn jerk was asking for it!) Expressing schadenfreude publicly is politically unacceptable.
Democratic policy leaders understand that treating unvaccinated COVID victims with anything less that whole-hearted sympathy is politically disastrous. It would be a new version of Hillary's "deplorables" comment, a projection of dismissive condescension and prejudice. The unvaccinated want validation, not shaming. They expect every benefit of medical science and technology if they contract a severe case of COVID. Democrats who hint at triage based on vaccination status get instant blowback. Democrats also feel obligated to continue to encourage vaccinations for everyone, including people who have "done their research" and oppose vaccination.
The new status quo. Democrats are doomed to look weak and unpersuasive. (Won't you please, pretty please, get vaccinated?) Vaccine refusers will continue to be confident and resolute, and they will continue to get hospitalized and die disproportionately. About 2,200 American are dying every day from COVID, with hospitalizations and deaths concentrated among the elderly and the unvaccinated. That is the new reality.
Democrats need to understand and accept that a majority of Americans have decided that on balance they are OK with this. They want to reopen America and get on with "normal," even if extra people die. That attitude is selfish and unlovely, but it nevertheless persists in the background of the American mood.
This will get resolved in the upcoming election. Democrats need to get ahead of this.