Only 52% of Republicans think the COVID vaccine is safe. The conservative politicians and conservative media that created this situation should be utterly ashamed of themselves.
And to what end? It isn't even a partisan issue. It's not as if Joe Biden would get a surge in the polls if Republicans got themselves vaccinated, after all. It's just a completely craven attempt to spread a dangerous conspiracy theory in service of undermining support for government services of any kind. I hope it was worth it, guys.
The next virus will probably be worse, the next vaccine will probably be better.
We may be heading for the biggest Darwin Award event in a long time.
Sounds promising, but we can't rely on this to save our antiquated, minority driven system of government and law. But maybe it will help!
Even if a virus kills tens of millions of unvaccinated fools, as long as red states still have 3 surviving residents in them, they still get 2 senators and 1 representative in congress, as well as 3 presidential electoral votes.
Higher death rates among conservatives won’t fix our political problems.
Maybe not, but it will certainly make the country more livable.
Yes, that's true. But ask yourself how many of those three surviving residents would be Democrats? My WAG would be "all of 'em".
But the anti-maskers and anti-everythingers will kill a lot of us before the vaccines arrive. The next virus will be way worse for everyone.
Republicans' policy (keep rich people rich) is not that popular, so they rely on getting the votes of the most bamboozable part of the voters, which has a strong overlap with anti-vax.
25% of Republicans think the vaccine is somewhat unsafe, and another 25% think it's somewhat safe. Only one in 4 think it's very unsafe.
Independents and Republicans are much more similar in their acceptance or not of covid vaccines. Dems are the outliers in their trust.
Dem (no lean) 62% 29% 6% 3%
Ind (no lean) 36% 33% 18% 13%
Rep (no lean) 27% 25% 24% 23%
The Independents are about half way between Republicans and Democrats on the dangerous side--not close to Republicans.
So three and a half times as many Indies think it's unsafe as Dems, while GOP isn't even twice as likely.
So, conservative independents are just as stupid as Republicans?
Not really. "Independents" (really, unaffiliateds, since few are genuinely independent) are pretty much half-way between Dems and Reps, considering the margin of error of the sample.
I think you should elaborate on what it seems that you are implying with your last sentence there.
Just what I said. Twice as many Dems think the vaccine is *very* safe as do Independents and Republicans. Roughly the same amount think in all three parties think it's somewhat safe.
Four times as many Independents as Dems think it's very unsafe, while just twice as many Republicans do.
Kevin was making it sound as if the Republicans are the oddballs, but Dems are the ones more out of line with the other two party ids.
If by "elaborate" you mean that I need to explain to you what my own opinions are, get over yourself. Numbers are numbers. But these say nothing about the actual safety of the vaccine and nothing about my own opinion.
No. So-called "Independents" are largely a mix of people who reliably vote Republican and people who reliably vote Democratic, with a few genuine swing voters. It is not a separate party identity. Given the current distribution of party identifications, You'd expect Independents to fall somewhere between Dems and Reps. That's what you see here. Given the stated margin of error for this survey, Independents are not really very far from halfway between the Dems and Reps. Dems are not outliers, they just differ from Reps, and Inds fall in line, halfway between.
If that many independents are sorted out from GOP and Dem, the whole survey is pointless so no worries.
Polls are worthless unless they say what I want to believe! Reaffirm my priors! I demand it!
love this take, lol.
Uh, no. That's *your* point. You're the one saying "independents" is a meaningless category..
lol, yes of course. After a big swing and a miss so you try a strawman.
how novel.
you are losing at the internet.
The vaccine has now been in widespread use for years, and has been demonstrated to be safe and effective. So you are arguing the Democrats are the odd balls for recognizing the scientific truth? I fear you may be right.
I'd say rather that Americans as a rule aren't huge believers in vaccines, particularly vaccines that don't actively prevent infection (like covid and the flu shot), Moreover, the covid vaccine in particularly seems to have changed that. Dems are now more likely to get flu shots than they used to be, Republicans slightly less likely.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/14/politics/flu-partisan-divide-analysis/index.html
"Moreover, the covid vaccine in particularly seems to have changed that"
The covid vaccine itself obviosly didn't change that. Maybe you mean the political process around the covid vaccine changed it.
The article you quote says:
"It seems plausible that the push to get the Covid-19 vaccine has led to more Democrats getting the flu shot, while it has had the opposite effect on Republicans. "
Without giving any actual argument to support that it is the push itself.
I think there were many processes that could affect it, for example the intentional disinformation to reduce the trust in scientists, authorities in general, and in the CDC.
I agree with all that and yes, I meant the politics around the covid vaccine.
But again, Americans have never been particularly zealous about shots that don't prevent the disease entirely, at least in regards to flu shots.
He calls himself realist. On the internet that usually means white male libertarian. Possibly a Q believer, more likely a Joe Rogan/anti-woke type.
Not a libertarian, only realized Joe Rogan was that guy on News Radio last year, not even sure what Q is, been around for over a decade. In fact, Kevin cited one of my articles recently! I was very proud.
As a practical matter, I don't mention gender, location, or name so you can't even really say I'm a he, although whatever.
Whatever.
I didn't make me the issue. Ya'll did.
Whatever you say ... troll.
So, uh, what's your point? Are Covid vaccines unsafe? Yes or no. This idiocy you posted is on a par with taking a poll on whether evolution is 'real'.
All I did was go through the numbers that Kevin posted. They say nothign about whether the vaccines are safe or not.
You didn't answer any of my questions, troll. So since your schtick seems to be 'butt-headed oppositional' I'm going to posit that you believe the vaccines to be unsafe. So fuck off, troll. No one cares what you think.
No one cares what you think, either. Twas ever thus in the comments section.
And I'm not sure you even know what "posit" means. But I have a blog, and a long history on twitter, and I don't have to do anything just because some fuckwit can't manage the difference between analysis and opinion.
How many million people have blogs and a long history on Twitter?
Neither of those two things suggests the person is smart, thoughtful, or particularly informed, so I don't know what exactly it is you want to brag about with that if you are too embarrassed to say which particular blog or Twitter account it is.
He's embarrassed to say he's Matt Yglesias 😉
I wasn't bragging or implying I was smart and thoughtful.
The charge was "troll" and, as a rule, trolls don't have blogs or long established presences on Twitter.
You. Have. A. Blog. Well ain't the special. Tyler Cowan, Glen Greenwald, Matt Yglesias, etc. have them too over in substack and everyone knows what blithering idiots they are. In the meantime, you believe that vaccines are unsafe, that public opinion about the age of the Earth, Evolution, etc. is somehow relevant.
So FOAD, troll.
Try not to be too hard on Scent - he's not that bright, and it's not his fault.
+1
The level of narrowmindness in the other replies is quite stunning.
The three groups most likely to have gotten at least one COVID vaccine shot were: Post-grads (94%), Male Democrats (93%), and Religious Non-Protestant/Catholic (92%).
But, but, but....my cousin's friend's sister's brother-in-law got swollen balls!!!
Yup - the facts are clear. People dying of the vaccine left and right.
Feels crass to be cheering on the virus but that may be our only hope.
I guess if you can go around saying you've "done your own research" and concluded that the brain-controlling microchips George Soros put in the Covid vaccine are unsafe, it allows you to feel like you have some autonomy and agency in a world where most people have little idea about how the technology that controls our lives works. Same thing with crypto -- you really don't understand how fiat money works, so it makes you feel special to buy a bunch of esoteric-sounding X-coin or whatever and take "control" over currency using "one weird trick" the elites don't want you to know about.
But, but . . . Matt Damon would never lie to me!
I'll be honest. I think that this is GREAT news. That's because when the latest VERY nasty strain of H5N1 jumps from birds to humans in the next few years -- it is killing 40% of the mammals that it has so far learned how to infect -- anti-vaxxers will die like the flies that swirl around their stinking piles of lies.
Still leaving behind embittered survivors, mortally certain that Biden and the Chinese murdered their loved ones--according to Alex Jones and his fellow manure piles.
So disappointing. This nation left footprints on the moon...
That's what the lamestream media wants you to think!
Yeah, but in the 1960s an 1970s, I bet there were all sorts of partisan divides in opinion polls that would shock and dismay us (example: imagine a poll in 1970 about whether or not men and women had the same cognitive capabilities).
So cheer up!
Meanwhile, we put a space telescope at a lagrange point, and just this morning a capsule landed in Utah with a sample retreived from a freaking asteroid. This country still does amazing things, despite many of our fellow citizens being distinctly non-amazing.
I wonder if enough of them have died yet to affect the results of an election? I seem to recall a couple years ago it not being a decisive factor, but maybe currently it could?
The survivors are still voting their deceased relatives' ballots.
Many on the right have gone full bore into anti-intellectualism. Do they even read Hofstadter in schools anymore?
Half of all Republicans are pretty dense, apparently
"...The conservative politicians and conservative media that created this situation should be utterly ashamed of themselves."
This was more a bottom up than top down phenomena.
It got and is getting a lot of help from the top, and people at the top are supposed to be more responsible.
It's a bit of a what came first, the chicken or the egg type of question.
Did the people from the bottom became so distrustful of this because those at the top did their best to dismiss and downplay the problem from the get go?
Or did the people at the top dismiss and downplay the problem from the get go because the people at the bottom were so distrustful about things?
Personally I'm inclined to believe it was a bit more of the first scenario than the second, but as soon as it started it became a vicious cycle where one side was constantly feeding off what the other said.