Fair point. But possibly an important distinction is that measles vaccination is much more prevalent and the vaccine works much better. As people have noted, even if you have 100% immunity (natural or vax-generated) with 85% efficacy, it’s not clear whether that is enough to stop transmission. At that point, my understanding of the biology runs out and I don’t really know what happens. Is the 15% non-efficacy rate of the vaccines reflective of the virus having a couple days’ window to replicate before antibody production is restarted to clear the infection? In that case, it seems plausible that the virus could circulate forever without mutating at all, just by hopping from person to person after their current crop of antibodies breaks down. Maybe that’s not actually possible for some reason.
Also, I’m way over my head here, but this paper seems to suggest that existing common-cold coronaviruses are also fairly slow to mutate, but obviously still manage to circulate.
Large majority (64%) supports a universal vaccination mandate.
Even larger majority (70%) supports a vaccination requirement to travel on planes, including a majority of Republicans, and a majority in every state.
Weirdly, school mandates poll the worst (62% in favor).
The dynamics around this issue are very strange. Regular people seem to understand that we already mandate lots of vaccines for good reason, and obviously should do so for this very dangerous virus. Elite opinion seems to be much more nuanced, and I’m not sure there’s any solid basis for it. My best guess is either status quo bias or else the fact that coercive measures applied against children feels less salient than coercive measures against adults.
I could maybe, MAYBE, understand people getting this upset over a vaccine mandate, but for a mask mandate just breaks my brain. It’s so fucking absurd.
Some elites have decided, for whatever reason, that catering to the lunatic fringe is in their personal/political best interests and some other elites are trying to backfill logic to this other than the plainly sociopathic behavior that it is.
My kids are in middle school and high school (man, holy shit), so this doesn’t directly affect us YET, but our elementary school just sent everyone home for two weeks.
EDIT: Misinformation here - it was just the 5th grade. BUT STILL.
Sorry, I was unclear. I was focused on the disparity between how popular mandatory vaccination of all stripes is and how slow TPTB have been to embrace it. It makes sense to me that mandatory COVID vaccination just for kids would be a bit less popular than universal.
Do I remember right that you’re in Marietta, GA? I think in my sister’s district? Her two kids already got a close contact notice that kids plus teacher in their classroom tested positive.
I was just about coming to terms with the idea of the death drive. Subconsciously a lot of people seem to seek death in oblique ways and you can have any number of psychological/biological explanations that sort of make a sick kind of sense, but a drive to see your own children die is altogether weirder and darker. It should surely be an evolutionary non starter.
Yup (East Cobb, so Cobb County schools, not Marietta schools, technically). Our middle school principal said we aren’t going to get “low-risk” notifications anymore (basically, notification that someone had COVID, but we don’t need to quarantine because our kid wasn’t near them or whatever) because we should just assume we’re always in that situation.
My daughter’s best friend’s mom just contacted my wife this morning to tell her that the high school said her son (my daughter’s friend) was in contact with someone who tested positive. Apparently he can keep going to school if he shows no symptoms. My daughter eats lunch with him, so that’s great.
Fortunately, we’re all vaxxed and mask up, so I’m not freaking out, but this still isn’t good.
A parent who is an infectious disease physician posted in our middle school parents Facebook group yesterday, urging everyone to get vaxxed and masked because things are really shitty in the hospitals right now. Most people cheered her, but a couple, of course, are spreading disinformation, linking websites that of course have the word “patriot” in them.
This. The NYT will gladly print Tom Cotton’s fascist screed about violently brutalizing protesters but will not publish anything advocating forced vaccination.
See Riverman’s Medium article. They don’t want themselves or their children to die. Conservative politics have made it such that getting covid or taking precautions against it are a fundamental sign of weakness, of failure, of a lack of faith, of foolishness, of their whole identity. Covid doesn’t affect me and mine, we’re strong, we’re Christian, we’re rugged individualists who believe in FREEDOM, not some namby pamby who gives a shit about other people.
Even though politicians have neither the time nor the inclination for strategic thought, I would think a lot of that has to do with anticipating a backlash.