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>My father is kind of scared of the COVID vaccine - understandable.

>But he gets his 'flu shot' (and a bunch of other things) by the doctor all the time.

Does make a lot of sense to me. Because not all vaccines are the same. Infact their contents can be vastly different (It has to be, given that they protect against different diseases, you know).

So Just because you are Ok with one vaccine, does not mean that you should be Ok with all vaccines.

Sounds like common sense to me. Don't you agree?

There are rational reasons to be hesitant even if on the whole, they don't fully add up (individual situations notwithstanding).

But the hesitancy I've witnessed is not based on a kind of logic or reasoning, rather just an 'instinct'.

If all you read is weird FB posts, tabloids then the sum totality of the 'decision' will just be 'no'.

Fox News I think illustrates how this can happen. Fox hasn't taken a Covid or vaccine denying position. In fact, you could probably find that officially they have been 'on the side of the vaccine'. But since so much of the coverage is questioning, cynical, downplaying and contrarian - and - they have not actually been overtly supporting the vaccine programs ... it's easy for people to be 'net vaccine hesitant' if that's their information source.

So while at the very same time that a news organization can be '100% technically correct' on everything, the channel might become noisy and the net result is lack of clarity.

My father doesn't have an argument about 'it was made too fast', it's more like 'Oh, there's that goddam Fauci again, telling us what to do!'. He personally dislikes Dr. Fauci, at least in part because of the media he's consuming.

He believes that coronavirus is real, and oddly, has even been in the hospital for some minor things where there were insane protocols he was more than fine with following (i.e. masks everywhere, everyone taking it seriously) - but at the same time, when the subject comes up he says 'Oh it's a bunch of bull**t' , kind of in a huff. Also - he lives in rural area that has mostly not been affected.

Public Communications is not about making just rational arguments - it's about information clarity, emotions, credibility, how much fog and misinformation is thrown about, all of the specious and frankly totally false bits of Social Media etc..

CNN went to somewhere in the Midwest and interviewed a bunch of people in a small town and they largely reacted the same way:

"We just do thing differently here"

"It's not a big deal for us"

"We just don't need it"

While the 'it was made very rapidly' logic (and other reasonable arguments) are sometimes made ... that's really not it.

That's why in a crisis, information discipline is so important.

I firmly believe that if Republican apparatus and media were very committed to vaccination especially with public messaging, then about 25% more Americans would be vaccinated.

Imagine if the President of the USA was using his Twitter to try to get people vaccinated. Imagine if he held 'vax rallies' where free tickets went to anyone vaxxed. Imagine if he asked Country Music stars to support the effort. Instead of 'technically supporting vaccination while publicly being cynical about it'. That's what it boils down to.

>But the hesitancy I've witnessed is not based on a kind of logic or reasoning, rather just an 'instinct'.

What about the advocacy? I would go further and say that not even advocacy, but the general behaviour to trust the authority, is an instinct, rather than rooted in logic or rationality.

Because there is really no reason to trust CDC/FDA, after so many instances where these have caught to act diametrically opposite to the interests of the public (For some examples, look at real event portrayed in documentaries like 'what lies upstream' and 'Dark Waters'). Time and again, these agencies get away with little more than a pat on the wrist.

But people still, instinctively trust them. It is very sad, as you say.

>He personally dislikes Dr. Fauci

To be frank, it is hard to like someone who declares himself as the embodiment of scientific truth.

Trust is first founded in reality, but then instinct, that's the whole point of trust.

Once you trust someone, then you don't have to scientifically validate everything they say.

Also - there's tons of coverage of the vaccine. There are dozens of rich nations, each with dozens of Health Agencies doing public work, it's impossible to keep a secret.

You're borderline conspiracy theory if you think there's 'no trust' in the CDC/FDA. There's tons of trust.

What's 'sad' is people' inability to grasp that institutions are not perfect. Police, government, military, etc..

The US has military has committed some pretty terrible atrocities, and yet 'trust' in it is very high.

Same with police: they've been known to arbitrarily kill and imprison people unnecessarily - and yet they have high levels of trust.

The CDC are Health Officials for God's sake, that people wouldn't trust them as much as the military is sad.

"To be frank, it is hard to like someone who declares himself as the embodiment of scientific truth."

Now you're resorting to crude populism ... He's done no such thing.

When you're talking daily to wall of reality and science-deniers, it will get frustrating.

I don't care about Dr. Fauci, but his opponents try to create contrarian conditions regarding him in an attempt to get clicks and rile people up. They're vile.

> The problem is people irrationally believe that a 'vaccine is unsafe' but at the same time 'some other drug is safe' and might therefore take the drug.

It's wild to see people grasping at random anti-parasitics as some sort of miracle cure when (if you're over the age of the 12 and in the US) you can literally walk into any pharmacy and get a real miracle cure for free.

Your father is erring toward things that have been proven over time. The flu shot has decades of use and data. So does Ivermectin (the open question is how effective it is wrt Covid-19). They are proven safe. They are FDA approved, Covid shots are not. It is perfectly rational to seek treatments that are FDA approved and have been used for decades.

100% agree that 40% or even more now can’t effectively deal with information, nor can think critically for themselves. It’s so politicized that you are either camp A or B (liberal or conservative). One side being ‘vaccine is the only way’ and the other is ‘vaccine unsafe, other drugs are safe’. There seems to be very little people in the middle who can say ‘vaccines are generally safe but we don’t know the long term side effects so we must look at alternatives now for those that choose not to take it or cannot take it for medical reasons’. Also it’s important for people to assess their own risk profile to make the decisions for themselves (if they decide not to take it).

>vaccines are generally safe

I am not sure how that can be correct. Because each vaccine is different, and can vary drastically in what the contain.

Now, if you say, all FDA approved vaccines are generally safe, then that might make a little more sense. Then you are at least qualifying something apart from just the name "vaccine".