Is It Foolishness, or Stubbornness?

We (the whole world) have been struggling with the coronavirus for almost a year and a half now.  Setting aside the distractions of trying to figure out whom to blame, we can't seem to agree on mechanisms to protect ourselves.

Many of us have relied on doctors whose specialty is epidemiology: expertise regarding epidemics.  You wouldn't think it would take much brains to realize that these are precisely the people on whose insights and advice to rely.  As is true of many parts of medicine, the path is not always clear, and doctors have to recognize what they don't know, how to find it out, and how to make the most informed judgments they can.  It's not always easy.  (I do a lot of work for the Social Security Administration.  I'm what they call a "Medical Expert" for appeals hearings.  But Social Security judges are not required to use Medical Experts.  It's always a curiosity to me that some judges don't want expert medical advice about these cases.  The cases are not infrequently difficult for me to figure out, and I'm a doctor of the relevant specialty.  I always wonder how someone who is not a doctor of the relevant specialty, or not a doctor at all, imagines s/he can figure the cases out without someone like me.)  Similarly, it appears there is a proportion of the non-epidemiologist and non-doctor public who think they can make their own judgments about how to deal with an epidemic, and they can declare epidemiologists and other doctors simply wrong, or in some cases dishonest.  And this is on the basis of nothing.  (Although let's not forget the title of this post.)

So, we started out, based on epidemiological advice, taking the precaution of not exposing ourselves to people who might be infected, so we wouldn't get infected.  We stayed home, we kept a distance, and we wore masks.  Some of us did.

For a while, that was the best we could do.  That is until vaccines were quickly developed, and those were thought to confer immunity, so that even being exposed to someone infectious would not cause infection.  We weren't completely sure of that in the beginning, nor did we know at that early phase, and with vaccines quickly developed without long range monitoring, how long the immunity would last, but it became the even better thing we could do, beyond isolating ourselves.  Over time, we have learned that some or most or all of the vaccines turned out to be as effective, and long lasting, as we hoped, and a sizable proportion of people in the world have gotten themselves vaccinated.  But the size of that proportion is not 100%, even setting aside all the people to whom the vaccines have not been available, and who could not have gotten themselves vaccinated.  I have read varying calculations of what proportion of people who could have gotten themselves vaccinated did get themselves vaccinated, and the numbers seem to hover around 50-70%.  It's more than a little disturbing to wonder about the other 30-50%, and what leads them not to protect themselves from a very serious epidemic.

And now, we have the "Delta Variant."  The Delta Variant is not more damaging than the regular coronavirus.  It's more easily transmitted.  So it infects, and makes sick, and kills, more people, because it is more infectious.  But it's not infectious to, or can infect, sicken, or kill people who are immune to it, because they got vaccinated.  Those people are not going to get the Delta Variant any more than they were going to get the regular coronavirus.

So we're left to wonder what's with the people who won't get vaccinated in an epidemic/pandemic.  They think vaccination is a government plot, or they don't trust doctors, or they don't trust Tony Fauci, or they think this must be someone's fault, and they want to use their emotional energy resenting whosever fault they think it is.  Instead of getting vaccinated.

If someone comes into your house, and takes your stuff, they're selfish, terrible people, and they don't care about you, and it's wrong, and they shouldn't do that.  So do you refuse to get locks for your doors, because locks cost money, and now, the locksmith might be able to break into your house, and what if you lose the key, and why can't the police patrol every house all the time, so no one will enter your house when you're not there?  You'd have to be foolish, stubborn, and frankly childish to take an approach like that.  But that's what people who won't get vaccinated do.