I don't really know what's spurring me to write this. A general sense of malaise with the current state of the country? Who knows.
But I've recently found myself in a strange situation: that people my age and younger are not generally eligible for Pfizer, but we could get AstraZeneca if we wanted it.
Because of poor messaging around the AstraZeneca vaccine, though, people are understandably concerned about their infinitesimal risk of suffering (and maybe dying) from a blood clot.
When I explain to people, many of whom I would consider friends, that I can understand this hesitancy, I'm met with two kinds of reactions, broadly speaking: people who understand, or at least can sympathise, and people who start throwing facts at me, presumably in the hopes that enough information will change my mind. What follows concerns the latter.
The thing is, it's not that I don't know the information already. I know that I'm probably more likely to get struck by lightning than die from a blood clot following vaccination. I know that the risk of my contracting COVID-19 and then suffering or dying from its complications is probably higher than that. So telling me that, over and over, is probably not going to make me reconsider.
And realistically, if we don't want to get into a situation where we propose to strap people down and forcibly vaccinate them, then we need to figure out why, despite the facts, they're still not willing to be vaccinated.
Negativity bias is strong — or is it zero-risk bias, in this case? Anyway, although it might be irrational, people aren't always rational. It's also a lot easier to spot other people being irrational than it is to notice when we do it ourselves.
Another observation is that people who've already been vaccinated seem to take an even stronger stance on this. I don't know whether it's from a sense of forcing people through a shared suffering — I risked a blood clot, and so should you — or whether it's something else.
How can we get through to people, though? If people know that there's a one in a million chance of getting a blood clot, the fact is that the idea of being that one person is a lot scarier than the comfort you get from being more protected against a virus which hasn't killed you and, in Australia, likely hasn't even infected anyone you know.
I don't know what the answer is. I'm sure that for some, the facts will help - maybe they just know that there's a risk, but not how much of a risk there is. For others, facts aren't going to change minds. Things might need to get worse, or people might need to be incentivised.
A side note on incentives: the fact that we issue fines to people who break laws (if we accept that they're not merely a means of raising revenue) should be all the proof we need that people would be encouraged to be vaccinated if they had monetary encouragement.
In any case, I'm not saying that people who are hesitant to be vaccinated are right, nor am I saying that none of them can be persuaded with facts and science. But it might be worth, when you encounter someone of this kind, to take a breath and remember to show some empathy.
