This past week, CNN fired three employees for coming to the office without getting vaccinated. Also, “Friends” star Jennifer Aniston said she had stopped seeing people who had chosen not to be vaccinated. On Sunday, Dr. Anthony Fauci said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the unvaccinated are allowing the virus to “freely circulate” which “might get a worse variant” that ”could evade the protection of the vaccine.”

The Scared Vaccinated and the Grateful Vaccinated

Fauci, CNN and Aniston are spokesmen for the Scared Vaccinated. Their opposites are the Grateful Vaccinated, who have little to worry about COVID. Nine out of 10 of the vaccinated will not catch the virus. That one “breakthrough” case will be much less severe or no symptoms. None of them will die of COVID.

As it stands now, 71 percent of adults have gotten one shot and 61 percent are fully vaccinated. When you add in the under 18 kids, the average is still 51% of the country is fully vaccinated. Most likely, that number will only increase with children vaccinations because the adults have had time to make a final decision. 

The Grateful Vaccinated have gone back to their normal lives — sightseeing, parties, traveling, unmasking. They wonder why other vaccinated people are so angry as things have improved so much.

 

What splits the vaccinated is fear. The Scared Vaccinated are scared of what they can’t control, which at this point in the pandemic, is simply other people’s health decisions. They are driven by emotions, not facts.

When we are traumatized — which I believe much of the country is from the March 2020 lockdowns — our frontal lobe turns off and our bodies take over for survival. This is why the Scared Vaccinated are so reactive. They are constantly in a state of fight or flight. They see someone without a mask and feel like they could die. They hear someone say he or she is not vaccinated, and they feel like they are being personally attacked.

It is impossible to reason with someone whose body is pumping cortisol and adrenaline. This is why the facts of vaccine effectiveness and the pandemic don’t work when trying to debate with the Scared Vaccinated.

Cognitive bias

One psychology professor theorizes that the cause of irrational fear related to getting COVID after vaccinated is that people just can’t do the math about probability. John M. Henderson, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of California, wrote in “Psychology Today”:

​​When it comes to thinking about the likelihood of events in the world, humans are woefully lacking. Indeed, when we reason about likelihoods and probabilities, we’re susceptible to all manner of mistakes. Psychologists call these susceptibilities cognitive biases. Cognitive biases can lead to faulty thinking and bad decision-making, sometimes with life-and-death consequences.

One type of cognitive bias at play these days on social media, and even in traditional media, has to do with the likelihood of becoming ill from Covid-19 following vaccination. Psychologists call the source of this bias the base rate fallacy.

He summarizes his points below. I linked Henderson’s article at the end of this post and highly recommend reading all of it.

Good news and facts don’t compute

The base rate fallacy explains why the Scared Vaccinated don’t comprehend the good news about the pandemic numbers.

There is new data for the 80 percent of people over 65-years-old who have been vaccinated to be optimistic. The CDC reported the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines prevent hospitalization for 96 percent of people between 65 and 74-years-old. (The J&J vaccine is slightly lower at 84 percent to prevent hospitalization for elderly. ) So grandma has been saved. Hallelujah.

For the vaccinated, the survival rate may be 100 percent.

Children and teenagers continue to be safe from COVID. During the whole pandemic, 350 children and teens died from COVID from a base rate of 75 million. Those kids had severe underlying health conditions. There is an increase in children hospitalized due to the more contagious Delta variant, but the base rates show less than .1 percent of kids with COVID end up hospitalized, according to the American Academy of Pediatricians.

For adults under the age of 65-years-old and with no health conditions, it’s virtually impossible to die from COVID or even get severely ill. Even if you take into account the elderly and the population with underlying conditions, the survival rate is 98.7 percent— even if you’re not vaccinated — according to Johns Hopkins. For the vaccinated, the survival rate may be 100 percent.

The Scared Vaccinated are incapable of understanding how these facts translate into their life. Their cognitive bias and panic make them perceive that they could die. They are afraid of their children dying. This is why they want everyone else vaccinated.

While the miraculous mNRA vaccines have made it possible to dramatically decrease the deaths and hospitalizations in just one year, the Scared Vaccinated can’t see the good news.

The neverending search for COVID zero

The Scared Vaccinated have an unspoken belief that it is possible to go back to the Before Times when the novel coronavirus only existed in a lab. This is false.

The virus will continue to mutate and circulate the globe. People will get sick. There is no way to go “COVID zero” in American because a solid 20 percent of adults will never get the vaccine — no matter how much the Scared Vaccinated criticize and shame them.

During the spring and early summer, the Scared Vaccinated used word-of-mouth and social media frames to try to get everyone vaccinated because they thought they would be safe when the vague herd immunity was reached.

Biden promoted this theory by saying his goal was to get to 70 percent vaccination rate by the Fourth of July. The president never explained the science of his goal. It was a blind push to get the shot in arms that convicined a lot of Americans that herd immunity was the end of the pandemic. He failed by a long shot.

The Scared Vaccainted never understood that herd immunity just means less chance of a mass outbreak of the virus. They believed that it would stop the virus completely and get to COVID zero. That is why they were so angry at the unvaccinated earlier this year and abusive to them now that the pandemic continues.

A Grateful, Vaccinated Doctor

Dr. Marty Mackary of John Hopkins School of Health has been an outspoken critic of the government’s push to vaccinate everyone.

The pandemic of the unvaccinated is a misnomer. It’s a pandemic of the non-immune. More precisely, it’s a series of regional outbreaks in select pockets of the country with low population immunity. Same take-home message though: If you’re not immune, get immune by getting vaxed.

— Marty Makary MD, MPH (@MartyMakary) July 29, 2021

He believes we hit herd immunity already because he includes those who have natural immunity with the vaccinated, which comes to approximately 85 percent. Mackary says the U.S. should be sending our unused vaccines overseas to nations that need it more.

In the United States, the covid-19 threat is currently low. Nearly all at-risk Americans are protected. The virus is now circulating in young people for which the case-fatality rate is similar to seasonal flu, except daily covid-19 cases are a fraction of the daily influenza cases in a mild flu season (about 20,000 vs. 133,000 per day).

The media love for the Delta variant

The Delta Variant has been very good for normally slow summer ratings. The Scared Vaccinated is the target audience. The media knows people will click more on stories with inflammatory headlines.  The “Delta Variant” just simply sounds scarier, and that is driving a traumatized nation backwards.

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