3 ms·

As an economist and a cultural transplant to the US, I'll never understand this. How can politics/party lines be stronger than rational self-interest? It just

As an economist and a cultural transplant to the US, I'll never understand this. How can politics/party lines be stronger than rational self-interest? It just doesn't compute in my head, and never will for the rest of my life. I know these people are not the majority, but their fraction is still large enough to amount to millions of people. It's absolutely mind-boggling.

rhino369 5y ago
Its a breakdown of trust in our nations institutions. The older ones who refuse mostly don't believe the vaccines will work. So based on that wrong fact, they are acting in their self-interest. Bad faith exploiters who peddle fake news are much to blame. But our institutions should reflect on why people trust dumbasses on facebook more than them. Our public health officials 1) aren't really competent on average, 2) have been constantly wrong, but worse 3) have lied (with noble intent I guess) about covid. Nobody trusts the media in general. It's all biased and sensationalist.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  Its not really the older ones though. We're seeing a lot more 30-40 year olds packing the hospitals and the kids ICUs are filling up in the hotspots. The message was that only 80 year olds die of this disease. But while the risk of death halves with every 8 years younger you are the risk of hospitalization only halves every 15 years. So while a 20 year old is 161 times less likely than an 80 year old to die, they're only 16 times less likely than an 80 year old to be hospitalized (roughly a 1% chance with the alpha variant so probably 2% chance with delta). And that's enough when spread across the entire population because of how resource intensive COVID patients are. Agreed though about public health officials. They are all MDs who were better at playing politics than they were at medicine.

3 ms·

As an economist and a cultural transplant to the US, I'll never understand this. How can politics/party lines be stronger than rational self-interest? It just

by antisthenes 5y ago

rhino369 5y ago
Its a breakdown of trust in our nations institutions. The older ones who refuse mostly don't believe the vaccines will work. So based on that wrong fact, they are acting in their self-interest. Bad faith exploiters who peddle fake news are much to blame. But our institutions should reflect on why people trust dumbasses on facebook more than them. Our public health officials 1) aren't really competent on average, 2) have been constantly wrong, but worse 3) have lied (with noble intent I guess) about covid. Nobody trusts the media in general. It's all biased and sensationalist.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  Its not really the older ones though. We're seeing a lot more 30-40 year olds packing the hospitals and the kids ICUs are filling up in the hotspots. The message was that only 80 year olds die of this disease. But while the risk of death halves with every 8 years younger you are the risk of hospitalization only halves every 15 years. So while a 20 year old is 161 times less likely than an 80 year old to die, they're only 16 times less likely than an 80 year old to be hospitalized (roughly a 1% chance with the alpha variant so probably 2% chance with delta). And that's enough when spread across the entire population because of how resource intensive COVID patients are. Agreed though about public health officials. They are all MDs who were better at playing politics than they were at medicine.