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A pure hypothetical thought experiment: imagine it occurs that the Pfizer mRNA vaccination + all booster follow-ups (4+ shots) regimen is disastrous to health, and has a high 10-year mortality rate. In other words, those who strictly adhered to the recommended CDC/Pfizer vaccination schedule have a 25% of dying by the decade’s end, or some such risk. What would be the public’s response and what would be the just punishment for those involved?
I think in such a hypothetical, the whole political climate of 21st century neo-neoliberalism will be fundamentally altered. There would be a huge rightward shift on distrust to authorities, especially but not limited to scientists and public health authorities. I don’t think the public would be satisfied with Fauci and other heads being tried, and will demand sentences for the thousands of individuals involved in the decision similar to what we would see in the Nuremberg trials. This would also fundamentally change the political climate, as the “vax-maxxed” lean left.
What if the reverse is true, and covid has so-far unknown long-term effects, but boosters greatly diminish them, so that the unvaxxed are 25% more likely to do? Purely hypothetically, of course. What would the public's response be, and what would be the just punishment for people who said vaccines didn't work and COVID is a nothingburger?
I find this hypothetical less interesting only because it is approximately the mainstream consensus amplified. If you asked the median Democrat voter the risk of a 30 year old dying from coronavirus per infection, I think they would put it at 1% per infection, and with infections every six months that’s about 20% mortality in a decade. I wonder if this polling has been done. (If the polling has been done this would be the best place to find it, I love when users pop in with the most obscure statistic.) Though I suppose that can be a case of statistical illiteracy.
I would definitely expect a blacklash against pundits though, perhaps even with a (theatrical) federal charge.
I don't think I've seen the claim that having covid now will greatly increase your chance of dying over the next decade expressed anywhere. Can you provide some evidence for this claim? (Obviously the mainstream belief is that vaccines reduce deaths in the short term, because there are very large RCTs that got a lot of scrutiny showing that this the case.)
I also don't think a lot of people would give you these numbers or anything particularly close. I know a lot of liberals and leftists who took covid fairly seriously (and even continue to do so) and I don't think they would say this if you asked.
This Rasmussen poll indicates that a big chunk of Americans overestimate the fatality rate:
https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/lifestyle/covid_19/conservative_news_viewers_more_accurately_estimate_covid_19_death_risk
I do not particularly trust phone interview polling, but this is the best we’ve got.
Weird, although it seems like the bulk of the population is just wildly innumerate and/or uninformed, regardless of political leaning:
That's a substantial majority of even the right-wing listeners getting it wrong, and OAN is even worse than the leftist networks. Possibly the people I know I just aren't so innumerate, since none of them talk (or act) like they expect people to get COVID every 6 months or have a 20% chance of dying from it in the next 10 years.
I remember once reading a study that showed that Americans had no idea what portion of each major political party had certain "stereotypical" demographics (e.g. rich or Evangelical or Republicans, black or LGBT for Democrats). The outgroup estimate was worse, but even the ingroup estimates were just incredibly wrong.
I think I said something like this long ago, like summer of 2020, but I think a big chunk of the population just has no idea what numbers mean. 1/5th of the population is definitely not acting like COVID has a 10% fatality rate (either that or they're all basically suicidal). I don't know how else to interpret someone who says that, but also ever leaves their house.
That's a weird metric, though: "Got it wrong." What does that mean? Anyone who doesn't guess "Below 2%" (which is still wildly wrong where it matters).
If 75% of OANN viewers "get it wrong" by guessing 3-10%, that's still directionally far better than only half of CNN viewers thinking it's 50%.
Seems like a better metric would be an average of how wrong each cohort is.
2% isn't actually that wrong, since it's asking about case fatality rate rather than infection fatality rate, and the linked article gives this value as 1.6%.
That's what I would call "damning with faint praise." It's also not actually relevant to the exact claim above, which refers to the "median Democrat" (so it doesn't matter how wrong the tail respondents are). But it's more generally not relevant, because taking these numbers literally and doing math on them is meaningless.
I agree that a more precise breakdown would be helpful in general, but the article doesn't seem to provide that.
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