The Homa Files

Specifically, immediate family members or close friends?
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From the jump, I’ve opined the obvious: the people most likely to be vax-enthusiastic (the inverse of vax-hesitant) would be (1) those who are most vulnerable to dying if infected and (2) those who have been personally touched by the loss of a family member or close friend.

Since I’m age-qualified for the first category, I rushed to get vaccinated … as have about 85% of my fellow 65 and overs.

Nonetheless, I’ve been intrigued by the 2nd category — those who have a close friend or family member who has been hospitalized or died.

With almost 600,000 covid-related deaths, you’d expect that there would be a lot of folks in the “know somebody” category, right?

I don’t want to jinx my family and close friends by saying it, but (thankfully) I don’t personally know anybody who has been hospitalized or died of covid.

I wondered if I was just a lucky anomaly, so I started asking friends the headlined question.

After some head-scratching, most either answered “no” … or had to go a couple of “degrees of separation” to ID a victim … that is, go down a couple of layers to “friends of friends” or “some guy in the neighborhood”.

Expanding  from my very small sample, YouGov did a broad-scale survey and found that 2/3’s of Americans are like me, and don’t “personally know anyone who has died due to complications from covid-19”.

So, for two-thirds of the population (minus those in the vulnerables’ categories) … covid has been more of an abstract notion than directly personal consequential .

So, it might make sense that these people might be less vaccination-energized than folks who have been more directly impacted.

If true, that might be a partial explanation for some of the oft-talked about vaccine-hesitancy.

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To that point…

YouGov also found that 43% of Biden voters have lost a close friend or family member…  only 1/3 of Trump voters have.

That’s a statistically significant difference!

Maybe vax-hesitant Trump supporters aren’t just dumb rubes as the MSM reports … maybe they don’t live in dense metro hot spots… do enjoy relatively healthy (outdoor) lifestyles … and, as a result, have not been as deeply touched personally by covid.

If so, the need to be vaccinated may seem less urgent.

Hmm.

This entry was posted on May 11, 2021 at 10:00 am and is filed under Coronavirus - Covid 19. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.