To me getting vaccinated was a simple decision: whatever risk there is from a relatively new technology is erased by the near certainty of severe illness if you get COVID-19. But a lot of Americans have a good reason not to trust the government. And a lot of Americans haven’t benefited from a good science education. Yelling at them is not going to change their minds.
I Know Why They Don’t Know
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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This is the blowback from 45 years of private religious schools where you don’t have to teach real science, plus the charter schools that use the same kind of textbooks, and the defunding of regular secular K-12 education. Couple that with knowledge of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and pseudo-documentaries like “Medical Racism: The New Apartheid”, and of course they won’t get vaccinated. This society is not built for plague survival; market structures are useless in dealing with one.