It’s just plain silly to blame optimism for how things have gone with covid. If anything many of the people not following covid protocols in the past year did it in the name of pessimism. The going narrative was we didn’t know when covid would end of if it ever would so we had to just learn to live with it. If people stayed optimistic that the end would come and successful vaccines would be developed we may have been better off.
I see no reason not to be optimistic about the vacines and the vaccine rollout today. What’s happening right now is nothing short of miraculous and will most likely go down in history as one of the greatest scientific achievements of modern days. There’s nothing wrong with feeling optimistic about how things are going at all. Just because people are optimistic that the end is in sight and the vaccine rollout is going great doesn’t mean they are not wearing masks or distancing or following other protocols.
On the issue of wanting to know the truth and sandbagging I think the latest remarks from Biden tell us all we need to know. They corrected the past mistakes made with conflicting stories and overly cautious timelines. They changed the return to normal from 2022 with the potential to see family at Christmas into family gatherings for July 4th, a very large increase in the timeline based on expected vaccine rollout which makes a lot of sense. They also moved up the timeline for when all adults would have access to the vaccine from end of July to mid-May. Again, a very large increase in the timeline and as is the case with the return to some version of normal projections it’s also backed by actual projections of vaccine rollout, not just an arbitrary date. So yes, people want to know the true projections and not some conservative estimate. If they really felt the timeline needed to be longer than say it, but explain why. All of the talk of July 4th was very carefully caveated to include the disclaimer that it’s only possible if enough people are vaccinated. That was smart.
As far as April 30 goes, the pandemic won’t be over but if we reach the vaccine projections that the manufacturers have set we will have a large number of people vaccinated. There’s no reason to think we won’t see a sharp decline in cases as a result. Nobody knows what level of vaccination we need to get to. Recently one of epidemiologists from the CDC said their agency was projecting we needed to get to 60% immunity to reach a level of herd immunity. I’ve seen projections all over the place, most higher than that, but in mot cases they are saying higher so that people don’t get complacent and stop getting vaccinated. A valid reason to estimate higher. We also need to see how many of the unvaccinated people are naturally immune. That number will grow by the Summer. So take total percent vaccinated plus unvaccinated but naturally immune and subtract anyone who got vaccinated but it didn’t work and that’s the true immune number. At some point we may need to adjust for natural immunity that no longer works since we are over a year now on natural infections.
In conclusion I still feel our best hope is to get as many people as possible vaccinated and do it as quickly as possible. I believe 100% that promoting all of the positives that can come from being vaccinated will attract a lot more people who are on the fence about doing it than projecting a lot of negative things. I think Biden laying out a goal of 4th of July parties is a great way to promote vaccinations. Optimism is the best way to get to our goal of getting enough people vaccinated. The talk of a return to normal in 2022 or Christmas made no sense, helped nobody and only hurt the cause.
Oh, come on, you've never heard of optimism bias? As fate would have it, this article from November came across my timeline tonight.
Experts who study the way we think and make decisions say that it can be more than politics driving our decision-making this year. The unprecedented nature of the pandemic undermines how we process information and assess risk. Need proof? Look around.
www.propublica.org
This is 3 times you've referenced the CDC person and the 60%. How about Dr. Walensky's statement while answering questions, that because of the increased transmissible variants, they have had to revise their assumptions upwards from the 60%-70% of this summer to 70-85%? Does that hold any weight, or is it like all the other people who previously have latched onto best case scenarios, "Since we don't know what will be true, I'm going to choose to hitch my wagon to someone other than the CDC director?"
Of course, that's not being plastered everywhere, because as you say the messaging has gone out to sell vaccines through positivity. Despite the "tell us the truth," crowd, what actually works on people is to tell them what they expect to hear, otherwise they think manipulation and lies, and you're facing an uphill battle. So the truth about needing to get to 2022, is being back-burnered, and we're back to giving people milestones instead of the finish line. First, we'll get people to May 1 and then July 4th. Then I expect it will be: get people to Labor Day with the carrot of all schools reopening as normal, then Thanksgiving, and then 2022. "Talk about degrees of normalcy," which people happily extrapolate as normalcy. You heard "small gatherings with a lot of caveats," others obviously think the limitation of small gatherings is just as ridiculous as your thoughts about what Christmas will look like and they expect fireworks and family reunions. I personally, expect that the earlier messaging that got the, "Don't say that or people won't behave the way we need!" freak out, will bear itself out. They are sitting on the troublesome parts because we have proven we aren't capable of dealing with it. And now that we have the vaccines to focus on, it's not as imperative we understand it today. Right now, it's phase one: May 1, phase 2: July 4, let people focus on a summer which should be manageable, and we'll worry about the rest when it's more obvious there is more work to be done. I don't think they sped up the timeline at all, but are choosing to focus on the expectation of oscillating seasonality. Summer isn't an actual return to normal, but a false normal that will placate the masses, while experts continue to model and plan for fall/winter because they know we aren't there yet.
www.bbc.com
