If you can only soundproof your walls to a certain level, because of technical or financial limitations, beyond that level turning down the music is your only option. — Srap Tasmaner

Absolutely. If you are obese, with heart disease and diabetes, the vaccine may be your only way of reducing your burden on the healthcare system, the 'being healthy' ship has definitely sailed. But for others...

Masking and social distancing do not increase the prevalence of the right antibodies in your community. — Srap Tasmaner

They do though because they're not perfect, they just flatten the curve. It's back to a healthcare burden issue again.

So we're back to questions like burden on the healthcare system and such, but keeping in mind now that the experts here say you will get infected eventually. — Srap Tasmaner

Indeed, the key aspect if this (since transmission is an uncertain element, both in terms of vaccine-based reduction, and as a goal).

But this is no out if reach technical matter, the figures are easily accessed and fairly undisputed. If I don't have any of the associated comorbidities, my chances of needing hospital care are tiny.

And even the moral case is uncomplicated because the numbers are so large. We only need look at the levels of burden on healthcare services we already find acceptable - smoking, eating red meat, being overweight, not exercising... the data on these are no less well established than the data on covid and they dwarf the covid risks. So the risk of a healthy person choosing to opt for chancing natural immunity seem already well within the normal range of risks we consider acceptable.

I'm glad it's not just me. I never got that either. It crops up everywhere as if it were a law of nature, and yet I've never heard anyone explain why it's a problem.

Like "Nothing is really 'true' (except this statement)".
...

All that's really happening is that a claim is being made about a grouping of entities into two sets; one containing a single unique case, and one containing 'all the others'. I can't see anything which would prima facie make that impossible, or even improbable.

The risks are minimal though it seems, unless you are privy to some evidence which has escaped my attention. — Janus

Not for the under 24s (well, not compared to the benefits anyway - the risks definitely are minimal in real terms)

https://medium.com/@wpegden/weighing-myocarditis-cases-acip-failed-to-balance-the-harms-vs-benefits-of-2nd-doses-d7d6b3df7cfb

For adults, the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination are enormous, while for children, they are relatively minor. Rare side effects from adult COVID-19 vaccination are unlikely to lead to future vaccine hesitancy whose public health impact could be comparable to the benefits of the adult COVID-19 vaccination program itself. But accelerated mass child vaccination under EUA — perhaps even spurred by school mandates and “vaccine passports” — presents a different balance of risks and benefits. Rare adverse events really could prove to be the most durable public health legacy of an EUA for child COVID-19 vaccines.

https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/05/07/covid-vaccines-for-children-should-not-get-emergency-use-authorization/

Given uncertainty over risks I cannot foresee for now that there will be a recommendation for general vaccinations" in children, he said, adding that while the vaccine was shown to be effective, "practically nothing" was yet known over any long-term adverse effects in adolescents. — interview with paediatrics professor Ruediger von Kries, a member of Germany's advisory vaccine committee

With kids, they’re not going to stop transmission, they won’t stop escape variants, nothing is. It is about the risk to the child themselves. — Paediatric critical care consultant Dr Ruchi Sinha speaking to the UK APPG on Coronavirus

And yet both Germany and the UK are rolling out vaccines to children, contradicting their own advisory committees.

It is appalling that they are making massive profits out of this emergency. "Oh, but what about the shareholders" I hear them braying. Well, fuck the shareholders! — Janus

Absolutely.

WHO’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, called global vaccine inequity “grotesque,” a recipe for seeding viral variants capable of escaping vaccines, and a “moral outrage.” — https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2027

As Gavin Yamey, professor of global health and public policy put it recently in the BMJ

This moral scandal, enabled by corporate and political permission of mass death, is tantamount to a crime against humanity. Yet we too are complicit by our silence. Why are workers and shareholders at vaccine companies not speaking out? Where are the academics clamouring to make the “fruits of the scientific enterprise” available to all? Where are the lawyers demanding global justice and corporate accountability? Which leaders of rich nations are pressuring vaccine companies to make their people safe by making the world safe? Where is the grassroots mobilisation of scientists and health workers to fight for fair access to vaccines?

the question that seems to arise if the findings of this study are accurate is as to whether a vaccinated individual who suffers a breakthrough infection and survives would acquire natural immunity just as an unvaccinated infected individual would. Because if the answer were 'yes' to that question then there would be no downside to being vaccinated — Janus

Yes, that's right. Although only if you measure 'downside' in terms of immunity only, not risk or cost.

The Australian government based on its medical advice advocates 80%. — Janus

Yes, there's some disagreement there to.

if supply is not adequate and the vaccine was shared equally across the world then perhaps no communities would reach an adequate level of vaccination fast enough. — Janus

Perhaps. But if that were the case, then vaccination (alone) wouldn't be a very good strategy would it? Like building a life raft whilst the boat's sinking.

Luckily, there's every indication that enough vaccine can be produced for those that need it eventually. It's just that we've put the operation in the hands of a enterprise which cares more about those who can pay and/or vote for them than about those those who are actually in need.

It's important to add here that there are many arguments working the other way too. At the recent All-Party Parliamentary Group on Coronavirus in the UK Professor Paul Hunter said it was

'absolutely inevitable' new variants that can escape the protection of the vaccine will emerge in the future.

And the group were told by Professor Andrew Pollard that

herd immunity is 'not a possibility' with the current Delta variant. He referred to the idea as 'mythical' and warned that a vaccine programme should not be built around the idea of achieving it. He predicted that the next thing may be 'a variant which is perhaps even better at transmitting in vaccinated populations', adding that that was 'even more of a reason not to be making a vaccine programme around herd immunity'.

Well the simple answer is I doubt it, but I'm afraid I've no idea why you would be asking me, nor what the question has to do with my insulting Prishon's lack of erudition.

once you've gotten to "you probably should get vaccinated", you still haven't actually touched the moral question. It looks kinda like you have, but this is still just description. What we need to look at is statements like, "If you're pretty sure you can help stop the pandemic, you should try to" and its close relatives. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, I agree. But moral imperatives don't normally carry a means. "You should help the poor" doesn't include in it which charity to donate to. Even something seemingly specific like "you should not disturb your neighbours with load music" does not detail whether to turn the music down or soundproof your walls. I can't really think of a moral imperative which contains within it the means by which you must meet the ends being prescribed (or avoid those being proscribed).

So "you ought to take the vaccine" doesn't seem to be the sort of thing can stand as a moral imperative anyway. It's "you should not overburden your health services", "you should not put others at risk of illness",... where taking a vaccine is just a means to that end.

So here, we don't need 'probably' at all. These are categorical. The probability arises with regards to the means. For my loud music example - "Your windows are quite large, you'll probably need to turn the music down, soundproofing probably won't work" - the imperative itself is still absolute.

Taking just the first "you should not overburden your health services", if you're fit and healthy, you might have that one covered already, even in a pandemic. If not, you may need to take extra precautions like vaccination. It's not the moral ends which contains the uncertainty, it's the means.

Again, I'm not saying anything controversial here. We all think we should help those poorer than ourselves. We expect a rich man to give more than a poor one. We don't trouble ourselves with the excessively convoluted - "you should probably give £100 to the poor, but it depends how rich you are".

Here's Susan Pennings writing on the issue you raise in the Journal of Medical Ethics

Our intuition that it is reasonable to require people to pay taxes is at least partly based on the assumption that tax rates will not be so high as to cause a real risk of harm to the taxpayer and mostly, tax rates are progressive and people on very low incomes typically pay little or no tax. There would likely be different moral intuitions about taxation in a case where all people were required to pay 80% of their income in taxes regardless of wealth and that this put them at significant risk of harm.

A larger study has just come out showing the opposite.

This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity. — https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1

The study is in preprint, so should be taken as preliminary, but the picture may not be so clear as your study indicates.

I don't follow fashion; I am fashion. — Banno

I'm ordering the flannelette as we speak...

Woah. Hipster grunge combo?

Havent found the Italics button yet. — Prishon

...and to think @Banno was suggesting a lack of erudition...

Tea? There's your problem, right there... — Banno

Ha! I'm a semi-retired British academic...what can I do...there are laws about these things. They've only just rescinded the requirement to smoke a pipe. Elbow patches on tweed are still mandatory though.

I gather from the ambience hereabouts that I've walked back into a bit of a shitstorm. I'm not going to go back over the two hundred posts to see who said what, but I take it that there has been a bit of a pile-on with you at the bottom.

My comment here was not intended to be part of that. It was directed to Prishon's apparent lack of erudition, which it now seems was a result of drugs and lack of sleep rather than a lack of knowledge. My apologies for causing offence. — Banno

Thanks, I appreciate that. It did come at something of a bad time, not your fault.

Perhaps I should change to tea. — Banno

Yes, do. I have a couple of spare tweed jackets going too if you want the full immersive experience.

There's nothing stopping them. — frank

Really?

https://www.thelocal.se/20210219/swedish-officials-report-escalated-threats-and-hate-in-coronavirus-debate/

Yes, in the one aspect they measured (antigen breadth). Natural immunity has the advantage of not costing anything, not taking vaccines from those who need them more, and not interfering with bodily autonomy (for those that don't like/trust the pharmaceutical companies), so it's not a binomial choice, there needs to be some weight to the difference in effectiveness to outweigh the disadvantages, it's mere presence is not sufficient. Maybe that weight is there, but the paper doesn't show it.

Oooo, that'd be pushing it. We might agree that there is at least something here that is worth a second look. The data for those with masters qualifications or less represents the bulk of the population, after all; and the relation between education and hesitancy is undeniable in that group. — Banno

Yes, you're right. Of course, the 'education' being thought of in the 'education ameliorates vaccine hesitancy' argument is not really PhD level. Only on my second cup of tea this morning, not yet fully awake.

A scoping study often sacrifices quality of data for sample size. The idea is just to see if there's anything interesting to investigate, a good hypothesis can then be constructed which better quality data can confirm or reject. I'd say this exercise certainly brought up something interesting to investigate, but in the current political climate, that ain't gonna happen.

To avoid any of that confusion, the authors could have just verified the data. — frank

That's a lot of verification. There'd have to have been a concomitant reduction in sample size, which may have been a trade-off they weren't willing to make in a scoping experiment.

Presumably - and I am speculating - the survey included doctors and nurses in the professional qualification category? — Banno

Ah, yes, that may be it. But if so, their claim is misleading. The only PhDs excluded from the last category would be active doctors and nurses. The implication they attempted to give it was that the PhDs in question were not medical and so their high prevalence shouldn't carry the weight used in the interpretations they're opposing. This is not something they can claim simply by excluding those currently engaged as professional doctors. No epidemiologists, nor many virologists, for example, would fall into that category.

Note also that the steady level of the PhD result was commented on; much the same for the duration fo the study, unlike the other levels — Banno

I see it was commented on in the paper, I was referring to the later comments. The article is an attempt to say that some interpretations of their study regarding the levels of hesitancy among PhDs were misleading and in it they say that hesitancy drops overall. I'm just saying that that comment itself is misleading in an article about hesitancy among PhDs (the only group for whom hesitancy did not drop), but I'd be happy to put that down to nothing more than the casual nature of the article (it's only an interview, not a paper)

I don't see that anything can be concluded safely. — Banno

Yes, I agree, but some things can be called into reasonable doubt. There is reasonable doubt that vaccine hesitancy can be ameliorated by education alone. That's important for policy-makers, who don't have the luxury of waiting for the full weight of multiple repeated studies.

Hmmm. This is not what I understood you to be arguing. — Srap Tasmaner

To be fair, it's not only what I'm arguing, so there's room for justified confusion. I'm more responding to comments than laying out a case, so have no right to expect anyone to 'get it'. I was a little short in my last post in that respect.

In that light, what I'm arguing is an opposition to the moral case for vaccination in all cases (the idea that a moral finger can be wagged simply because someone says "I'm not getting vaccinated" (outside of any medical reason).

The moral case, as I've heard it is this.

1. You ought to be vaccinated because reducing your risk of disease needing hospital care is a moral obligation and the vaccine achieves that.
2. You ought to take the vaccine because reducing your risk of harming others is a moral obligation and vaccine does that by reducing your chances of transmitting the virus.
3. You ought to take the vaccine because there's a global effort to eliminate (or make endemic) the virus by achieving herd immunity and the vaccine is the most efficient way of doing that.

I think all three lack sufficient normative weight.

For (1):

a) this is not conclusively true for all age groups, there's genuine expert dispute about the balance of risks/benefits for the under 24 age bracket, with the weight of naysayers getting higher as you reach the under 12s. It is not normal practice to morally require any offence against bodily autonomy on the grounds of a balance of probabilities, it's normally insufficient to say "it seems slightly more likely than not that this will cause more good than harm, therefore you ought to do it, even if you don't want to". There's just no precedent for such a norm as far as I can see. Normally it need be overwhelmingly clear and with children it is definitely not so.

b) for other age/health groups, whilst this claim is true, it does not necessarily reduce the risk of needing hospital care from a risk which isn't already below the threshold risk we normally accept for various lifestyle choices and activities. We normally only require people to reduce that risk to below a reasonable threshold, we do not normally demand that it is as low as it is possible to get it. It has been countered that being unvaccinated is not an activity or lifestyle choice, or that it is irrational and so doesn't count. I find both arguments to be pretty arbitrary and post hoc, and so uncompelling. What classes as a lifestyle choice is in the eye of the life whose style is in question, otherwise it wouldn't class as a 'choice', and nowhere is it argued that irrational choices are exempt from this reasonableness limitation.

(2) I find most compelling of the three, but my reservations are;

a) the evidence is again only a balance of probabilities; there has only been a few studies and none of them show a strong reduction, none of them divide that reduction into cohorts who might be expected to have lower/higher transmission rates and none of them are wide enough to capture all such cohorts in any case. Again we don't normally require actions against bodily autonomy on the basis of a balance of probabilities - for example the MMR vaccine is not merely 'more likely than not' to be beneficial to the average child and others at their school, it is overwhelmingly and conclusively proven to be so.

b) there's again no understanding of the threshold of reasonableness which is associated with other moral duties. It is not normally required to reduce one's risk of harming others down to as low as it can possibly go, only to below a certain reasonable threshold. Masking, distancing, and hygiene can already do this. A vaccine would do more, but there are hundreds of cases where we could all do more to prevent harm to others (I gave the examples of health and safety precautions, environmental lifestyle changes...). There's no similar moral imperative on those issues.

(3) is the argument we're having now. I don't believe we can justify just any means of achieving that end, no matter how noble the end is. Getting the world to herd immunity requires equitable distribution and, in our current circumstances, that requires prioritising the needy at the expense of those at lower risk. It has been countered that this is pointless because such prioritisation isn't going to happen anyway, but I don't find that compelling because;

a) I'm not a consequentialist. As I said - "There's not enough x for everyone who needs it. Taking a x when others need it more is wrong". I see this as simply moral a truth, for me.

b) I don't think it's at all clear that this is the case. A lower demand in rich countries could well see the pharmaceuticals look more favourably on deals with the poorer ones.

___

I'm also arguing, separately, that there is a finite space of public fora to sway political opinion and spending all of that space of trying to shame a handful of lunatics and smaller handful of legitimate concerned parties is manifestly irresponsible when we are in the midst of a crisis which is almost entirely the result of massive failings by our collective governments and institutions, who are currently sheltering behind the idea that the vaccine hesitant are entirely to blame.

I hope that clears things up.

Thanks. It's this I found odd

A sensitivity analysis found some people answered in the extreme ends of some demographic categories to throw off some of the numbers. King said it appeared to be a “concerted effort” that “did make the hesitancy prevalence in the Ph.D. group look higher than it really is.”

Running a sensitivity analysis on this kind of data is no small undertaking for a start, but I can't see what form of sensitivity analysis they would have run on these numbers without prior assumptions for the expected distributions (for which there wouldn't really be any reasonable ones to make without biasing the methodology). To reduce the phenomena to one which is entirely in line with the 'increasing education decreases hesitancy' model, you'd need below 8% PhDs hesitant, plus we'd need to assume (following the model function) that something like 6% of the 23.9 were genuine PhD holders who were vaccine hesitant. A reduction of 2% was expected, an increase of 16% was found. Explaining this by dishonesty would require, by my calculations, around 1600 dishonest respondents, with the intent to bias the results against the expectation. That sounds a lot to start with, to have all had the same idea, but it's not impossible in the large sample size. But, again, without biasing the interpretation, we'd have to initially assume there were an equal number of people wishing to bias the results in favour of the expectation, so they'd have to so sensitivity analysis on the numbers in favour of the vaccine claiming they had PhDs to make their opinion sound more authoritative. I don't see how, without additional data, their sensitivity analysis could have divided those two groups.

Also

some of their work appears to be misrepresented online, missing the overall point that hesitancy dropped.

Yet they say that

There was not a decrease in hesitancy among those with a professional degree or PhD.

So that's not really a misrepresentation, as far as I can see, though without having the apparently misrepresenting quotes, it's hard to tell.

Finally this is intriguing

the Ph.D. group does not include medical doctors or nurses.

Am I missing something? I don't see the data on what the PhD is in - it would answer a lot of our questions if we could see that. Hopefully that data will be in final paper.

More questions than answers, but thanks for posting the full text anyway.

Frank found this https://www.wnct.com/news/north-carolina/fact-check-setting-the-record-straight-on-claims-about-vaccine-hesitancy-among-ph-d-s/
But I can't access it, for some reason (EU data laws or something), so he summarised it for me here

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/585094

That's all I've got to go on I'm afraid.

As near as I can tell, the most you can claim so far is that you're doing your part to keep too many people in the UK (yes?) from getting vaccinated. If the UK has already reached herd immunity, then good for you. If not, then you're advancing the wrong goal, aren't you? — Srap Tasmaner

Well, the world needs herd immunity, not just the UK.

I just can't see how this is so complicated, it's like people are doing this convoluted mental gymnastics to get the media message to fit.

There's not enough x for everyone who needs it. Taking a x when others need it more is wrong.

That seems like a relatively tried and tested moral position.

You could argue that I do need it, you could argue that others around me need me to take it, but those would both be technical arguments. I'll even grant you've the consensus on your side there.

But the moral argument, given what I believe (with appropriate qualified justification, of course) about the technical case... I really can't see the difficulty.

I had a quick look for more studies, and found only a small study at Qatar University that did not have sufficient granularity to reproduce the results. — Banno

Shame. The authors now seems to think a mass conspiracy of fraudulent responses was to blame, possible with the numbers.

It just sounds really wierd to me, to set up such a survey, put in all that work and then within days say "the results aren't to be trusted". I've rejected some bad study methodologies in my time, but... here we've got a very politically sensitive topic where the researchers have been confident enough in their methodology to go to preprint, got a politically unpopular result and then turned round and said their methodology was shite afterall.

Whatever comes of it, and whatever actually happened, it doesn't do objective science any favours.

Well it must be more something you don't like, or you'd just do it, right? — Srap Tasmaner

Why must my motive only be selfish? Has nothing I've said about my motives been taken with even the slightest benefit of an assumption of honesty?

The paper only suggests more research, which is appropriate. It was others who took the data too far. — Banno

That's a fair assessment, and, if I was going to do something along those lines I don't think it would be an absolutely terrible preliminary approach. The subsequent juggling of hot potatoes at even the suggestion of intelligent people being vaccine hesitant should not, however, be a necessary step. But these are the days we're in...

Notice that Banjo did exactly what you suggested. He didn't know it was flawed. He threw it out because he didn't like it. — frank

Yes, well...

I need six guys to move some furniture; you volunteer to be one of the guys who doesn't. The point is that counting doing nothing as "each of us doing their part" is sophistry. — Srap Tasmaner

It's not hard work to get a vaccine and it's entirely beneficial to those getting it, so I really can't see how even moving furniture works. You're still painting getting the vaccine as if it were harder or more dangerous or in some other way 'more' than not getting it. Apart from a ten minute diversion to one's day, it nothing, it's no 'sacrifice' is it?

No one is asking you to gorge yourself on the vaccine, just to get the minimum. — Srap Tasmaner

Most countries in the world currently have barely enough to reach 10%. The WHO, and both Europe's and the UK's vaccine advisors have advised that restraint will be necessary to ensure equitable distribution. This is not a controversial position in that respect. The head of the WHO called it 'grotesque'.

That seems pretty unlikely. Undergrads should be aware if the malleability of stats. I doubt you need a PhD for this; nor would a PhD in English Lit lead to a deep understanding of inference from statistics. — Banno

Undergrads are, in my experience, sorely unaware of the limits of their stats, but you're spot on about the non-scientific PhDs, I didn't think of those, probably not to do with stats then, but as @franks earlier citation showed, the research seems flawed anyway, so the question is moot. The more interesting question is why such an obviously flawed piece of research got as far as pre-print without anyone mentioning the issues. What were they expecting?

The data came off Facebook with no verification. That's enough to ignore it. — frank

Indeed. So one wonders what possessed them to conduct, gather, analyse and write up the data if they knew all along it was just going to be a load of lies. Had it shown only a preponderance of uneducated Trumpers having such notions would we be questioning it?

Seems either a political stunt gone wrong, a very stupid bit of research, or an OK (if not perfect) methodology (given the vast sample size) which is being hurriedly discredited because it gave the 'wrong' answer.

Interesting, thanks. I'd love to see the analysis done to reach those conclusions. Maybe the EU will let me see the paper someday.

I need six volunteers for a dangerous mission. Do you expect praise for throwing up your hand and volunteering to be one of the 14 who stay behind? — Srap Tasmaner

Well no. But it's not a dangerous mission is it? Getting the vaccine gives you (as we've just been emphatically told) 29.2 times less chance of getting sick. How's that the 'dangerous mission ' element of this analogy. If you believe the CDC etc, I'm the one doing the dangerous bit.

There is hunger in the world. Do you help the hungry by refusing food they would love to get their hands on? What would they think of your refusal? — Srap Tasmaner

Virtue ethics. Consequentualism isn't the only game in town. I don't eat excess because it's wrong, not because I actually think my saved food will get to the starving. Do you really think our excess can be excused by citing admin problems?

I have already done as you suggest, I'm not an idiot. I have a PhD and, until a few years ago held a professorship at one of the 'better' (ahem!) UK universities. I know how to research. If you think a little to-ing and fro-ing between disputing parties results in anything other than the further entrenchment of those conflicting positions then you, evidently, do not. There's a reason you have a jury, right?

What exactly, then, is your problem? — tim wood

I'm not starting all over again simply to act as your whipping post. I've laid out my argument in these 200 some pages. If you've an interest simply read back through them.

I must have been in a different discussion group. My recollection was that you were arguing your decision not to vaccinate was supported by a study that showed a correlation between PhDs — Hanover

It would help if you quoted the part of my post you think says that. It's certainly not what I intended to say, I've provided several dozen articles from respected medical journals to support my argument, I don't need a pre-print Gallup poll.

you further opined that those PhDs consisted of epidemiologists and other PhDs (statisticians and economists) with specific knowledge on the subject of data manipulation. That was a counter argument to a poster who suggested the vaccine hesitant PhDs were likely physicists. — Hanover

That's my personal experience, yes. I did make that clear. As I said, strike such idle speculation from the record if you prefer, but the speculation to which it was a response was no less idle.

do you reserve the right to openly, knowingly, and intentionally argue from data you know to be invalid? — Hanover

I'm not arguing from it. None of my supporting arguments rely on it. I'm just saying that there's bigger fish to fry if poorly evidenced opinion is an issue for you.

So this is just about niceness? — Hanover

Not 'niceness' no.

it's a bad decision to make bad decisions, even if you have the right to do it. — Hanover

It's not a bad decision. It's a different decision. A bad decision is one which can be shown to fail, or one which can be shown to be irrational. Neither charge has been carried. I've made my decision using perfectly coherent arguments from data provided by experts in their field (more than one). Decisions of this sort are alternatives in a complex situation, not 'bad'.

And what is the uncontrolled variable you hypothesize that exists within the vaccinated community that has resulted in this deceptive data? — Hanover

It's not about an uncontrolled variable in one cohort (although it could be, they haven't checked), it's that the Odds Ratio which applies to the population as a whole is almost certainly not going to apply to any given cohort within it. A vaccine if you you're elderly and ill is going to massively help your chances. One if you're young and healthy might make no difference at all, all you're seeing in that figure is the average effect.

Lovely. I'll strike out all prior references to it now that you withdraw it. — Hanover

If you strike out every single other reference to any data with equal or lesser statistical rigour. Are you prepared to do that? I'd hazard a guess this thread would end up looking like I'm talking to myself most of the time.

And even should I accept your data as truthful, do you propose I shrug off the mountain of evidence being accumulated supporting the efficiency of the vaccine reducing the Covid symptoms just because 25% of the US PhDs express some hesitancy about its efficiency? — Hanover

No. I'm not asking you to do anything. I haven't once made any request of anyone here nor have I judged them in any way for their choices. In fact I think you've made the right choice given what you know.

I'm defending my choice against some pretty nasty judgements.

you treat as gospel an opinion poll posted on Facebook where people responded to questions and then self-identified their level of education? — Hanover

I haven't relied on that poll for evidence of anything on which my arguments hinge. I only brought it up in response to others making equally spurious, unsupported claims about the intelligence level of the vaccine hesitant. I would not rely on it.