So Scary

The good professor is at it again.

It’s obvious what an unvaccinated person should do: get vaccinated ASAP, and stay super-safe until fully vaxxed (remember, shot #1 doesn't protect against Delta the way it used to). Particularly in a high case prevalence region, your chance of catching the virus has never been higher, and – while treatments have improved – there’s still a decent chance of a stormy course, including Long Covid, hospitalization, and (depending on your risk factors) death. I’d be afraid. Yes, I'd be very afraid.
Professor Robert M. Wachter, Chair of the Department of Medicine at UCSF.

Now, if you've read this blog for any period of time, especially since the beginning of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, you may recall that fearmongering gets on my nerves, and I've dunned Professor Wachter for this previously. While I understand the reasons why one might seek to use fear as a motivator, it's not always the best way to go about things. In a situation in which people trust one to advise them, there's no real need to use fear. As I've stated before, the intuition that only fear breeds an understanding of the usefulness of precautions is misplaced; people are perfectly capable of taking action to prevent outcomes that they aren't necessarily afraid of. Understanding an outcome to be undesirable is not the same as being afraid of that outcome. And for people who don't trust the person seeking to advise them, fear comes across as an attempt to manipulate.

This is not a rapidly-emerging situation where an immediate fear response is needed. While it may be conventional wisdom in some sections of society that it is literally impossible to be too careful where SARS-CoV-2 is concerned. not everyone is ready, willing or able to hand over a blank check in that fashion. And there's no need to. There isn't anything that one can do with a threat that one can't do by understanding what motivates someone and appealing to that.

But I don't think that's the point. I don't know if Professor Wachter is really attempting to spark fear in those people who haven't taken a vaccine or justify the fear (and perhaps loathing) of those who have. Because honestly, how many people is the Professor going to reach with his tweets who don't already agree with him? It more likely that his words have become a cause for the vaccine-supportive to fear for their children than the vaccine-opposed to fear for themselves. And for those who have already been vaccinated to nod along in agreement as to how stupid their "fellow Americans" are.

I am of the opinion that the United States is not, and has never been, a unified polity. The United States is too large and populous, and not wealthy enough, for people to not have interests that are direct cross purposes with someone else's interests. And that clash of interests eventually lead to people seeing one another as The Enemy. The SARS-CoV-2 outbreak is just another in a long line of things that people have used to sort themselves into Good and Bad, while their backers cheered them on. Sometimes, the media finds the cheerleading to be newsworthy.