Thread: Vaccinations
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Old 08-03-2021, 09:53 AM   #497
SailinAway
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Default The science of human behavior

Quote:
Originally Posted by thinkxingu View Post
I'm pretty confident we could've been done with all this if people. Had. Just. Gotten. Vaccinated."
To create a pandemic you need (1) a virus and (2) specific human behaviors to spread it. To end a pandemic you need all of the following:
  1. Scientific knowledge
  2. A vaccine
  3. Management of human behaviors

Fortunately, management of human behaviors is a science. We have a fairly good understanding of why people do what they do and some knowledge of how to manage behaviors. Unfortunately there are some forces working against that at present. The first is lack of experience managing very large populations to get people to adopt life-saving behaviors. One's stance on vaccinations has very deep-seated roots in personal values, identity, political and social beliefs, and one's environment Those things only change very slowly over time, if ever. It can take a lifetime for a thoughtful person to develop a mature system of values and behaviors, beginning with the adolescent's typically self-centered thinking. What portion of the population is actually "thoughtful," meaning willing to modify self-centered attitudes and behaviors for the survival of society and the human species? I believe it's less than half, which predicts catastrophe in a pandemic or other crisis.

613,000 deaths in the U.S. is a catastrophe. It's 204 times the number of people who died on 9/11, which we previously thought was a catastrophe. How did we get to this point, and why is the pandemic continuing? We have the scientific knowledge and the vaccines to beat COVID-19. What we do not have is effective strategies for managing human behavior on a very large national and global scale.

This is ominous, and it is mirrored in other developing crises that depend on changing human behavior, especially the climate crisis. The problem is simple: we (the world, the U.S.) have achieved a very high level of progress in science, technology, production and distribution of goods, medicine, etc. We have made far less progress with the things that are actually just as important as or even more important for our survival than the more tangible forms of progress. Material progress has vastly outpaced social progress, the ability to work together for our survival on a planetary scale.

After a slow start over a period of millennia, we made very rapid material progress in the last 150 years. The pace accelerated with each decade. There has been visible social progress since about World War II, but it is nowhere near enough to stop crises as big as a pandemic or the climate crisis. In a word, we remain a socially immature species and we may well be out of time for evolving quickly enough to save our species.

For a more optimistic view of our chances of survival, see Toby Ord's The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity. https://www.amazon.com/Precipice-Exi.../dp/0316484911

I don't share Ord's optimism because human behavior is rooted in very powerful instincts like preservation of the individual self that have persisted in the human brain, like prioritizing one's well-being today over one's survival 30 years from now (you would rather eat an unhealthy diet today than be alive 30 years from now), or the survival and welfare of our descendants 500 or 1000 years from now. You may be worried about your children and grandchildren's future, but have you thought about what life will be like for your 100G grandchildren if we don't fix the climate crisis? No, because you can't identify with your human race that far in the future. You feel disconnected from those future people, even though they will carry your genes, just as your children do.

Have you thought about what life will be like for your children if this pandemic goes on for 5 years or 10 years? The impact on their education and jobs? How an economic crisis will impact them? Right now we have no reason to believe that the pandemic will end this year (certainly not) or next year (probably not). Around the globe we are pouring billions of dollars into the pandemic, wildfires, floods, hurricanes, etc. At some point, we're going to run out of resources to fight against these catastrophes and they will overwhelm us. You can already see that the pandemic has overwhelmed the U.S. with all our resources, since 613,000 people have died and infections are increasing again (+142% in the last 14 days).

The question is simple: what can you do today to slow down these catastrophes? And one answer is simple: get vaccinated.

P.S. I am really not convinced that all the time spent by intelligent people in this forum has any usefulness at all for solving these problems. You/we/I should seek more productive venues for these discussions and avenues of concrete action. Posting here only provides more opportunities for falsehoods to be spread.
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