The question I would ask is whether the marginal utility of a dollar spent in convincing this long tail of people is actually worth it, compared to other uses of the money. It’s obvious that some of us needed no convincing at all, we were just desperate for a vaccine. Other people were ok with getting vaccinated if it were easy or convenient. Some must have been on the fence or mildly against it, but could be convinced with some nudging (see vaccine lotteries and other interventions). So now you have a minority that is stubbornly against getting vaccinated. Let’s say it’s 10% of the people, and perhaps you could convince one in five of those people at some cost. Now you have 8% of the population who won’t get vaccinated, and you spent a significant amount of money or resources on going from 10% down to 8%. Are the public health gains significant enough to warrant the expenditure? Is there anything else with more impact that you could have done instead?
I threw 10% there as an example of a target that you might convince with some intervention. By “long tail” I don’t mean a small number of people, a long tail can be 50% of a distribution. I am using the term to refer to the reasons they don’t get vaccinated. The post mentions 34 distinct responses, so if one were to optimize for impact then the idea would be to identify the most “nudgeable” class, evaluate the cost/benefit of the nudge, etc. Sorry if I wasn’t clear enough in my original comment.
Right, I did misunderstand. I thought you were proposing taking 10% and trying to convince some of them who can be convinced. But the value of that is decreasing every day now. Half the population has already been infected at least once and recovered which is probably equivalent to vaccination.
The question I would ask is whether the marginal utility of a dollar spent in convincing this long tail of people is actually worth it, compared to other uses of the money. It’s obvious that some of us needed no convincing at all, we were just desperate for a vaccine. Other people were ok with getting vaccinated if it were easy or convenient. Some must have been on the fence or mildly against it, but could be convinced with some nudging (see vaccine lotteries and other interventions). So now you have a minority that is stubbornly against getting vaccinated. Let’s say it’s 10% of the people, and perhaps you could convince one in five of those people at some cost. Now you have 8% of the population who won’t get vaccinated, and you spent a significant amount of money or resources on going from 10% down to 8%. Are the public health gains significant enough to warrant the expenditure? Is there anything else with more impact that you could have done instead?
In US, the number of unvaccinated is closer to 30%. This is no long tail.
I threw 10% there as an example of a target that you might convince with some intervention. By “long tail” I don’t mean a small number of people, a long tail can be 50% of a distribution. I am using the term to refer to the reasons they don’t get vaccinated. The post mentions 34 distinct responses, so if one were to optimize for impact then the idea would be to identify the most “nudgeable” class, evaluate the cost/benefit of the nudge, etc. Sorry if I wasn’t clear enough in my original comment.
Right, I did misunderstand. I thought you were proposing taking 10% and trying to convince some of them who can be convinced. But the value of that is decreasing every day now. Half the population has already been infected at least once and recovered which is probably equivalent to vaccination.