According to the CDC, unvaccinated Americans are 11 times more likely to die from covid than vaccinated Americans.
And that sentence is supported by the most recent data and science.
And that sentence should be enough for any logical person, sane person, rational person to read and think, “oh wow, I should vaccinate myself and my family so we can all continue to live.”
But that is not the reaction you get in this country.
I am astounded by the number of virologists and epidemiology and public health “experts” popping up on my social media feeds. They all have outrageous claims ranging from the demonstrably false (the Pfizer vaccine isn’t FDA approved) to the utterly deranged (masks have worms in them). Social media platforms have allowed misinformation to spread like wildfire, and then when it gets shut down or deleted, it simply fuels the fire more by adding to the people’s conspiracies that this is all a big fake.
These people spend countless hours watching videos online, commenting on social media, and talking nonsense to their friends, family, and coworkers when instead, 15 min of solid fact-based research and a 10 min drive to a CVS are two actions that could save their life. But so many are continuing to buck the system and refuse.
President Biden spoke this week and stated his frustrations. “We have been patient, but now our patience is wearing thin,” he said during his nearly 30 min speech discussing his multi-step plan to defeat covid.
But the real question is: why are so many people still refusing to get the vaccine?
Mistrust in the government and politics have certainly played a role, as well as misinformation. But if Americans were more scientifically inclined, this would not be an issue.
Despite America having one of the top 5 funded education systems globally, our scores drop lower and lower every few years in both science and math. Currently, the US is nearly 24th in science education and 38th in math. This is even though we spend more money than almost all the countries that are beating us. So, if it’s not funding, what is it?
One issue appears to be Americans' lack of knowledge in the system that science operates inside of. Americans do not fully grasp the fact that science is the only profession where you are constantly trying to disprove yourself or your colleagues. If a large group of scientists make a specific claim, backed by research and data, that claim is most often valid. And it’s been proven true because hundreds if not thousands of scientists and researchers have spent time trying to disprove it. Even today, many Americans do not believe in basic scientific facts, such as climate change or evolution.
Americans watched the system of science unfold in front of their very eyes with Covid-19. They watched as the nation’s top scientists said one thing. "no need for public to wear a mask," and then changed to "time to mask up." The scientifically inclined Americans recognized this as simply the trials and errors of science. As more information came in, the data changed, and masking appeared to be a better option. However, to the Americans that do not understand how the process of science works, this created untrust right from the beginning.
Another problem is sequencing in our education system. Often, if you compare significant concepts taught in US schools to schools worldwide (the human eye, tectonic plates, evolution, biology), the US tends to teach in the wrong order. While other countries reserve complex subjects for students who have a good grasp on basics, American students are taught mere facts (such as the parts of the human eye but NOT the physics behind sight) instead of scaffolding the information from simplest to the most complex. This means that American students are often taught complex scientific concepts with little to no base information. This seemingly backward form of educating science combined with the inability to read and research appropriately makes for students who cannot grasp fact from fiction. And decades of this form of education coupled with constant attacks on teaching science (such as evolution) has produced entire generations of Americans who have difficulty examining even simple information. This is detrimental when Americans need to be able to decipher information as factual or fiction based on the scientific data provided. Americans are struggling to do this. And this has become painfully obvious over the past 18 or so months.
Many Americans believe masks do not work. The science proves otherwise. Many Americans believe the covid vaccine was rushed, is not safe, or is not even FDA approved; those claims are all false. The truth is, many Americans do not have the base level of science education to critically think about the issues presented to them during a global pandemic. And we see that nearly every day in the news, some poor person died from covid because they refused to mask up or get the vaccine, and now their entire family is on television begging for everyone to wear a mask and get vaccinated. And despite the excessive amount of unnecessary human suffering we have seen, Americans continue to appear to deny science.
We do know that the more educated you are above a high school diploma, the higher your science scores appear to be, with postgraduates scoring the most elevated, nearly twice the score of those with a high school diploma. But with higher education becoming more expensive by the year, it should concern us that America will continue to struggle with basic scientific concepts for many years to come.
The bottom line is this: Americans lack the science education necessary to make crucial decisions as a country, such as wearing a mask and receiving a vaccine, and because of this deficit in knowledge, death and human suffering has increased exponentially. Many experts believe that a return to everyday life will continue to be delayed the longer Americans fight against science, and that is a real tragedy.
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