I’m an ICU Doctor and I Can't Believe What Unvaccinated Patients Are Saying

What's more, people don't like being told they're wrong. They especially don't like being talked down to. When experts (and more importantly, those arguing on social media on behalf of those experts) use demeaning language to address critics and people with concerns, the people don't respond well. Some of them will begrudgingly admit they were wrong, but humans are not purely logical creatures. Many will write off those who talk down to them as malicious or corrupt and use that as justification to disregard what they say.

We all need to start showing more respect to one another. Be patient and compassionate when dealing with people who are currently opposed to getting vaccinated - even if they don't show you the same courtesy. It wont earn you fake internet points and you're certainly not guaranteed to convince them of anything, but you'll never reach them doing anything else.

Vaccination does not prevent transmission, but it does reduce it.

* Doing your part to wipe Covid out so we get back to normal (do you have a better plan?)

* Wiping Covid out so we don't get a worse strain like the delta strain that will affect younger people.

* The lag between a particularly bad strain circulating widely and you finding out about it.

* Long Covid including brain chronic fatigue / brain fog, potential non fatal but still permanent, debilitating lung damage, cardiovascular damage leading to increased risk of strokes later on. Which has been shown to be a risk for young people as well, more than death.

* Avoiding the massive inconvenience of a potential multi week "very bad flu".

* The medical experts (gov agencies, universities, industries) across the world all strongly recommending it. (Have you at least asked your primary care physician if you should get it? Why not?)

* Benefitting from the exemptions granted to vaccinated people such as indoor dining in NYC and entering the US from Europe and vice versa.

* Keeping your job when they mandate it unofficially or officially (I've seen both).

* The demonstrated risk of dying from covid, and even more so the risk of long covid, as a young person still being way higher than the theoretical / non demonstrated risk of the vaccine. Especially since we have already vaccinated >1.5 billion people - if anything should be seriously wrong with the vaccines, fixing that and helping affected people would likely immediately become an important topic of medical research as soon as we find out.

* Fringe benefits like the lotteries for vaccinated people.

* There being clear evidence of covid being downplayed for political reasons, especially in the US and in 2020. But everywhere else and in 2021 as well. Prominent politicians who have downplayed it still having gotten the vaccine (granted, they're all old people, and your question was about young people). The same politicians constantly retreating from one wrong position to another as they are proven wrong again and again. Whereas the "other side" has so far mostly been right on every major topic.

* Political players that normally don't agree on anything agreeing on this - Russia, China and the US all have a vaccine program and recommend vaccination for essentially everyone. Inside the US, the Democrats are obviously in favor of vaccination, but do not forget that two vaccines got emergency approval while the Republicans had control of all three branches.

* Young people being vaccinated and showing up in vaccination stats influencing older people to get vaccinated.

* Last and least all the anecdotes of people who on their deathbed said they should've gotten the damn vaccine.

Which means, I guess they'll get the shot in 50 years?