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Caste and COVID

On December 12, 2021

At 9:22 am

In General

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Here’s a really interesting Twitter thread, interpreting the right wing reaction in the USA to the pandemic through the lens of caste logic:

See this through the lens of caste: people perceived as being outside the dominant caste were telling the dominant caste what to do. Again, the dominant caste does not get told what to do, even if what they’re told to do could save their lives.https://t.co/hzjihb3mW1— Ethan Grey (@_EthanGrey) December 11, 2021

Members of the dominant caste view it as important that you treat their views as the correct ones. This is a very different energy from a genuine desire to hold correct views. When you tell members of the dominant caste to get vaccinated, all they see is your lack of deference.— Ethan Grey (@_EthanGrey) December 11, 2021

Furthermore, the dominant caste will immediately find the idea that people among other castes have the correct strategy for dealing with COVID-19 to be absurd. To view yourself as a member of the dominant caste is to view yourself as unassailable in knowing what should be done.— Ethan Grey (@_EthanGrey) December 11, 2021

The whole thing is very thought-provoking, although I should note I’m pretty much completely ignorant regarding the sociology of caste.

On a related subject, here are a bunch of stats on how vaccination status affects mortality rates from COVID in the USA.

Long story short: For younger people (under 65), being unvaccinated makes you about 30 to 40 times more likely to die from COVID than people of the same age who are fully vaccinated (the mortality rate from COVID in the latter group is very close to zero).

The protective value of the vaccines among 65-79 year olds is still extremely high: unvaccinated people in this age cohort are about 15 times more likely to die from COVID than fully vaccinated people of this age.

Among the very elderly (80+) the efficacy of the vaccine is still high, but much lower when compared to its protective effects in the rest of the population: Unvaccinated people in this group are about five times more likely to die from COVID than fully vaccinated people of this age.

So basically the reason for non-geriatric people to get vaccinated is that it reduces your personal risk of dying from COVID to essentially zero, while protecting that portion of the population that still faces a significant risk, despite the vaccine (the very elderly).

The caste analysis in the linked thread suggests one set of reasons why this logic is less than compelling to the roughly 40% of the American population that is gradually destroying this country.