This poll caught my eye:
This shows everything that is wrong with polling. I wouldn’t even know how to answer the second question, because I don’t see what they are asking. Required by whom? Should there be a law requiring that everyone be vaccinated before boarding an airplane? Of course not. Should airlines require vaccination? That’s up to them, but it certainly makes more sense than requiring that people take off their shoes before boarding, or that they wear a seatbelt.
Perhaps I’m unusual, although I know many people that feel the same way. On the other hand, maybe the “many people I know” are all quite unusual.
For some reason, poll questioners really struggle with the distinction between, “is X a good idea” and “should X be mandated.” I see the two getting mixed up quite frequently. On the other hand, maybe the public also struggles to distinguish between those two views. After all, pollsters are people too.
PS. Should children be required to brush their teeth? And if so, by whom? Parents? Government officials?
READER COMMENTS
Ken P
Jul 30 2021 at 6:08pm
I agree with you on the ambiguity Scott, but I think most people automatically assume that it would be the government that would do these things.
The results are odd, too. Does a significant number of unvaccinated people think people should be required to be vaccinated? I’m fully vaccinated and very pro-vaccination, but I don’t believe the government should require people to be vaccinated. I’m sure there is a significant percentage of the population like me. As for employers, if they require vaccination, I believe they should be liable for any employee vaccine damages.
Mark Z
Jul 30 2021 at 10:17pm
Should they also be allowed to require employees to sign waivers saying they can’t sue for any effects of the vaccine?
robc
Jul 31 2021 at 9:06am
Yes.
And in a world where that is allowed, competitors would offer options to draw away the top talent annoyed by the mandate.
Don Geddis
Jul 31 2021 at 11:10am
If the employers don’t require vaccination, and then I get infected at work, who do you recommend be liable for my covid damages? Should I be able to sue the employer, for the unsafe work environment? The specific individual coworker that infected me?
Scott Sumner
Jul 31 2021 at 12:07pm
“I agree with you on the ambiguity Scott, but I think most people automatically assume that it would be the government that would do these things.”
I’m not sure many people make that distinction. Recall all those protesters saying “The government should keep its hands off my Medicare”
How many people know both of these facts:
1. The TSA in the US is a public company
2. Airport security in other countries is done by private companies.
If I talk about “government schools” I have to explain to people what I mean. “Oh, you mean public schools”.
Ken P
Aug 3 2021 at 12:53am
On the government hands off my medicare thing, I think it’s a feeling of ownership from having “paid in” for so many years. Because it is taxed separately and for many people social security and medicare dwarf income tax witholdings, many people don’t see those as belonging to the government. If I was worried about my employer spending my pension, I would probably say my employer should keep their hands off my pension.
The “public schools” is a nomenclature thing that works quite well. People are seen as an anti-government nut for calling it a government school. Words matter. If you say the government spends too much you will get push back from the majority of people. If you say politicians spend too much you will get mostly agreement.
Good points. I agree that there is a disconnect.
Andrew_FL
Jul 31 2021 at 4:20pm
Not sure what you mean, the adult vaccination rate is almost 70% nationwide, and they obviously don’t poll children.
MarkW
Jul 31 2021 at 7:18am
On the other hand, maybe the public also struggles to distinguish between those two views.
Judging by various casual acquaintances, people really do have trouble with this. I live in a deep blue zone, so probably a sizeable majority would favor mandatory vaccination. If I were in the habit of debating them on these kinds of things (I am not — I plan to keep living here), I would argue something like:
“Do you think contraception is a good idea for sexually active, unmarried teen girls?”
And then
“Do you think contraception should be mandatory for sexually active, unmarried teen girls?”
But, as I say, I plan to keep living around here.
David Seltzer
Aug 2 2021 at 11:59am
Good point Mark. Apparently Sandra Fluke thought so. She advocated requiring insurance plans to cover birth control and medical insurance should have a contraceptive mandate because some sexually active women could not afford contraceptives.
MarkW
Aug 4 2021 at 7:43pm
Apparently Sandra Fluke thought so. She advocated requiring insurance plans…
But that’s not the analogy I had in mind. Forcing insurers to pay for a drug or treatment isn’t the same as requiring patients have it. I think lots of my leftish neighbors would support the government requiring people to get a Covid vaccine (or, if not quite that, for government to mandate require vaccine passports and ban unvaccinated people from engaging in various activities). At the same time, they would recoil in horror at the thought of government mandating contraceptive implants for teen girls (or requiring them to present cards indicating their fertility status).
Choice is a paramount value to them when it comes to female sexuality, but not when it comes to mandatory medical treatments for people they dislike (although you might give them pause if you pointed out the low rates of vaccination among racial minorities). Anyway, it seems there are no principles behind these positions, just sympathies for particular groups and antipathies for others.
west
Aug 7 2021 at 5:13pm
Absolutely. I’m on the left side of the spectrum, but if I have a frustration with my political crowd, it’s how fuzzy their beliefs often are. More than once, my call for precision in belief has been met with “this is more important than private-schoolboy debates”. (Which admittedly hit awfully close to home :-))
But long experience has taught be that rigourous examinations of beliefs is rarely rewarded, and I imagine pollsters have learned that in spades.
Mark Barbieri
Jul 31 2021 at 9:00am
Good posting. It should be required reading.
Rebes
Aug 2 2021 at 12:03am
Apropos airlines.
I always wonder why they explain how to buckle a seat belt after they require passengers to buckle their seat belt.
Scott Sumner
Aug 2 2021 at 12:28pm
George Carlin has an amusing sketch on airlines seat belt lectures.
derek
Aug 3 2021 at 1:53pm
Regarding “who” is being asked, I believe that pollsters simply rely on the sample size and claim that both surveys are a representative sample of US adults. I don’t really know that it is worth us going down this rabbit hole.
As far as the “by whom” question, this one is just your bad for relying on a twitter screenshot. Here is the link to the Axios writeup, and also the underlying poll (https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-vaccines-mandates-government-policy-dd087a81-234b-490e-863c-6ab829ef135a.html) (https://osf.io/6wcn9/). The list of measures is prefaced with “Do you approve or disapprove of the following measures which federal, state, and local governments could take to prevent the spread of coronavirus (COVID19) in the next 30 days?” The pollsters are not struggling with the idea you suggest they are struggling with; it is very clear that we are talking about mandates from whatever the relevant government would be (probably local for schools, federal for airplanes).
Personally, I think colleges should definitely mandate vaccination to go back to university. Many colleges are effectively state agencies, so, yes, I think state governments should mandate vaccines to go to college – at the very least, state governments not directly connected with the university should not stand in the way of the university’s officials making this decision.
I do not think the government should “require” (i.e., physically force) everyone to get a vaccine, nor do I think they should force businesses to bar entry to the unvaccinated. However, I would favor the government introducing policies via legislation that badly disadvantage the unvaccinated to the point that they pretty much force everyone to become vaccinated – e.g., much higher premiums for government health insurance (and allow private companies to discriminate based on vax status).
Scott Sumner
Aug 3 2021 at 5:28pm
Thanks for correcting me on that point.
derek
Aug 6 2021 at 10:00am
Devil is always, all the time, forever, in the details.
Knut P. Heen
Aug 6 2021 at 10:38am
Polls may be unclear for strategic reasons too. People do not spend too much time answering, hence you can make the questions deliberately unclear in the hope that you get the answers you want. If you get the answers you want, you send it to every newspaper in the world. If you get answers you don’t want, you just throw it in the garbage can and create a new poll.
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