[SantalBlush]

Sure, if they're unvaccinated but still taking precautions to mitigate the spread to others and reduce the hospital workload, I'll certainly have more sympathy for them. How many unvaccinated people do you believe really do this?

[mdp2021]

?! Most, surely, if they are rational. You seem to be implying the unvaccinated may tend to be careless.

If people delay vaccination in fear of health consequences, of course they will also be extra careful about avoiding contagion.

If people delay vaccination for other sensible, defensible reasons - I cannot guess them. And I do not want to get inside the pit of the "it's all fake" minds. Even today I had to listen to a mate stating that "only the already compromised got killed" - many of "my" dead were very healthy.

[SantalBlush]

There were plenty of people who spoke out against simple precautions at the beginning of the pandemic, before vaccines were available to anyone. So I don't even need to speculate that at least some people do not take precautions while being unvaccinated; I've already seen a lot of it.

[mdp2021]

Of course in the population you will see the whole range, the bell has two tails:

do not assume there is one tail only.

Remember that one side is louder than the other: do not be fooled scouting by noise. (Nor do commit fallacies of generalization at rights - responsibility is on the individual.)

Anecdote: you tell me? The day before posting that - which already contained other anecdotes - this nice guy went for a takeaway and an unknown fool, the wrong tail of cheeky, started smiling and fake-coughing - owner reported he did that whenever he saw anyone wearing a mask. Is that the end of the pandemic? Because the nice guy saw the same at the early beginning: fake-coughers at the supermarket, mocking those who seemed to want to stay at a distance. She, almost twenty, kept herself coughing smiling and almost adhesive (well, it's nice guy involved, what else can you do) at the counter. The boyfriend went along but while leaving went "Well, on the other hand, when it's full of people...", in a sudden strike of reason. And nice guy looking and the sky thinking, the are so foolish they do not remotely guess that I kept at a distance especially because I had to attend to business, hours before, in the biggest epicenter city of the epidemic. Now: if society thinks that combating and preventing foolery is not a priority...

[SantalBlush]

Yes, probability distributions have two tails, but you can't just assume they're the same size. If you know what the probability distribrution of unvaccinated people is w.r.t. precautionary measures they take, then I'd love to see it. But my bet is that you don't have any actual data on it, and you're just making assumptions.

edit: To be clear, I don't know what the distribution looks like either, but I'm not assuming the average unvaccinated person takes other precautions. I don't think we can confidently say that.

[mdp2021]

> you can't just assume they're the same size

I did not. I am stating: one can not assume that the set of the unvaccinated who take strong precautions against the infection is negligible. As I wrote, it would be irrational: those who are hesitant about the vaccine for health reasons must also be very wary about being infected - plain logic. Many are are hesitant about the vaccine for health reasons, so they must also be very wary about being infected, if not insane.

I would not call what I have made and again follows 'assumptions': positively both tail exist, that is easy to prove (as above. We do not need to prove the other tail, it is evident and loud). I do not know what benefit is brought by drawing proportions. I am not sure what gain we get by assessing the average.

In fact - but this brings us elsewhere -, I am already extremely diffident towards the opinions of the average. I believe by experience that the distribution also of intellectual resources is in general paretian. I start already by believing that Average Joe and Median Jack "will be a mess". But of course, given that, I also insist that the average and median cannot be representative of the whole.

So, for example, calibrating policies on the median would be a Procuste's bed for the healthy part. "Please open your purse Sir, and let me check your items: the median customer is a shoplifter" - I am very wary of this kind of perspective, I have met it instanced many times in my life. This is also in the area of what I meant with «fallacies of generalization at rights».