[eesmith]

My disagreements with a traffic light placement so far have not been based on a don't-tread-on-me sense of The Man treading on my free will.

For example, I strongly prefer a modern roundabout for many of the places where the US uses a stop sign or traffic light. But my argument is made on increased safety and improved traffic flow.

I once accidentally ran a red light because I got confused about which traffic light was for my lane.

My father once deliberately ran a red light. After waiting for 5 minutes in the middle of the night. Because the detector didn't sense his motorcycle. A cop ticketed him. My father went to court and the judge ruled that what my father did was reasonable.

So while I'm certain that someone, somewhere ran a red light because of moral outrage over repressive government, that's not main reason people run a red light.

Just like this linked-to article seems to describe that the drop in routine vaccinations does not seem primarily due to increased vaccine hesitance due to the covid pandemic, even though certainly that is a reason for a few people.

[ominous]

> So while I'm certain that someone, somewhere ran a red light because of moral outrage over repressive government, that's not main reason people run a red light.

So you agree coercion causes pushback. A bit tricky to get that out of you. Thank you for the exchange.

[eesmith]

Like I said, your point is "so high-level and abstract as to be useless."

I expect far more people have run a red light because they were texting than as pushback against coercion.

It appears far more kids have failed to receive their MMR shots due to pandemic-related interruptions in children’s medical visits than parental pushback against coercion.

[ominous]

> Like I said, your point is "so high-level and abstract as to be useless."

It is not useless. It tells you coercion, if applied to fix these other reasons, could be counterproductive.

[eesmith]

"Could" is doing a lot of work there. It could also be productive. (Another example of "so high-level and abstract as to be useless".)

Here's a counter-example. Assume 99% of the people who run a red light / haven't vaccinated their kid, do so for some reason totally disconnected from reacting to coercion, and 1% of the people are fighting The Man.

Now we change the coercive circumstances [1] so that 98% of those people now stop at a red light / have vaccinated their kids, the 1% still haven't changed, and an additional 1% have joined them.

That means the overall number of red light runners / non-vaccinated children go down significantly.

Which means those changes are productive.

[1] For traffic lights this might include: higher fines, more active police enforcement, propaganda campaigns about the dangers of running a red light, changing the lights to be more visible. For vaccination these might include: remind parents of vaccination requirements, provide in-school and home-visit vaccination services, and increase propaganda campaigns.

[ominous]

A counter example of a "could"? That's brilliant.

Are you seriously trying to argue your way away from agreeing that coercion can be refused by itself so much that you can't resist providing your hypothetical?

[eesmith]

Are you still talking about the linked-to piece on the drop in routine vaccinations?

Or abstract generalizations that could be applied to just about any topic?

What evidence do you have that the reason for the drop is NOT primarily due to disruption caused by the pandemic, but is instead due to people "who thinks of [themselves] as having free ... fight[ing] back at least a small amount"?

Because the paper is clear that the decrease is due to disruption, saying:

] Twenty-three states reported COVID-19–related impacts on data collection including lower response rates from schools, data collection extensions and delays, and incomplete data from schools that did respond; 30 states reported lingering COVID-19–related impacts on vaccination coverage, mostly related to reduced access to vaccination appointments and local or school level extensions of grace period or provisional enrollment policies (CDC, School Vaccination Coverage Report, unpublished data, 2022). - https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7202a2.htm?s_cid=mm...

I don't know why you are so pointedly insistent on a population which is so small it doesn't seem to show up in the statistics.

Supposing people thought your point was useful. How would that insight help improve routine vaccine coverage?