For a Significant Percentage of People - COVID-19 and Other News Is an Abstraction
Here at DU, we're pretty much all news consumers. However, that's not the case for 30% of Americans. Keep that number in mind as you think about the news and who is following it. 30% of people do not regularly follow the news!
So, unless such people are directly affected by things like COVID-19, they really know very little about the pandemic. For news non-followers, what news they hear is second-hand at best. They see something on Facebook, or hear a minister in their church say something, or someone they know says something about the news.
They can't be bothered to follow it themselves. They don't get a newspaper. They don't watch news on television. Many on the right don't even tune in Fox News. They have no idea what is going on out there. Either they don't care or have become jaded at the news and everything that surrounds it.
There's not a lot of data about news followers and non-followers. I did find this Pew Research report, though, which is where I got that 30% number:
https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2016/07/07/the-modern-news-consumer/
Think about it: Most people don't comprehend the COVID-19 pandemic. A sizable percentage of people has not seen any impact from the disease, other than second-hand. If they only get information from right-wing friends or associates, they might believe that it is fake or not serious or even that it does not exist.
30%. That's about the size of Trump's voter base. It's a number that politicians take seriously, so they cater to the news non-followers. Republican candidates want to reach that 30%, and will use whatever tactics are necessary to feed them misinformation. Do they use Facebook? Well, feed them what you want them to believe on that social media platform, and that may be the only thing they hear. Those of us who use Facebook all know someone who is oblivious to reality and takes all clues from right wing social media sources.
As far as COVID-19 is concerned, I believe it is likely that something like 30% will NEVER get vaccinated, unless forced to by employers. They don't believe that the virus is a threat to them, because that is what they hear from their non-news sources. They are hearing from people with a strategy. They don't know the truth, and have no interest in learning the truth.
Until someone close to them becomes a victim of the pandemic, they can blithely ignore the whole thing and might even carry a sign denying the truth if someone hands one to them. They are ignorant and have no plans to correct their lack of information. They don't follow the news, and don't want to follow the news. They listen to people with agendas, though. They are reliably stupid, and there are those who are happy to take advantage of that.
In my opinion, they are unreachable.
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They're perhaps still in school, or they're working 2 jobs, or they're busy playing video games in their mom's basement. Whatever they are, they don't vote (a lot of them) and they aren't what we would call "adults."
To me, adults are people who pay attention to what's going on, they pay their taxes, they might even be homeowners. They might be parents or grandparents, they might have kids in school. Some might even have kids old enough to serve in the military. So these are people who do pay attention to the news, and they have something to lose when the doo-doo hits the fan.
I'm thinking the 30% who don't care, they're never going to be part of the solution, just part of the problem. For those people, I'd rather just create laws and tell them they HAVE to be vaccinated, they HAVE to wear masks.
