I’m an academic, so I don’t know many conservatives. I’m not sure I know any at all. But I find it impossible to imagine that they can be any more constantly terrified, apocalyptically minded, anxiety-ridden and likely to envisage complete horror befalling them than Liberals. Because it’s just not humanly possible.
Silly Study
Clarissa's Blog 
Amazing study! Who knew that people who don’t get flu shots are more likely to be anti-immigrant than those who do? (If conservatives are “more afraid of physical threats” than liberals, wouldn’t the conservatives be more likely to get vaccinated?)
This is the kind of idiocy that you expect from a “social psychologist.”
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It’s a very literal (and frankly dumb) adaptation of the psychoanalytical theory of fear of invasion. Some people are terrified of needles because they have invasion fears. But I, for instance, love needles. I love getting my blood drawn. But I don’t get flu shots simply because I forget or cant be bothered. One can’t generalize like this. It’s dumb.
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The flu virus (which KILLS a lot of unvaccinated Americans every year) is a far worse invader than a needle. Every parent should get the shot so they don’t risk bringing the illness home to their family.
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But I find it impossible to imagine that they can be any more constantly terrified, apocalyptically minded, anxiety-ridden and likely to envisage complete horror befalling them than Liberals. Because it’s just not humanly possible.
The more political media consumes the more likely you imagine the sky falling on you.
The flu is a boring pedestrian danger. I was sick with a very bad cold for three weeks.
The only reason I considered getting a flu shot afterwards because I was going to see my cousin and her two young children under 5. Otherwise, I didn’t see the point in getting an ineffective flu vaccine.
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Free “over the transom” medical advice:
The boring flu kills seemingly otherwise healthy people with some regularity every year. The vaccine ISN’T ineffective! True, it doesn’t keep everybody vaccinated from getting the illness, but it greatly reduces the likelyhood that a person will catch and spread the disease.
Not getting a flu shot, especially if you have a family at home and interact with a number of people at work, is simply foolish.
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A very bad cold is one thing, the flu is something else entirely. Thousands to tens of thousands of people in the US die every year of it, and considering how contagious it is, I think it’s a good idea to get vaccinated even if you’re young and strong. Firebreaks, you know?
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As an academic, you don’t know many conservatives? You went to Yale, right? And you’re always talking about how all the profs at Yale, despite popular opinion about academia, are all very conservative… ☺
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Of course, but I’m not hanging out with them. They are all 30+ years older and live far away.
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