I also have run into this with some coworkers as well. Particularly one.
He was encouraged to get the shot because he needed it for the job. He was given the ability to work from home and also skirt the laws. He was allowed to work without a vaccine if he did the tests, wore mask, kept distance, etc.
He quit after faking a bad lower back accident (to buy time) and that is another story altogether.
Why did he quit?
He wasn't going to get the shots, and work needed them. He believed that all vaccines were some sort of plot to control him.
He still sends me texts to this day (6 months now) about blatant misinformation regarding all vaccines.
I had no idea so many people felt this way.
This guy and I were like brothers. We chatted about everything, went to lunches together, and helped each other with non works things at times.
I was sad to see him go. He did good work, was and is smart, and a good person.
But somehow, despite all those great qualities, he believed so strongly in something that has so little evidence to support. It blew my mind.
I kept trying to use logic to show him he had less to worry about than he thought. I appealed to his sense of logic and scientific thinking.
But I failed.
I pointed out all the coworkers who were vaccinated and how free they were, and how they are not having reactions to the shots. He would say that we do not know the long term effects. I would respond , true, but that is true of many things in life, we all take on risks. He would respond that he didn't want the risk. I said we were in a pandemic, if there ever was a time for heroisim, now was it, what was the hold up?
No matter what I would say, he would say against it.
I appealed to his sense of doing right, and morals. That did not work either.
I wanted him to stay.
He got sick from covid, his pregnant wife got sick, his daughters did too. His stay at home wife was the most ill. This makes sense to me. His young kid was young and that helps her. HI unborn is protected by placenta and fluids and mom. He got ill and it took him like 2 weeks to be able to breathe well enough to walk. But his wife, being of different genes than him and the kids, suffered worst. I've see her, she is fit and active. This does not matter.
I watch everything unfold before me unto him, and it was as I expected. I got angry and told him that THIS is why he should have gotten a shot. To protect her, kids, him. Kids need him. Family needs all to be well. This made him mad and did not change his mind at all.
I learned it was futile dealing with him on this topic. So I let it "die".
How can some people blatantly choose to not see what is in their face, and yet believe so strongly in things that have no evidence whatsoever. Like conspiracy theories, and more.
So I worry about Coronavirus because people are not taking it as serious as any other virus. They think we are not in a pandemic, for reasons that outwardly look to me, ridiculous.
And I am being gentle with that statement.
And what burns me up is these same people will not believe the science behind the covid vaccines, and yet use things everyday which revolve on sound science. How can one pick and choose what they want to be truth? Madness!