> Twenty-eight percent (28%) of adults say they personally know someone whose death they think may have been caused by side effects of COVID-19 vaccines, while 61% don’t and another 10% are not sure.
Seems like a high enough number that most adults would therefore know one of these people. I don't. How likely is it that Rasmussen would have 1000 of the right phone numbers to call?
There is a number, in the upper-20-percent range, that can be relied on to support a certain political viewpoint regardless of the question asked.
I wish I could recall the details better, but this number (27%, I think) that got some notoriety for supporting George W. Bush at a time when nobody supported George W. Bush. This was in 2007 or so, and unfortunately Googling is not turning up any of the spate of think-pieces written at the time.
The implication is that you should not take a number like this as a face-value answer to the question. The respondents may or may not actually know a person who died from a COVID vaccine, but they know the answer that supports their political point of view. And it's more or less the same people who said they approved of George W. Bush even if they didn't actually approve of George W. Bush.
(I assume there's a similar number for Democrats, though I don't know if it's higher or lower. I don't mean this as a criticism of either party, but rather am singling out the way opinion polling is skewed by partisanship and therefore must be taken in that context.)
"Four percent of Americans believe lizardmen are running the Earth".
4% or a bit more will give obviously insane answers - if they actually believe that or not is moot.
a double digit percent will support "my party right or wrong"
You'd have to subtract both the mad and the dogmatic to get a real answer.
Anyway, check the submission history of the account that posted this: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=sfusato
It's moot if it falls in the "dogmatic" or "insane" category, but it's certainly one of them.
Early on it was "you don't know anyone who has died from COVID personally". Now everyone knows someone who has died from vaccine side effects. Remarkable!
Seems like a high enough number that most adults would therefore know one of these people. I don't. How likely is it that Rasmussen would have 1000 of the right phone numbers to call?