Vaccination misnegation
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From this blog post:
ICU beds are filled to capacity with unvaccinated COVID patients who are not vaccinated because they didn’t have access to immunization. They chose to be unvaccinated.
A.L., who sent in the link, observes that "this seems like a particularly striking example, because the misnegated phrase ('not vaccinated because they didn’t have access to immunization' instead of 'not unvaccinated because they didn’t have access to immunization') is the focus of an explicit contrast with one that's appropriately negated."
As often in cases where the problem is extra or missing characters, rather than a whole-word substitution, it's hard to tell whether this is a slip of the fingers or a slip of the brain. Or maybe a bit of both.
The obligatory screenshot:
Ed M said,
September 2, 2021 @ 9:16 am
It would be better, perhaps, if the blogger wrote:
"filled to capacity with COVID patients who chose to be unvaccinated."
"Access to immunization" is irrelevant here.
Jerry Friedman said,
September 2, 2021 @ 11:26 am
I suspect that part of what led the author is that in fact they are not vaccinated. If they'd written "…unvaccinated Covid patients who are not unvaccinated because…" there would have been a short but strange garden path. Starting the sentence over might have been a good idea.
Jerry Friedman said,
September 2, 2021 @ 11:27 am
*led the author astray
I also seem to have a "they" problem. Maybe I should start over.
David Marjanović said,
September 2, 2021 @ 1:24 pm
I think the author was striving for "aren't not vaccinated" and then stumbled over the unemphasized duplicate.
Daniel said,
September 2, 2021 @ 2:10 pm
I agree with Jerry that simply fixing "vaccinated" -> "unvaccinated" sounds contradictory. I think that, in addition, the "not" needs to go later, just before the "because", giving us "not because".
ICU beds are filled to capacity with unvaccinated COVID patients who are unvaccinated not because they didn’t have access to immunization. They chose to be unvaccinated.
I would have combined the second sentence with the first with a "rather", also.
Philip Taylor said,
September 2, 2021 @ 3:02 pm
For me, "but because" would be more idiomatic than "rather".
Bloix said,
September 2, 2021 @ 5:45 pm
If English grammar were logical, it wouldn't be possible to say, "'not unvaccinated because they didn’t have access to immunization." You would have to say, "unvaccinated not because they didn't etc." But we're not allowed to put the not in the right place unless we're setting up a contrast within a single sentence, and even then we can put it in either place, and putting it in the right place does seem a bit pedantic, doesn't it?
It's the wandering "not" that causes the confusion that leads to the misnegation.
John Swindle said,
September 2, 2021 @ 6:47 pm
The wandering not, tumbling along like a tumbling tumbleweed.
Viseguy said,
September 2, 2021 @ 6:53 pm
@Ed M said: "Access to immunization" is irrelevant here.
Ironically, the text as written makes "They chose not to be vaccinated" irrelevant — not surprisingly, given that the analysis is binary, but the opposite (one presumes) of what the author intended.
Andrew Usher said,
September 2, 2021 @ 10:29 pm
Well, this example isn't really complicated – it's a clear misnegation; here, lack of a required negation. Yes, the word order change suggested by Bloix could have been used, as could the wordings of Daniel and Philip Taylor – but simply changing 'vaccinated' to 'unvaccinated' would be perfectly grammatical as well, and was the solution I first thought of seeing the error.
This is, I suppose, one of those slips of the brain (unlikely to be a typo) that sometimes affects anyone in their speech but are normally quickly expunged from writing. But the author of such a blatantly, venom-drippingly partisan screed as that (and quite possibly the whole blog – I don't care to look) is not going to worry about mere grammar, is he?
There's also a clear elegant-variation problem there – 'immunization' should have been 'vaccination' or 'it' rather than a not-quite-synonym.
k_over_hbarc at yahoo.com
Barbara Phillips Long said,
September 3, 2021 @ 9:15 pm
If I were editing this, I would take out the section I have put in brackets below:
“ICU beds are filled to capacity with unvaccinated COVID patients who are not vaccinated because they [didn’t have access to immunization. They] chose to be unvaccinated.”
Andrew Usher said,
September 3, 2021 @ 11:38 pm
That would be wrong,is because it removes a point he was trying to make explicitly. Yes, it could be considered logically redundant, and if this were a summary report it would be better excised, but as a rhetorical device this kind of redundancy is entirely normal,