Since the race to develop a coronavirus vaccine began last spring, disturbing polls have garnered upbeat announcements: however encouraging the news may be, a growing number of people said they would refuse to receive the shot.
The deadline was dangerously accelerated, many people warned. The vaccine was a Big Pharma scam, others said. A political call from the Trump administration, many Democrats charged. The Internet throbbed with apocalyptic predictions from former vaccine opponents, who denounced the new feature as an epitome of all the concerns they had ever raised.
But over the last few weeks, as the vaccine went from a hypothetical reality to a reality, something happened. New polls show changing attitudes and a clear majority of Americans now want to get vaccinated.
In surveys conducted by Gallup, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Pew Research Center, the share of people who say they are now likely or safe to get the vaccine has grown from 50 percent this summer to more than 60 percent, and in a single survey 73%: a figure that comes close to what some public health experts say would be enough for the herd’s immunity.
Vaccine resistance certainly does not fade. Misinformation and nefarious warnings are gaining strength on social media. At a meeting on December 20, members of an advisory group from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cited strong indications that vaccine complaints and acceptance are growing, so they could not predict whether the public would swallow limited supplies or pass a pass.
But the improvement in attitude is amazing. A similar shift in another hot pandemic issue was reflected in a different Kaiser poll this month. It was found that almost 75% of Americans now wear masks when they leave home.
The change reflects a constellation of recent events: the decoupling of the vaccine since election day; results of clinical trials showing 95% efficacy and relatively modest side effects for vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna; and the alarming alarm of new infections and coronavirus deaths.
“As soon as I get the shot, I’ll be there in front and in the center! I’m very excited and hopeful, ”said 68-year-old Joanne Barnes, a retired teacher at Fairbanks Elementary School in Alaska, who told The New York Times last summer that she wouldn’t make it.
What changed your mind? “The Biden administration, once again listening to the science and fantastic statistics associated with vaccines,” he replied.
The appeal of modest amounts of vaccines also cannot be underestimated as a driver of desire, as is the must-have frenzy generated by a limited-edition Christmas gift, according to public opinion experts.
This feeling can also be seen in the changing nature of some skepticism. Instead of targeting only the vaccine itself, eyebrows are set on the entire political spectrum about who will get it first: which rich people and celebrities, demographic groups, or industries?
But the sad reality of the pandemic (with more than 200,000 new cases and some 3,000 deaths daily) and the disappointment of this holiday are perhaps one of the most important factors.
“More people have been affected or infected by Covid,” said Rupali Limaye, an expert on vaccine behavior at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “They know someone who had a serious case or died.”
Limaye concluded, “They are tired and want to get back to their normal life.”
Extensive media coverage, which includes prompt attention to leading scientists and politicians when they receive cheerful mixtures surrounding local health workers who become the first to be vaccinated, has amplified the excitement, public opinion experts say .
Remarkable discrepancies remain between demographic groups. The division between women and men has been pronounced, with women being more hesitant. Blacks remain the most skeptical racial group, although their acceptance is rising: in September, a Pew Research survey said only 32% of blacks were willing to receive the vaccine, while the latest survey shows an increase of 42%. And while people of all political convictions are warming up with the vaccine, more Republicans than Democrats consider the shooting suspicious.
The association between vaccine attitudes and political affiliation is worrisome for many behavioral experts, who fear that vaccine uptake is linked to partisan opinions, which prevents the achievement of broad immunity.
“We’ve seen growth among Democrats and Republicans over their intent to vaccinate,” said Matthew Motta, a political scientist at Oklahoma State University who studies opinions and opinions about vaccines. “But it’s twice the size of Democrats,” who, he added, had been embittering the vaccine after President Donald Trump’s statement that it would come on election day.
A brighter indication, he said, is that two-thirds of the public say they have at least some confidence that the coronavirus vaccine will be distributed fairly, up from 52 percent in September.
The most marked bags of resistance include rural residents and people between the ages of 30 and 49.
Timothy Callaghan, a scholar at the Southwest Rural Health Research Center at Texas A&M School of Public Health, said rural residents tend to be conservative and Republican, characteristics that also appear among hesitant people. They also include immigrants and day laborers, many of whom have no college education or even high school diplomas, so they may be more suspicious of vaccine science.
“They seem to be less likely to wear masks, less likely to work from home, and there is opposition to evidence-based practices,” Callaghan said.
Resistance also comes from its hampered access to health care in remote areas. In addition, the need to take off several hours of work from the inflexible demands of agriculture to travel and recover from the side effects of the vaccine makes the shots seem even less compelling, he added.
According to the Kaiser survey, about 35% of adults between the ages of 30 and 49 generally expressed skepticism about the vaccine. Dr. Scott Ratzan, vaccine surveys in New York with the New York University School of Public Health from New York University echo findings similar to national surveys, noted that this group also does not maintain vaccines. against the flu. They are well out of the age range for routine vaccines.
“There is no normalization or habit to vaccinate this age group,” he said.
Blacks have continued to be the most resistant to getting a coronavirus vaccine, in large part because of the history of abusive investigations by white doctors about them. But his willingness to consider it is once again being jeopardized. In the Kaiser survey, the proportion of black respondents who believe the vaccine will be distributed fairly has nearly doubled, from 32% to 62%.
Mike Brown, who is black, runs the Shop Spa, a large barber shop with a black and Latino clientele in Hyattsville, Maryland. This summer he told The Times he was happy to sit back and watch the others take the vaccine while he devoted himself to his time.
It was then.
“The news that it was 95% effective sold me out,” Brown said. “The side effects seem to be those that are obtained after a bad night of drinking and that are hurt the next day. Well, I’ve had a lot of them and I can cope to get rid of face masks. “
Still, he says, many customers remain skeptical. He says to them, “What questions do you have? Why are you upset? Do your research and follow the science. Because if you just talk about what you’re not going to do, you’re going to be part of the problem. “
He sees progress. “A couple of people who were more militant about not taking it now are calmer,” he said. “The seeds are being planted.”
Another group that has no doubts about the vaccine is the health workers, who usually have high rates of acceptance of established vaccines. In recent weeks, some hospital executives have said many staff members were busting. ProPublica reported that a hospital in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, had to offer some doses assigned to other medical workers in the area, because an insufficient number of its own workers showed up. A deputy mayor and a state senator lined up.
But other hospitals say staff time slots for the vaccine are becoming a hot product.
For months, Tina Kleinfeldt, a surgical recovery nurse at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, a Northwell Health network hospital, had absolutely no intention of getting the vaccine until long after science was established and side effects.
Last week he was randomly offered a rare vaccine slot. Still, he refused, despite warnings from envious comrades.
He then began to think of all the Covid-19 patients he had seen and the new ones he would inevitably find. She thought of her husband and her three children. He thought, well, I can always cancel the appointment at the last minute, right?
Then he realized that the doses were still so scarce that he might not have another chance soon. So he said yes. She became the first nurse in her unit to receive the shot.
Then he felt some muscle pain at the injection site. But she also felt exalted, excited, and relieved.
“I felt like I was doing something good, for myself, for my family, for my patients, and for the world,” Kleinfeldt said. “And now I hope everyone gets it. Isn’t that crazy? ”