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“It’s becoming an unvaccinated pandemic,” director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Rochelle WalenskyRochelle WalenskyFauci: Smallpox Would Not Have Been Eradicated With Today’s “Fake News” Former Surgeon General Says CDC Mask Guidelines Are “Premature” and “Bad” LA County Sheriff says reinstated mask mandate “is not backed by science” MORE warned last week. President Biden
Joe BidenGraham says he would ‘leave town’ to stop .5T spending plan Afghan Ambassador, diplomats withdrawn from Islamabad Biden seeks to prove his skeptics wrong MORE echoed his feelings on Friday. “Look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated,” he told reporters.
As the death rate rises for the first time in months, with a 70% increase in seven-day cases and a peak in hospitalizations of 36%, state and local governments scramble for a solution that protects Americans and encourages the unvaccinated to get their shots. On Saturday night, Los Angeles County reinstated a broad indoor mask mandate, which has been decried by those on the right and left as anti-science and flying against CDC guidelines. President Biden has called for a door-to-door vaccine education effort, although experts fear much more is needed.
Requests for vaccine passports are also increasing. Fueled by movements like those of the French president Emmanuel Macron
Emmanuel Jean-Michel Macron Protests in France continue to grow after Macron enacted new COVID-19 measures The Eiffel Tower will reopen on Friday for the first time in nine months., who announced that from this week only fully vaccinated people will be able to enter restaurants, bars, trains and other public spaces, the idea resonates. While there are a lot of angry French citizens, there have also been 2.2 million vaccine appointments made in less than 48 hours.
But the data shows that these government-led approaches to getting Americans hesitant to get vaccinated to sign up for their doses can do more harm than good.
Last week, the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) released the results of its six-month COVID-19 vaccine surveillance study. KFF has tracked vaccine confidence and reluctance, messengers and messages of confidence, and the public’s experience with immunization from January to present.
The results show an astonishing level of consistency over the six months and a great opportunity for friends and family to help push vaccine hesitants towards vaccination.
More than nine in ten Americans who said they planned to get the vaccine as soon as they had a chance said they received at least one dose six months later. This includes 72 percent who received the vaccine more than two months ago. In encouraging news, 54% of adults who were in the “wait and see” group have now received at least one dose of the vaccine, and a quarter of those who said they “would only get vaccinated if needed” or “certainly not”. getting vaccinated have done so in the past six months.
The role of friends and family in persuading adults to get vaccinated was powerful. Qualitative interviews revealed that a quarter of this group opted for the vaccine after seeing their friends and family not develop side effects. “Almost all of my friends have been vaccinated with no side effects,” said a 64-year-old black Democrat from Tennessee. “That it was clearly safe. No one was dying, ”said a South Carolina Republican, a 32-year-old white man.
A 28-year-old independent white man in Virginia said that “my friends and family have convinced me and so has my workplace.” And a 68-year-old white Democratic man from California said that “five generations of our family will reunite in a week” as justification.
Doctors and other health care providers have also played an important role in convincing hesitant Americans to get vaccinated more than 10% of the time, according to the study. A 58-year-old White Republicans from Washington “discussed [his] her spouse’s immune system ”with her doctor and decided to get the vaccine. Others have been persuaded because of underlying conditions such as diabetes and COPD.
A small proportion said easing restrictions for vaccinated Americans helped change their mind, but nothing like the effects described above. It follows that there is little evidence that enticing people to get shot, especially along partisan lines, will be effective. In fact, KFF data reveals that black Americans, the most Democratic constituency, remain the most reluctant to get vaccinated.
Prominent Republicans such as Sens. John cornyn
Senators John CornynGOP urge Yellen to brief them on expiration of debt ceiling and inflation Cybersecurity bills gain urgency after wave of attacks Plan to deal with growing orphan well crisis MORE from Texas and Mitt Romney
Willard (Mitt) Mitt RomneyGraham Says He ‘Would Leave Town’ To Stop .5T Spending Plan Passport Backlog Threatens To Shake Travel Plans Of Millions Of Americans Biden: Social Media Platforms’ Kill People people »MORE of Utah said vaccine skepticism was “based on conspiracy theories” and “moron.” But as a pediatrician Rhea Boyd Remarks, there are a lot of legitimate questions about the vaccine that are not rooted in politics or conspiracy theory. She recently spoke to over 5,000 people in rural Georgia, where most were unvaccinated and “every question they asked was legitimate and important.”
Too often we lose sight of the fact that vaccine-hesitant Americans are not a monolith and forget the dangers that come with creating an environment in which people are afraid to ask questions. As Michael Brendan Dougherty argues in the National Review, “For proponents of vaccines, it’s like stooping down to respond to people they think are less intelligent.
I am not pollyanna. I know as well as you that Americans who think the vaccine is actually a cover to inject a 5G microchip into our system so that the government and big tech can keep up with us are probably out of reach, but there are millions. who remain unvaccinated for very sane reasons. For example, some fear that an approved vaccine may be taken urgently, or that there are no long-term studies that show the vaccine is safe beyond a few months. I have even heard these concerns in my own circle of Liberal vaccinated friends and colleagues.
It is incumbent on all of us, friends, family and even some healthcare providers of people hesitant to immunize, to treat them with dignity and concern by promoting this extremely effective solution to our COVID-19 problems. As the KFF survey shows us, they are ripe to convince if we are doing it the right way.
Jessica Tarlov is Research Manager at Bustle Digital Group and Fox News Contributor. She got her doctorate. at the London School of Economics in Political Science. Follow her on Twitter @JessicaTarlov.
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