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If Johnson & Johnson and fellow vaccine makers Moderna and Pfizer keep their vaccination promises, the biggest question we may soon face is not whether we have enough doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, but if people will actually take them.
A recent poll suggests a continuing decline in the vaccine-hesitant population as more people get vaccinated in the United States.
In the past two weeks alone, there have been two surveys showing how reluctance to vaccinate has decreased. The Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that 55% of adults now say they want a Covid-19 vaccine as soon as possible or have already received their first dose. That’s an increase of 47% in January and 34% in December.
While the percentage of hardline “only get it when needed” or “definitely not” has remained fairly constant at or just north of 20%, the population hesitant “to wait and see how it works” has dropped by. almost half in the last two months from 39% to 22%.
The Axios / Ipsos query shows a similar trendline. Just 13% of adults said in September they would receive a Covid-19 vaccine as soon as it was made available to them. This rose from 27% in early December to 43% in early January. Today, 57% say they have already received the vaccine or are getting it as soon as possible.
As in the Kaiser poll, the population resistant to hard vaccines (i.e. people who say they won’t get the vaccine or only get it if they are forced) are basically the same size now ( 18%) than it was in September (23%) and early January (19%).
The number of people who say they wait a while (from a few weeks to a year or more) to get vaccinated has declined rapidly: 64% in September, 51% in early December, 38% in early January and 28% now.
Unfortunately, it will be difficult to convince the population resistant to vaccines. The fact that this proportion of the population has remained fairly constant (at around 20%) indicates that even a burden of proof that vaccines are safe and effective and our most likely path to a normally functioning society will not change. their.
The good news is that the decreasing percentage of those in the middle (i.e. the hesitant vaccine) is what we would expect as more and more people are vaccinated safely. Even before the FDA approved vaccines, I pointed out that one of the biggest factors in vaccine hesitation was that people wanted to know the vaccine was safe and effective.
It is always true that the desire to be vaccinated is correlated with knowledge of the vaccines and the knowledge of the people who have received the vaccine.
To achieve herd immunity through vaccination, scientists believe that between 70% and 90% of the population will need vaccination. We will only reach this percentage if more people in the vaccine-hesitant population are convinced to take the vaccine as soon as it is available to them.
This is why the coming months will be decisive. Given the Johnson & Johnson one-dose regimen and the two-dose regimen of Pfizer and Moderna, it is still a few months before there are enough vaccines for everyone.
If current vaccine delivery times continue and the number of people hesitant to get vaccinated turns into those who will get the vaccine immediately, we could have enough vaccines for every adult who wants one even before the end of May – and we will have a much better chance of containing the coronavirus.
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