Fears of side-effects fuel reluctance to get Covid jabs, survey finds

The Guardian via MSN ^ | 6/03/21 | Sarah Boseley

[Libloather]

Most people who are reluctant to be vaccinated against Covid are worried about side-effects and whether the vaccines have been adequately tested, a survey in 15 countries has shown.

Other reasons cited in the survey of 68,000 people, led by Imperial College London’s Institute of Global Health Innovation in collaboration with YouGov, were the uncertainty that people would not get the vaccine they preferred and worries about efficacy.

The survey was carried out in Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Excluding eligibility, the top reasons for not having the vaccine across all 15 countries surveyed were “concerns about side effects” and/or “concerns that there has not been enough testing of vaccines”.

Trust in vaccines was highest in the UK, at 87%, and lowest in Japan, at 47%. The UK respondents also had the highest level of confidence in their health authorities (70%), while South Korea had the lowest (42%).

Among those who had not yet been vaccinated, confidence was highest in the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in nine out of the 15 countries, and in three others – Canada, Singapore and Sweden – among those under 65.

The US had the largest number of people across all ages saying they did not trust any of the Covid vaccines. The survey, which has been running since last year, found that until March the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine was the most trusted in the UK among the under-65s, but confidence in it has declined in all age groups with the publicity over side effects. In most other countries, trust in Oxford/AstraZeneca is low, as with Russia’s Sputnik V and China’s Sinopharm vaccines.

[Fresh Wind]

Water is wet, survey finds.

[caww]

"Most people who are reluctant to be vaccinated against Covid are worried about side-effects and whether the vaccines have been adequately tested....and they put up recovery areas to prove there's reason to doubt!

[caww]

[mewzilla]

I make it a policy to never solicit or accept medical advice from people who have been caught freaking LYING TO ME.

[Adder]

Perhaps there’s more hope for this country than I thought.

I hope you are right but seeing how many folks are walking around still masked makes me wonder.

[SkyDancer]

I’d rather fight the virus with known effective drugs than take the experimental gene modifier.