Posted on 02/25/2023 10:48:13 AM PST by DoodleBob
Joyce Ann Kraner is eager for the pandemic to end and for life to get back to normal. Kraner, 49, wants to be able to hug her mother, who lives in a nursing home.
But she says she has no plans to get the vaccine, even though it's widely available in her community of Murfreesboro, Tenn. "I feel like I'm healthy," she says.
Despite the fact that millions of people have been vaccinated safely, Kraner worries about complications. She believes some people are having "life-threatening reactions" to the vaccine that the media isn't reporting. (Many such reports shared on social media are false or misleading.) And she's worried because it's so new: "We don't know the long-term effects. We don't know what it's going to do."
A recent NPR/Marist poll found that one in four Americans said they would refuse a coronavirus vaccine outright if offered. Another 5% are "undecided" about whether they would get the shot. Although the numbers were highest for Republican men and residents of rural areas, there were still a significant number of people across all ages and demographic groups who claim they will say "no".
Now some researchers are increasingly worried that this reticence will be enough to prevent the nation from reaching what's known as herd immunity, the point at which the coronavirus can no longer spread easily through the population and transmission peters out. Reaching high levels of vaccination would mean new outbreaks of coronavirus would die down quickly, as opposed to growing and spreading.
"Vaccine hesitancy is a big problem for all of us," says Ali Mokdad, who tracks coronavirus trends at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
Up until now, the nationwide vaccine campaign has seen demand outstrip supply, but Mokdad believes that will soon change. By May, he believes, "We will have more vaccines than people willing to take the vaccine."
It's hard to know exactly how many people will choose not get vaccinated. NPR/Marist's polling has seen the number of people saying they would refuse a vaccine drop since the question was first asked in August of last year, and it continues to fall.
What it will take to return to 'normal'
The numbers who may refuse the vaccine remain potentially too high to contain a respiratory virus such as SARS-CoV-2 , which requires a very large segment of the population to be immune. Nobody knows exactly how large, but based on other diseases, researchers believe it is far above the current 32% of the U.S. population that's gotten at least one shot to date.
"What most of us want is safe return to something that looks more normal," says Samuel Scarpino, who models the coronavirus outbreak at Northeastern University. "That to me means 80-85%, probably, vaccinated."
There remain many obstacles to the U.S. getting to the roughly 80% immunity threshold — and some unknowns. It's unclear, for example, how many of those who say they will refuse a shot are immune because they've already had COVID-19. (The CDC recommends people who already had an infection to get vaccinated anyway, so many COVID-19 survivors will also be in the "yes" camp).
And roughly 20% of the population are children under the age of 16, who are not yet eligible to receive a vaccine — making it even more crucial that adults do get vaccinated.
But based on current polling data, Scarpino says that the herd-immunity tipping point for the virus remains out of reach: "We can't get there right now."
A new emergency in the making
Scarpino and Mokdad say the problem will not be immediately apparent. Both scientists expect COVID-19 cases to drop over the summer months, when a combination of vaccinations and warm weather will dramatically slow the virus down. Mokdad says he thinks the improved conditions will paradoxically make vaccination more difficult.
"It's very hard to convince people to take the vaccine in summer, when everything is going good," says Mokdad. He expects the warm weather and low infection levels mean that even people who originally intended to get a vaccine will put it off or forget about it all together.
But the fall and winter could be a very different story. Scarpino believes that more contagious variants such as the one first reported in the U.K. will dominate the fall and winter COVID season, raising the herd immunity threshold. Variants with higher transmissibility may require a larger share of the population to be immune before they can be contained.
Moderate rates of vaccination will prevent a nationwide crisis like that seen during the winter of 2020 and 2021, he says. But he worries that regional outbreaks could still overwhelm hospitals, close schools and force local governments to reinstitute restrictions in different parts of the United States, especially in areas where vaccination rates are low.
"If we're below 60-70% vaccination for COVID when we enter the fall respiratory season, that could easily tip us into an emergency situation," Scarpino says.
How to reach refusers
The reasons for saying "no" to a vaccine are often complex. NPR's polling shows that a diverse swath of Americans are reluctant. Some groups do stand out as more likely to refuse: Republican men, rural residents, and Americans under 45, for example. But the number of people saying no is relatively high across racial groups, economic classes and geographic regions.
"I don't think there's one particular group," says Tara Kirk Sell, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. "I don't think that it works to classify people who are vaccine hesitant all having the same reason for being vaccine hesitant."
"Everyone knows someone in their life who is not willing to get vaccinated," agrees Kolina Koltai, a vaccine misinformation researcher at the University of Washington.
Koltai says that misinformation is proliferating right now, often tailored to different groups with different grievances. "For the first time in a very long time we have everyone deciding whether to vaccinate themselves as adults," she says. "We're all becoming susceptible to anti-vaccine narratives that can be promoted in ways that are beyond anti-vaccination communities."
Kirk Sell says that countering misinformation and encouraging vaccination cannot be done as a "blast broadcast."
"You need to speak to these different groups: the minority groups, the Republicans and the other people who feel like they have some distrust in science," she says. Often the best way to do so, she says, is through groups and leaders at a local level who are in favor of vaccination.
Last week, the Biden Administration launched a major initiative to try and encourage vaccination by enlisting faith groups, unions and even NASCAR to promote getting vaccinated. It's the kind of broad, grass roots effort experts say can help.
The question is, will it be enough? "We need to vaccinate as much as possible right now, stop the circulation of this virus in the U.S. and elsewhere," says Mokdad. "Then we can control it."
These whackos promoting the vax jab never give up!
s/b: “Herd mentality may compromise freedom and civilization.”
Still in the no camp. My camp has Ivermectin.
Wow, there is so much disinformation there, a single response is useless
People need to pay attention to the studies now coming out across the world that debunk the debunkers
Its not that that X doesn't work, its just that some people are not doing X hard enough...
2021- when there were so many gullible people swallowing whatever storyline of the day our feckless leaders trotted out.
Control by fear. Tell whatever story that keeps them in control.
I wasn’t fooled then. I’m not fooled now.
What a crock of s$#&. I’m immune because I had the Wu-flu.
Although you may be right, this particular article is from a while back.
Notice they never try to address the concerns, all they do is labeling anything contradictory of the approved message as mis or dis info.
Never a discussion of valid studies not supporting the narrative., Just ignore those, ignore VAERS and never bother to look at the data to see if it means anything AND just believe Pfizer, we do not need to see the research studies they did for at least 75 years.
Nothing builds trust and assuages concerns like telling you to just believe us, you do not need to see our data or methodology, screams science doesn’t it?
Why would anyone want to know such details before injecting a substance into their body. How irrational to not inherently trust someone who will make a profit from selling you said injections.
I’m #pureblood as well 👍
the people that claim the experimental shots are “safe and effective” also claim men can cut off their family jewels and convert to women...
Natural immunity in for the win…on true herd immunity
Latest studies confirm
Isolate seniors as much as possible and let it ride. The lockdown set the stage for these ongoing mutations.
The article is almost two years old.
Joyce Ann should be the head of the CDC. Brilliant use of common sense.
Thing is, they want people to believe the only way to herd immunity is by vaccinations.
BLAH BLAH BLAH
Yup. It's amazing to look back just two or three years ago and recall the BS we were being fed. Remember all those photos (obviously posed, when you see them now) of people in hazmat suits in Wuhan tending to people who had just suddenly collapsed on the street? Remember the edict to make sure you washed your hands for at least 30 seconds? And then, of course, there was the extreme importance to disinfect every surface you touched.
All that, and so much more. What a freaking scam.
I’ve been jabbed 3 times for this thing and I had Covid last year. I am NOT taking another jab. PERIOD!!
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