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."
That’s funny right there.
I wonder how that’s working for her now. Now that infections are primarily amongst the people who have gotten the clot shot. In my circle, I’m seeing multiple infections with people who got it. None the other way around. As a point of interest; my wife caught Covid in her nursing home with zero symptoms. She was forced to take the shot a month later, and died in about a month.
That’s not possible! The jab saves 100’s of billions of lives each year! We need all jabbed to stop the spread! That’s what vaccines do, they stop transmission right?
...oh wait, did someone just change the definition of what a vaccine is..
Old definition Biological agents that elicit an immune response to a specific antigen derived from an infectious disease-causing pathogen
New Definition A preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.”
Imagine that, the clot shot was never a vaccine until the definition was changed, how convenient.
Absolute B.S.
Take your “herd ammunity” and shove it and yourvaccine.
a person who was worried about side effects from the shot in the beginning has even more reason to be worried about them now,
So many have destroyed trust, brands, fields of science and medicine, governments.
They have thrown respect and trust away with both hands, they can’t unload it fast enough.
I am dubious of almost any claim nowadays, I question everything.
I had it. I do not need the vaccine. STFU
The jackass who wrote this crap should explain how the Spanish Flu disappeared even though no vaccine for that disease was ever developed.
Absent a vaccine, a good quality treatment to prevent death and secondary infections is available and has been employed with success (when permitted by the agenda driven official vaccines pushers).
Total BS. The left -wing media put out these weird stories all the time. In our area, there has not been one single case of covid for months! I’m sure it is the same in a heck of a lot of places. They talk about getting back to normal...well, if they stop this BSing about some fictional person and how bad things are for them, we would be back to normal. These people just won’t let it go.
I've had the WuFlu in January 2022 and January 2023. I suspect at the current mutation rates, any durable immunity will hold about a year before the virus successfully evades it. Not unlike other types of flu. Maintain your immune system and hang in. I didn't destroy my immune system with mRNA injections.
WGBH - Boston. That’s a PBS station isn’t it?
No thanks. You can have my shot/booster.
There is no such thing as “Herd immunity” as no immunity is actually created. One infected person that come into the herd can cause those that have not yet developed immunity to become infected.
The term was coined to reduce vaccine hesitancy.
It took Fauci over 2 years to admit that herd immunity should have been the goal.....aka....no lockdown.
without individual immunity being POSSIBLE... then herd immunity isn’t even theoretically possible.
the only immunity we’ve seen comes from those that had covid, were treated (usually with ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine +zinc) thus giving the patient a SHORT TERM immunity.
as more people are exposed and treated PROPERLY... more short term immunity is established at which point herd immunity is possible.
anyone suggesting the jabs as a ‘vaccine’ as just snake-oil salesmen who have no care whether or not you live or die.
What utter BS.
I’m not a doctor but I’m smart enough to know that Herd Immunity is not obtained solely through vaccinations but through a combination of a certain number of people contracting the disease and developing antibodies which is then passed on through the rest of the population.
Two points here:
1. Natural immunity was the sole source for Europeans against small pox and bubonic plague. There were no vaccines until 1796 when Edward Jenner discovered the vaccine for smallpox. Prior to that, the only protection people had was “NATURAL IMMUNITY”.
2. It has already been acknowledged and proven that the “vax” does not provide any immunity whatsoever, and is actually killing normal, healthy people of all ages.
Lord, please forgive me because sometimes I just want to bitch slap the snot out these fearmongering azzholes.
Herd Stupidity at Risk
Fixed it
Clot shots or else!
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