Kristin Lunz Trujillo and Matt Motta at The Conversation:
According to some estimates, about one-fifth to two-fifths of Americans express reservations about vaccine safety. If most of these individuals forego receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, they could potentially jeopardize the recovery process.
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In a demographically representative survey of 493 U.S. adults conducted on April 15, 2020, we investigated whether people who hold skeptical views toward vaccine safety plan to receive a vaccine against COVID-19.
Specifically, we asked respondents whether they would be willing to get vaccinated against COVID-19 once a vaccine becomes available. Nearly a quarter (23%) of respondents said that they would not.
Additionally, and consistent with the view that even a global pandemic may not persuade anti-vaxxers to get vaccinated, we find that 62% of people who are skeptical of vaccines said that they will forego COVID-19 vaccination.
To assess this, we measured vaccine skepticism by asking respondents three questions about whether they find vaccines to be safe, effective and/or important == which is how vaccine skepticism is typically measured. Respondents indicated whether they thought each characteristic described vaccines “quite a bit,” “a moderate amount,” “a little bit” or “not at all.” We then averaged the score across the three to create a scale of vaccine skepticism.
Nearly one-fifth (19%) of respondents were more vaccine skeptical than not. Among vaccine skeptics, 62% stated that they would not get vaccinated against COVID-19. By contrast, just 15% of those more supportive of vaccines than skeptical said that they would not get the COVID-19 vaccine.
We also asked respondents if they self-identified as anti-vaxxers, and nearly 16% said they did. For those that identified as anti-vaxxers, 44% said they would not vaccinate against COVID-19, compared to 19% of people who did not identify as anti-vaxxers.
FYI: These results are from a working paper, currently under peer-review. I will say, though, that I've found very similar gen. pop. levels of hesitancy to request a COVID vaccine in a larger, representative, & more-recent sample using an alternate Q. (See Fig below). pic.twitter.com/QdCeMvjMch— Matt Motta (@matt_motta) May 4, 2020
