It’s immunization season, which means well being businesses and medical facilities are urging Americans to prep for winter by getting their COVID, flu, RSV, and pneumonia photographs. Public well being consultants are expressing concern, nonetheless, that vaccination charges forward of the vacations, with peak an infection usually rising from December to February, are stagnant, stories the Washington Post. According to the CDC, solely about 37% of US adults ages 18 and over have obtained a seasonal flu shot, whereas simply 19% of that group have gotten the up to date COVID vaccine.
For youngsters, these figures are even decrease—33% for flu, and slightly below 9% for coronavirus. A smidge over 40% of adults 75 and older, in the meantime, have obtained a shot for respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. Only 41% of eligible infants, who’re additionally weak to RSV, had obtained that antibody therapy as of March. Most of those numbers are just like final yr’s, give or take a couple of proportion factors. So what’s driving the reluctance to get a protecting jab? The Post notes that, for youthful folks particularly, lack of insurance coverage may very well be taking part in a component. But misinformation has additionally fueled Americans’ distrust of getting vaxxed, a priority that was current in sure circles even earlier than COVID hit.
An Annenberg Public Policy Center survey from late final yr discovered, as an example, that in August 2022, 73% of these surveyed believed the COVID vaccine is protected; that determine in November 2023 fell to 66%. A full 22% of respondents assume it is safer to get COVID than to get vaccinated, up from 10% in April 2021. “There has been a lack of belief in science over the course of the pandemic,” Tara Kirk Sell of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security tells the Post. Andrew Stanley Pekosz of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health provides that many individuals aren’t even anti-vax, per se, however nonetheless hedge. “They simply do not know what to consider, and when you do not know what to consider, you find yourself not doing something,” he says. (More vaccines tales.)
