Not just US, I would say there's a large number of very well educated people even in well off countries who have a large amount of hesitation toward this mainly due to information handling and lack of transparency.
(Yes there is a very vocal anti-vax nut job crowd, but frankly that will always be there, and is always different to those who object to policy decisions on moral grounds of their failings and the deaths that poor policy leads to)
The only nice message for "please take a vaccine for something that won't kill you "is "please take it to stop it killing others". Given the USA seems to treat getting ill as a personal failing that will destroy your life and society turns it's back on you I'm not shocked that it would fall on deaf ears.
I don't think it's an issue of seeing illness as a personal failing - that's just dismissive and an unhelpful characterization.
People I know that choose to not get vaccinated yet are largely resistant to the 'do it for others' push because we've been told that the vaccine is so effective that the 'others' should be safe anyway, unless they've chosen not to get the vaccine too. That leaves these people with a risk assessment based solely on their own health, age, etc.
The "for the good of society" messaging has been very unstable, even moreso than normal for public health messaging. It's been a mix of: the elderly will take the vaccines because they're at high risk and then life can go back to normal. Then it became all adults need to take it to build herd immunity (the concept that in 2020 was supposedly some sort of a-scientific conspiracy theory), then it became life won't go back to normal even with high vaccination rates, then passes were introduced that have an exception for testing i.e. they look like an attempt to stop spread of the virus, but then it became clear that vaccines don't stop the spread yet the passes remained the same or even had the testing exemption removed. Then it became something about hospital capacity but they started firing healthcare workers en-masse, then it became all teenagers need to take it to stop schools closing and/or to protect their mental health (UK justification), but schools closing is itself a government/union policy, now Pfizer is trialling vaccines for babies. So who knows what the justification for that will be. But, we can be sure they'll find one.
It's been less than a year and that's not even all the changes in vaccination messaging, just the ones related to why everyone has to take it even if they don't personally want to. I'm honestly not sure I even got them all. That's been combined with very strong messaging that anyone who doubts the perfect omniscient competence of the public health establishment are crazy loons who need to be purged from society, with some of the nastiest and most aggressive tactics deployed by western governments against their own peoples for a long time.
Really don't see a way to recover trust in vaccination after the rollercoaster messaging over this year. There's no consistency anywhere which strongly implies the collectivist goal is chosen, then scientific-sounding justifications are invented to justify it. By next week this comment will be out of date and more stuff will need to be added to the list.
I think distrust is a larger extant problem for a variety of reasons. Antivax is a manifestation of it, but not unique.
In my personal life, I was deeply affected by the guidance that was given by authorities on 9/11 re: evacuation. The decision made by the police was pragmatic “we don’t know the downside of evacuation, which creates more problems as the situation at ground level is bad”, but killed more people than it saved. I have a close friend who is alive today because he chose to ignore the instructions, and has suffered from survivors guilt for not taking more people with him.
My way of handling that is that I get well acquainted with my buildings and evacuation procedures, and get myself and my people out if anything happens, and don’t care about the PA. It’s a selfish position that may create more hazards to others, but that’s my position.
I think antivax and hesitancy is a similar attempt to address risk, but with an impact that mostly affects others. The same industry that gave you opioid addiction gives you a vaccine. The vocal anti-everything people are able to pull on that string of doubt.
>In my personal life, I was deeply affected by the guidance that was given by authorities on 9/11 re: evacuation. The decision made by the police was pragmatic “we don’t know the downside of evacuation, which creates more problems as the situation at ground level is bad”, but killed more people than it saved. I have a close friend who is alive today because he chose to ignore the instructions, and has suffered from survivors guilt for not taking more people with him.
The Grenfell Tower fire in London is another example of this. If you look at the official timelines for the fire; when the fire was reported, when the fire spread, when the fire started killing people, one thing becomes clear: if building evacuation had begun when the fire was reported, then few if any would have died.
Official instructions for people living in London highrises was, and to my knowledge still is, to stay put. The building only had one staircase and everybody rushing for it might have caused a stampede... except that was bad advice even so. The fire was called in at 0:54 and isn't known to have spread to another unit until 1:15, more than twenty minutes later. If a building wide fire alarm had triggered an evacuation at 0:54, there would have been plenty of time to get virtually everybody out through that single staircase. The first reports of people trapped by smoke arrived by 1:30, nearly 40 minutes after the fire was called in; 40 minutes after the general evacuation could have begun. A general evacuation was not called until 2:47, nearly two hours after the fire was called in. Two hours too late.
My two take-aways from this: I have a lot more trust in American fire codes, particularly an appreciation for the importance of running general evacuation drills twice a year (the whole building clears out easily in five minutes.) And secondly, that I would never trust the British government's recommendations in an emergency; I would look out for myself instead and evacuate immediately, damn the consequences.
The more I deal with various government systems/entities, the more I realize the level of incompetence and misinformation that exists. Also the lack of transparency and accountability.
Given that the vaccine doesn't work to stop transmissions, I'd reckon this was just another way for the "experts" to further loose trust with the public.
> Given that the vaccine doesn't work to stop transmissions,
Nothing is perfect, but vaccination reduces transmission significantly:
> Two studies from Israel, posted as preprints on 16 July, find that two doses of the [Pfizer] vaccine ... are 81% effective at preventing SARS-CoV-2 infections. And vaccinated people who do get infected are up to 78% less likely to spread the virus to household members than are unvaccinated people.
Important to note that both of these studies are on pre-Delta variant patient sets, so unlikely to represent current real world impact on transmission from vaccination. This [0] is the most recent I've seen, and it suggests the reduction in transmission against Delta is smaller and wanes rapidly, even with the mRNA vaccines.
The experts selling it? The experts politically mandating the pisspoor sales contracts?
Or the experts who say a natural response to covid is better and that they'll be sued for saying this publically after the reddit "I know science mob" is through with them?...
Frankly it was about capacity. If enough get critically I'll we go into triage and kill oaps by prioritising treatment. The fact the vaccine is linked with less severe symptoms proves it would statistically save lives. The crowd insisting children get vaxed are just hypochondriacs or those who fail to understand statistics. (Or those refusing to share vaccines with the at risk in foreign countries who will almost certainly die compared to have to take time off school...)
But frankly if our healthcare wasn't stretched to breaking point we wouldn't be seeing so much triage.
And if the vaccine actually was a complete vaccine at the same efficacy of wet vaccine from other diseases then transmission would drop and we wouldn't be talking about boosters, catching it after vaccination and frankly the estimates of total hospitalisation rates due to covid were about as reliable as a chocolate tea pot.
Frankly it justified the huge expense in buying the defective product after contracting away the right to sue IMO... Given the media reporting in the really days made this vaccine seem like it'd be a guaranteed "cures what ails ya"...
Just look at data of percentage of people vaccinated in the western world where supply is actually available for anyone to take the vaccine right now. The US is last.
And look at the geographical distributions of low vaccine rates. Is very low in very wealthy parts of the UK where house prices are astronomical vs high dentisty pupation centers.
Why should most of London be at a higher vaccination rates than Oxford or Cambridge city centres? There is clear hesitancy here of some small groups that live near universities and make up <5% of the population. (Source ONS UK stats)
The only nice message for "please take a vaccine for something that won't kill you "is "please take it to stop it killing others". Given the USA seems to treat getting ill as a personal failing that will destroy your life and society turns it's back on you I'm not shocked that it would fall on deaf ears.