A smidge over 40% of adults 75 and older, meanwhile, have received a shot for respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.
Only 41% of eligible infants, who are also vulnerable to RSV, had received that antibody treatment as of March.
But misinformation has also fueled Americans’ mistrust of getting vaxxed, a concern that was present in certain circles even before COVID hit.
A full 22% of respondents think it’s safer to get COVID than to get vaccinated, up from 10% in April 2021.
Andrew Stanley Pekosz of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health adds that many people aren’t even anti-vax, per se, but still hedge.
For kids, those numbers are even lower: just under 9 percent for coronavirus and 33 percent for flu. Conversely, slightly more than 40% of adults aged 75 and above have had a respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, vaccination. As of March, just 41% of infants who were eligible and at risk for RSV had received that antibody treatment. The majority of these figures are comparable to those from the previous year, within a few percentage points. What is causing this hesitancy to get a protective vaccination? According to The Post, lack of insurance may be a contributing factor, particularly for younger individuals. However, false information has also contributed to Americans’ skepticism about vaccinations, which existed in some quarters even prior to the COVID pandemic.
For example, a late-year survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center revealed that 73 percent of respondents thought the COVID vaccine was safe in August 2022, but that number dropped to 66 percent in November 2023. Twenty-two percent of respondents, up from 10 percent in April 2021, believe that contracting COVID is safer than getting vaccinated. “Throughout the pandemic, there has been a decline in confidence in science,” Tara Kirk Sell of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security tells the Post. According to Andrew Stanley Pekosz of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, many people hedge even though they aren’t technically anti-vax. “They simply aren’t sure what to believe, and when you’re unsure of what to believe, you wind up doing nothing,” he says. More stories about vaccines. ().
