How to Fight Back Against Coronavirus Vaccine Phobia
Make inoculations easy to get. Tell the stories of Covid-19 victims. Recruit celebrity validators to woo the skeptics.
Don’t be scared.
Photographer: Eva Marie Uzcategui/BloombergThe world is soon likely to confront a serious new challenge to the fight against Covid-19: vaccine hesitancy.2
In the U.S. and U.K., large numbers of people — at least 30 percent — have said in recent surveys that they would hesitate to take or refuse a vaccine that could protect them from the coronavirus and slow its spread. These numbers probably understate the problem. People might tell a researcher that they will get vaccinated even if they won’t. And the problem might be even worse if a vaccine is made available under a speeded up “emergency use” exception to the usually lengthy approval process, amplifying public concerns about rushing it out.