Poll: 67% of Americans won’t get vaccine quickly
Some doubt safety of rushed effort, approval
Two-thirds of U.S. voters say they won’t try to get a coronavirus vaccine as soon as it becomes available and 1 in 4 say they don’t want to get it ever, according to a new USA TODAY/Suffolk poll released the same week that the number of COVID-19 cases surpassed 6 million.
“I don’t plan on being anyone’s guinea pig,” said Ebony Dew, an independent from Capitol Heights, Maryland. “I don’t plan on getting it at all.”
The 40-year-old access control specialist questions the safety of a potential vaccine, echoing concerns shared by millions of Americans.
“I feel like their testing is a trial and error,” Dew said. “And I also feel that they don’t really know all that much about this virus, so how can they create a cure for it just yet?”
The poll of 1,000 voters follows similar surveys conducted in the past month that indicate as many as one-third of Americans would decline a vaccine, fueled by mistrust of the Trump administration’s push to speed up its development as well as a sizable slice of the country that generally oppose immunizations of any kind.
President Donald Trump has been promoting Operation Warp Speed, a multiagency initiative to expedite rapid production of COVID-19 tests, treatments and vaccines. Its goal is to produce and deliver 300 million doses of vaccine by January. Three vaccine candidates are in Phase 3 trials in the United States, and more are expected to enter Phase 3 trials by the end of September, according to Alex Azar, secretary of Health and Human Services.
Experts say the level of public resistance to an immunization against a virus that has already killed about 187,000 Americans is concerning because it undermines the utility of the vaccine.
The USA TODAY/Suffolk poll found that about two-thirds of the 1,000 voters surveyed – 67% – would either not take the vaccine until others have tried it (44%) or not take it at all (23%).
The other third of respondents were split between those who said they would take the vaccine as soon as it’s available (27%) or those who were undecided (6%).
The poll, taken Aug. 28-31, surveyed registered voters by cellphone and landline and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Democrats (86%) are more likely than Republicans (61%) to get the vaccine at some point. Men and women were evenly split but the youngest respondents (those under 24) and the oldest (those 75 and older) were the likeliest to get the vaccine either right away or after seeing how the initial immunizations went.
Hispanic voters (17%) and Black voters (15%) are less willing than white voters (31%) to take the vaccine as soon as it becomes available, according to the poll. The survey found that both groups also were likelier not to take the vaccine at all, compared to whites.
Forty-one percent of those surveyed would not get the coronavirus vaccine if the federal government mandated it versus 50% of those who said they would.
Dozens of doctors, nurses and health officials interviewed by Kaiser Health News and The Associated Press expressed concern about the country’s readiness to conduct mass vaccinations, as well as frustration with months of inconsistent information from the federal government.