COVID cases are surging, and hospitals are reaching capacity. This has led many to ask why there is so much resistance to having a vaccination that might have kept us out of the situation now facing the nation.
I believe that the COVID vaccine is a remarkable, life-saving achievement. While we will doubtless learn more about the vaccine over time, and while more complications may yet emerge, I have still encouraged friends, family members, patients and readers to be vaccinated. I believe the benefits outweigh the risks. However, as a physician, I frequently have patients who do not necessarily follow my advice. And I still have to care for them, and (as a Christian) treat them with love and respect.
I do think that it’s important to try to understand why so many people are uncomfortable having one of the several vaccines available against SARS-Co-V-2. As government representatives and media organizations ruminate over vaccine hesitation, it seems that they have only a few explanations.
From what I have seen, the vaccine hesitant are routinely described as stupid, purely hateful and uncaring about the sickness and death of others. Sometimes they are called unscientific and uneducated. Other times, their behavior toward the vaccine is attributed to their religious faith; evangelical Christians especially seem to be seen as backwards regarding science in general and the vaccine in particular — a theory that seems at odds with the evidence on the ground.
But these invectives will not change minds. The unvaccinated have a variety of concerns. Some believe that the technology is not safe; others have been told that the vaccine is a means of tracking humans or of intentionally causing worse illness later. I do not believe that there is sufficiently compelling evidence that these assertions are true.
However, concerns about the honesty of Big Pharma are not unreasonable, especially given the history of the opioid crisis and other medical misadventures the world has seen as a result of the pharmaceutical industry. Some of the vaccine hesitant feel that the experts mismanaged the lockdowns. This resulted in loss of jobs, loss of basic medical care, increased depression, anxiety, substance abuse and domestic violence, as well as diminished educational achievement in the young. That is, I believe, a fair critique of the pandemic management to date.
Still others are weary of being called ignorant or backwards, hicks or “Covidiots” when they are unclear about either the disease or the vaccine. And no small number of persons feel that the media and big tech have been careless with facts in their own way — for instance, refusing to accept the possibility that the pandemic came from a lab leak, which is a theory growing in acceptance.
Finally, it is difficult for even the best educated to understand all of the subtleties of statistics and to grasp the complexities of virology and biotechnology. This is not an insult, but a reality. A lack of comprehension of such things does not imply ignorance, but a lack of exposure to certain concepts.
Human beings do, or do not, follow expert advice for a variety of reasons. The sooner the nation’s experts recognize this and address vaccination hesitation with compassion for concerns, the sooner vaccination rates will rise. However, the constant drumbeat of insults to the intelligence of the vaccine hesitant does nothing to help us to navigate the current pandemic.