Why would anyone refuse a COVID-19 vaccine? Today’s lesson is all about “vaccine hesitancy.”
Lesson summary
Hi there everyone, I’m Jeff, and welcome to Plain English Lesson 388 on August 9, 2021. JR is the producer, and the full lesson is available at PlainEnglish.com/388. On that page, you’ll find the transcript, fast version, translation, how-to video, exercises, and much more.
As you know, we use current events and trending topics to help you upgrade your English, and there is no topic trending more strongly than the Delta variant, the new version of the coronavirus spreading through the unvaccinated population. In many parts of the world, people are not vaccinated because there aren’t enough vaccines there. But in many other areas of the world, including in the US, some people have chosen not to get the vaccine. That’s called “vaccine hesitancy.” And on today’s lesson, we’ll talk about the reasons people have for not getting vaccinated.
Don’t shoot the messenger. That means, don’t blame me for vaccine hesitancy. I got my vaccine at the earliest possible moment. But it is important, I think, to understand the reasons people have for making a different choice. With that disclaimer in mind, let’s dive in.
Reasons for vaccine hesitancy
It was one of humanity’s great success stories. Less than a year after a deadly new virus broke out, multiple independent scientific teams developed a series of highly effective vaccines. The vaccines promise to cut short or eliminate the deadly impact of COVID-19 with minimal side effects.
There was always going to be a shortage of vaccines early on as production ramped up and people clamored to get their protection. But in some corners of the world, there is a much different kind of shortage; a shortage of individual arms to inject the vaccine into.
The reluctance to get a vaccine is called “vaccine hesitancy.” It is hard for many people to imagine refusing a vaccine against this deadly virus; it’s especially hard on the many doctors and front-line workers around the world that are still not sufficiently protected. But vaccine hesitancy is real, and today’s lesson is about why people don’t want to get inoculated.
First, let’s start more generally. Even before COVID-19, more and more people around the world were refusing vaccines. Many people chose not to get the annual flu vaccine because they questioned its effectiveness. There is also a large community of people that believe there’s a link between vaccines in children and autism, though that has been disproven.
In Japan, many people today are skeptical of vaccines after an experience in the early 1990s. At the time, some data suggested that a vaccine against measles, mumps, and rubella caused another not-so-great disease called meningitis. No link between the two was ever proven, but the Japanese government stopped administering the vaccine. That was enough to make many people believe that vaccines cause disease, rather than prevent them.
It must be said, too, that the medical establishment has not always treated all people fairly and equally. Here in America, there is distrust of the medical establishment among minority communities due to historical injustices. Some people are genuinely afraid of being used as part of an experiment. That’s not happening now, at least not in the western world, but that fear is not totally unjustified based on history and what some communities have endured in the past.
So, these examples show that some of today’s vaccine reluctance pre-dates this pandemic. However, much of it is unique to this pandemic, and there are several reasons why people are reluctant to get vaccinated against COVID-19 specifically.
The first reason is distrust of the government that administers the vaccine. In America, for example, the vaccination rates are different depending on political party. In some rural counties, which are more likely to be Republicans, less than a third of the population is vaccinated (by choice!), despite pleas from doctors and medical experts. Many people simply don’t trust vaccine information because they don’t trust the party in charge of the federal government, or they just don’t trust government institutions including government doctors overall. About half of Americans are not fully vaccinated.
This is an even bigger problem in countries where governments have a long history of deception. Russia, for example, approved the world’s first COVID vaccine. In fact, they export the vaccine to other countries. But only 13 percent of Russians are vaccinated and 62 percent of Russians say they don’t want the vaccine. A large reason for this is trust in their government to act safely and in the best interest of their citizens. Early in the pandemic, Russian, Indian, and Chinese vaccines were not subjected to the same kind of rigorous regulatory studies and approval processes as western vaccines were.
A second reason for distrust is the speed with which the vaccines were developed. Vaccines often take several years to create, test, and approve; some diseases, including HIV, still have no vaccine. Within a year though, the world had a vaccine against this coronavirus. Many people think a safe vaccine could not have been developed so quickly. Their view is that pharmaceutical companies and governments are still testing the vaccines out and they don’t want to be a guinea pig or research experiment.
Some people think the dangers of COVID-19 are exaggerated. There has been a lot of suffering and death because of COVID-19, but it’s also true that not everyone that catches COVID-19 has bad symptoms. Many people know three, four, or even five friends that have gotten COVID and experienced no symptoms, so they might just think it’s not a big deal. They might think that they’re healthy and strong overall so they can handle a virus like this and simply don’t need a vaccine.
Why else would people be reluctant to get a vaccine? Some are simply afraid of the needle and the potential side effects. Many people experience side effects such as fever, chills, headaches, and pain. This is no fun. But this pales in comparison to the risk of actually getting COVID and possibly dying, but people sometimes act irrationally when they have fears like this.
There’s one more big reason for vaccine hesitancy, and that is what’s called apathy. People just don’t think it’s worth it , so they don’t act. They may not be against it, but they don’t see the urgency in getting it, so they haven’t made the appointment yet.
Out of all the reasons for vaccine hesitancy, this is the trickiest. That’s because as more and more people get vaccinated, there will be fewer and fewer cases. As there are fewer cases, the urgency for the unvaccinated to get the shot does go down. Therefore, a lot of people now think that COVID is going away so they simply don’t need to get the shot anymore. Some also think that they might need to get multiple shots in the future if the pandemic continues, so they’ll just get one later when they feel like it.
A pandemic of the unvaccinated
I got my Pfizer vaccine the first day I could. I was refreshing the page on my phone to try to find appointments. I was willing to go anywhere, at any time, to get the shot. I am in awe of the scientific research needed to develop this vaccine and, on the business side of things, of the supply chain and logistical considerations needed to produce this vaccine. I’m proud of the American companies involved in this critical process and of the American government’s early leadership in jumpstarting the development. It’s hard for many people to admit, but this was a bright spot at the end of Donald Trump’s unpredictable presidency.
I think everyone should get this shot. I see the hospitalizations in America, almost all among unvaccinated people, and I just feel despair and frustration. Here are doctors and nurses in America re-living the pandemic—the ventilators, the PPE, the overtime shifts, the death, the exhaustion—only this time, all the patients are people who have voluntarily not gotten a free vaccine. However, it’s also important to understand and have some empathy for the reasons some people are hesitant, even if we don’t agree with their decision. Researching this lesson did definitely help me take a deep breath and understand a little more about people who’ve made a different choice and where they’re coming from.
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