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Medicine United States

Many Formerly-Skeptical Americans are Now Eager to Get Covid-19 Vaccines (deccanherald.com) 247

The New York Times reports: Ever since the race to develop a coronavirus vaccine began last spring, upbeat announcements were stalked by ominous polls: No matter how encouraging the news, growing numbers of people said they would refuse to get the shot... But over the past few weeks, as the vaccine went from a hypothetical to a reality, something happened. Fresh surveys show attitudes shifting and a clear majority of Americans now eager to get vaccinated. In polls by Gallup, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Pew Research Center, the portion of people saying they are now likely or certain to take the vaccine has grown from about 50 per cent this summer to more than 60 per cent, and in one poll 73 per cent — a figure that approaches what some public health experts say would be sufficient for herd immunity...

[T]he attitude improvement is striking. A similar shift on another heated pandemic issue was reflected in a different Kaiser poll this month. It found that nearly 75 per cent of Americans are now wearing masks when they leave their homes.

The change reflects a constellation of recent events: the uncoupling of the vaccine from Election Day; clinical trial results showing about 95 per cent efficacy and relatively modest side effects for the vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna; and the alarming surge in new coronavirus infections and deaths... The lure of the vaccines' modest quantities also can't be underestimated as a driver of desire, somewhat like the must-have frenzy generated by a limited-edition Christmas gift, according to public opinion experts... A barrage of feel-good media coverage, including rapt attention given to leading scientists and politicians when they get jabbed and joyous scrums surrounding local health care workers who become the first to be vaccinated, has amplified the excitement, public opinion experts say.

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Many Formerly-Skeptical Americans are Now Eager to Get Covid-19 Vaccines

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  • Are they really? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bonedonut ( 4687707 ) on Saturday December 26, 2020 @05:04PM (#60868024)
    Or is this just manufacturing consent?
    • by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) on Saturday December 26, 2020 @05:18PM (#60868058)
      No, it's just hypocrisy and chickening out, as usual for these people.
      • At the end of the day the devil will be in the details. These are just surveys, and as vaccination stats come out, we'll know if people were telling the truth. I will probably wait since I caught covid back in October and will just let higher priority people get the dose. I personally think that covid is highly contagious, but the seriousness for the average healthy person is no worse than than a cold. So if you're in that category and getting vaccinated when higher risk people need it, you're just taking
        • If you had COVID, then you are now immune and no longer need a vaccine. If the antibodies from infection wear off over time, then they are going to wear off over time from a vaccine as well. Get ready for your every 3-6 month COVID shot.
          • If you had COVID, then you are now immune and no longer need a vaccine.

            From what I understand, even COVID survivors are expected to get the vaccine as it should provide antibodies for a significantly longer time.

          • by jd ( 1658 )

            Plenty of people are suffering Covid more than once.

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by dcw3 ( 649211 )

              Citation needed. I've only read of a couple cases (see quote below) where there were claims of reinfection. Just to be clear, testing positive on separate occasions doesn't mean you've contracted it...there have been many false positives.

              Health experts don't yet know whether we become immune to COVID-19 after we're infected. And if we do become immune, we don't know how long that might last.Thus far, there have been only a few incidents of confirmed re-infections. With two cases, it appears the patients

          • by dcw3 ( 649211 )

            Please stop passing along your assumptions. They are NOT medical advice.

            From WHO:
            Common question
            Are you immune to COVID-19 if you get it once?

            Research is still ongoing into how strong that protection is and how long it lasts. WHO is also looking into whether the strength and length of immune response depends on the type of infection a person has: without symptoms (‘asymptomatic’), mild or severe. Even people without symptoms seem to develop an immune response.Oct 15, 2020

            From WebMD
            If you've had

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by hankwang ( 413283 )

          I personally think that covid is highly contagious, but the seriousness for the average healthy person is no worse than than a cold.

          Be careful not to confuse 'mean' and 'median'. The 95-98% "mild cases" are the ones not requiring hospitalization, but they do include the ones where people are bedridden with high fever, cannot take two of flights of stairs, or lose their sense of smell for a month. Some 10% of the cases, including mild cases, end up with months of lingering symptoms that are bad enough to prevent you from doing your job. ("Long covid") This includes apparent brain damage ("brain fog").

          A disease with a 51% probability of b

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Sunday December 27, 2020 @09:25AM (#60869386) Homepage Journal

        Just look at the number of Republican politicians who claimed COVID was a hoax and are now getting vaccinated.

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      Your question is unclear.

      The source for the claim are polls by Pew Research, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and Gallup. Are you asking whether reporting on these results is an attempt to "manufacture consent"? Or whether the results themselves were engineered by a program of media propaganda?

      If the latter, it's a classic "proving a negative" scenario. You can never rule out that possibility, so the burden of proof is on the claimant: what evidence do you have that this change in opinion was artificially pr

  • by The New Guy 2.0 ( 3497907 ) on Saturday December 26, 2020 @05:05PM (#60868028)

    Vaccine they're going to force on everyone: Leave me out...
    Vaccine they're giving to first responders and old only: Get me in...

    • Vaccine they're going to force on everyone: Leave me out...
      Vaccine they're giving to first responders and old only: Get me in...

      I'm eagerly waiting and wondering when I can get it, and I can see it is still going to take a long time. Fortunately I'll still be ahead of all the people who don't want it. Get out of my way.

  • If there was ever a large-population experiment with controls, placebos, etc. that could be run on marketing, this is a great candidate. Try designing and running multiple campaigns, deceitful and otherwise, and see which ones best convince a big group of people who are "I won't" and "Maybe" to "Yeah, I want it and I'll pay $xx for it to get on the list."

  • Somehow, this has gone horribly wrong and you link to this story about migrants is Bosnia: https://www.deccanherald.com/i... [deccanherald.com] How did this even happen? Who published this?
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      As if we need the fucking article here. Please.
    • Fixed! (Thanks for noticing.) The Deccan Herald republishing the Times' story) does that thing where when you reach the end of a story they automatically append another story from the site and also change the URL in your address bar without telling you...
  • Vax-afraiders (Score:5, Insightful)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Saturday December 26, 2020 @05:23PM (#60868076)

    Sorry but the vax-afraider scaredy cats are still a significant enough number that ones hope in humanity should be depleted. I've noticed these same vax-afraiders have no problem buying supplement pills with God-knows-what ingredients from manufacturers that make all sorts of claims with zero FDA oversight. I mean these fools would buy hemlock and poison ivy. Who knows the long term side effects of taking all the rubbish supplement pills sold to the vax-afraiders nowadays.

    • You seem... upset. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dfenstrate ( 202098 )

      Sorry but the vax-afraider scaredy cats are still a significant enough number that ones hope in humanity should be depleted. I've noticed these same vax-afraiders have no problem buying supplement pills with God-knows-what ingredients from manufacturers that make all sorts of claims with zero FDA oversight. I mean these fools would buy hemlock and poison ivy. Who knows the long term side effects of taking all the rubbish supplement pills sold to the vax-afraiders nowadays.

      Why are you so angry at them? If their path is foolish, a bunch of them will die off; won't you get some smug sense of self-satisfaction from that? Isn't the consequence of disobeying the establishment and departing from your plainly superior intellect- the disease culling the 'vax-afraiders'- doesn't this prospect set your heart at peace?

      • Well no, given that COVID-19 has a very low mortality rate especially with the new treatments they won't die (nor would I want them to --obviously). Most of the vax-afraiders are young. Most of them will pass Covid and other vaccine preventible diseases to others and live happily, oblivious to all the harm they've caused.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Why are you so angry at them? If their path is foolish, a bunch of them will die off; won't you get some smug sense of self-satisfaction from that?

        I can't speak for the GP, but I for one have many reasons to be angry at them.

        1) I'm angry these people have no moral problems causing great suffering and likely death against me.

        2) I'm angry knowing their willful ignorance will be trotted out as a proud excuse of their choices.
        "But I didn't know he was immunocompromised! I'm blameless!" they will say, despite being told people such as myself are in such a situation.

        3) I'm angry the very government sections tasks with protecting citizens from harm and dea

      • by The Evil Atheist ( 2484676 ) on Saturday December 26, 2020 @07:27PM (#60868360)
        Because they often have kids and push their nonsense onto their kids with dangerous results.

        Not to mention spreading to other kids, and I don't mean just the disease.
      • ? If their path is foolish, a bunch of them will die off; won't you get some smug sense of self-satisfaction from that?

        I would too, but the problem with a significant number of antivaxers is that they could infect a lot of innocent people while enroute to perdition. Fortunately, the antivax movement seems to have ghosted on us this time. Covid is not a childhood disease that was "good enough for Grandpa, so it's good enough for me."

      • by F.Ultra ( 1673484 ) on Saturday December 26, 2020 @11:37PM (#60868890)

        Because they get other people killed. One recent example: Samoa Island had 2 kids dying shortly after getting their MPR vaccine (in the end it turned out that the nurses injected muscle relaxants instead of the vaccine). The anti-vaxxers used those 2 deaths in a massive anti vaccine campaign with the end result of a measles outbreak that killed at least 76 people in Samoa alone.

        If the anti-vaxx movement is not stopped, deadly outbreaks such as this will be the norm in the future. And they are gaining traction, even as people die from covid they are increasing their numbers.

    • I see a lot of "FDA has not evaluated" statements printed on supplements that have been prescribed by doctors, like vitamins B, C, and D, minerals like iron and calcium, and such. Do you avoid them because the FDA didn't put a sticker on it?

      I've had multiple doctors suggest that I take vaccinations while they have my immune system suppressed to fight something they don't have a vaccine for. When I asked them to explain the logic of that, "Well, we have to ask everyone if they've taken the flu and pneumonia

      • In times of stress and fear, people latch onto all sorts of rituals to ward off the evil. Primitive people would make sacrifices to their gods. More refined religions constructed whole philosophies of prayers and rituals and codes of conduct to stay in God's good graces. In the absence of a theistic religion, some science cheerleaders place their faith in institutions or government agencies or scientific journals, or even men like Fauci. And any good religion needs to root out the heretics. So here we are:
      • by Octorian ( 14086 )

        Just because it is approved (especially under an "emergency approval") doesn't mean any of these current vaccines are 100% safe. They are still working out the contraindications on them. If you aren't in a high-risk group or high-exposure group, waiting to find out what which of the vaccines available so far are safer for you. It may be that the safest one for you isn't available yet.

        This is an absolutely reasonable concern, and probably the real issue behind a lot of the current hesitation. That being said, by the time most of these people will even have the chance to make a decision about getting a vaccine... millions of others will have taken them and we will have that data.
        Therefore, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if peoples' opinions on this change in a few months.

    • by NoNonAlphaCharsHere ( 2201864 ) on Sunday December 27, 2020 @07:08AM (#60869252)
      Believe me, had you spent any time using VMS, you'd be Vax-afraid, too. Sometimes I wake up wet with sweat and shivering at the same time.
  • Keep people in lockdown long enough and eventually they will agree to be injected with bleach.

    Fortunately we now have vaccines so it will not come to that.

    • Well in France we had 2 lockdowns but pro-vaccines went from 60% to 40%. No idea how it happened. I though America was idiocracy numer one but it seems we stole the title.
      • Well in France we had 2 lockdowns but pro-vaccines went from 60% to 40%. No idea how it happened. I though America was idiocracy numer one but it seems we stole the title.

        Maybe they secretly like the relaxation. It is France...

      • Well in France we had 2 lockdowns but pro-vaccines went from 60% to 40%. No idea how it happened. I though America was idiocracy numer one but it seems we stole the title.

        America: Hold my beer...

  • by kbahey ( 102895 ) on Saturday December 26, 2020 @05:38PM (#60868118) Homepage

    The vaccines being rolled out in G7 countries are the mRNA ones, namely Pfizer and Moderna.

    So far, over a million Americans have received the vaccines [cnbc.com], and over 600,000 in the UK. In addition to those, Canada and Japan starting roll out, so at least tens of thousands of people got them. [www.gov.uk]

    Efficacy, per test results submitted to the FDA, are 94% and 95%. That is preventing serious disease and hospitalization. For preventing infectiousness, results are 52% for Pfizer and 67% for Moderna.

    If there was something wrong with these vaccines, it would have shown by now. The worse side effect is a physician in Boston who has shellfish allergy and carries and EpiPen [globalnews.ca], which he used after the vaccine. About five other people had allergic reactions too, and all made it after a period of observation. There is talk about polyethelene glycol (PEG) causing these allergies, but that is not conclusive yet.

    If you have allergies, don't take it, and talk to your allergist. If you don't then you are most likely OK.

    On the other hands countries like Russia are rolling out the Sputnik V adenovirus vector vaccine without the result being made public or reviewed by independent experts in the field. The same goes for the SinoPharm which is a classic attenuated virus, which is being rolled out in some countries (UAE for example) without the results being made public. The latter is probably safe, because it is a classic approach that has been used for 100+ years. However, the process is flawed. Medicine should not be taken on a "trust me, it works and it is safe" word of manufacturer basis.

    • by hey! ( 33014 ) on Saturday December 26, 2020 @06:58PM (#60868304) Homepage Journal

      One of the interesting things about both these vaccines is that they use a generic delivery mechanism. The only difference between Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine and the cancer therapies it has been testing for years is the protein encoded by the mRNA sequence. Everything else is the same. If you're allergic to one vaccine that uses Moderna's technology, you're going to be allergic to all of them. If you are not allergic to one, you almost certainly aren't allergic to any.

      This contrasts with traditional killed-virus or attenuated-virus vaccines, which take years to develop and test because every one is completely unique and contains many possible antigen targets that have not been fully evaluated for safety. This technology will speed future vaccine development by an order of magnitude over traditional vaccines by eliminating almost all the trial-and-error involved.

      At present, all the serious side effects we've seen have been prompt allergic reactions -- within minutes of getting the vaccine. This means (a) that the reaction is to something in the lipid nanoparticle delivery vehicle (polyethylene glycol is suspected) and (b) the reaction can easily be treated if the vaccine is administered in a clinical setting prepared to respond to anaphylaxis. Even if I had a history of allergic reactions, I would still get this vaccine if I had my doctor's OK. I'd just be choosy about where I got it -- probably a hospital rather than a pop-up inoculation clinic.

    • by Bengie ( 1121981 )

      If you have allergies, don't take it, and talk to your allergist. If you don't then you are most likely OK.

      May want to talk to your doctor about this. FDA and CDC are both recommending getting the vaccine even if you have a history or hospitalization from allergies. The risk from allergic reaction for people with a history of severe reactions is considered less than the risk from covid.

      When digging into this, it seems even the flu shot has gotten the same recommendation in recent years. The purity and quality of vaccines has gotten to the point that allergic reaction rates is less than that of prescribed drugs

  • by ghoul ( 157158 ) on Saturday December 26, 2020 @05:59PM (#60868180)
    Most anti-vaxxers are generally selfish. They want to avoid even the smallest harm to themselves. However the vaccines being rolled out are 95% preventive of severe disease but only 64% preventive of being infectious. This means that those who take the vaccine will be protected but not anti-vaxxers in their vicinity. The anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers could get sick and die while those who got vaccinated will be fine. This flips the script on selfish people. Now they want the vaccine.
  • But it really looks like it won't be available for my demographic group until late summer at best. 70 (but not 75), some comorbidity issues, but staying home except for grocery shopping (maybe dropping to normal week-week and 1/2 now that the holidays are winding down) and quietly going crazy. So I'm in that in-between group that's not quite old enough, not quite sick enough, and not quite essential enough. Oh well...my kid needs an inheritance, right?

    • The ex UK prime minister had an interesting idea - vaccinate twice as many people with just one shot and then cycle back through people with a booster once pretty much everyone had had it. I suppose maybe give some especially high risk individuals the second shot more quickly.
      • That's dodgy, you don't really know what the thresholds are when the vaccine stops working if you start "optimizing" the dosage regime. You have tested and know the efficacy of one specific regime, if you start playing around and deviating from that you can easily end up wasting most of the vaccine you have and you won't even know it until it's too late. It makes more sense to just put your best in ramping up manufacturing faster.

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