Vaccine Hesitant? There’s Nothing to Fear But Fear — and The Virus
I suspect the poignant “I wish I had gotten my shot” accounts from patients and others in news interviews moved a lot of latecomers — even a chronic latecomer like me.
How much, I wondered, is the rise of “vaccine hesitancy,” as the experts politely call it, and the longer-established, far-out “anti-vax” movement a reflection of changing times and a sagging faith in institutions?
I remember nothing but gratitude and relief from my own parents about the rise of polio vaccines in the 1950s. That’s what I found in a survey by polling pioneer George Gallup in 1954, shortly after Jonas Salk’s new polio vaccine became available.
Gallup found the American public to be generally “very optimistic” about the shots. Such optimism was what I expected from those seemingly more innocent and trusting post-World War II days.
But, reading on, I found more thorns among the roses. Asked if they were willing to take the new shot themselves, Gallup found 60% of Americans said they were willing to do it while 31% said they would not.
That’s remarkably close to the 35% who told Gallup they would not take a COVID-19 inoculation last year shortly after it was first announced. Even higher numbers — 45% — said they would not take the new vaccines for smallpox in 2002 or the swine flu in 2009.
So, I think that in the future many of us will look back on this era and view vaccine skepticism as a natural and predictable development. I also think that vaccines will help us live long enough to be able to look back.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
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