Health

Why 38% of MA residents polled said they wouldn’t take a COVID-19 once one is available

BOSTON — You’ve been hearing for months to keep the faith because the vaccine is on its way. But now that it’s almost here, would you even take it?

The virus has killed more than 10,000 people in Massachusetts and still, according to the Western New England University Polling Institute, just 59% of 415 adults said yes, they will be taking the vaccine while 38% said they’d pass.

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“It surprised us that that high-end number of folks were leery,” said Western New England University Director of the Polling Institute Tim Vercellotti. “We asked for a follow-up in your own words, ‘Why would you be unlikely to get the vaccine?’ and the top reason that people gave was they didn’t trust the approval process. They worried that it had become politicized.”

Twenty-nine percent of them felt that way. The other top reasons: 26% said they were concerned about side effects, 14% wanted more information on how it works and 9% said the process was too rushed with not enough testing.

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“People thinking that the emergency use authorizations are being rushed, but we’ve been there before, we’ve gone through this several times with other drugs, and they just haven’t known it,” said Michael Urban, senior lecturer at the University of New Haven. “The emergency rush to get it through wouldn’t happen if it wasn’t safe. Any red flags that start popping up the FDA will pull it.”

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Researchers say they didn’t expect such low numbers since we have multiple companies showing off high efficacy levels. They say one of the biggest hurdles will be closing the gap between the distrust among people of color since race revealed the biggest disparity in the numbers. Sixty-five percent of white people surveyed said yes to a COVID-19 vaccine, but only 57% of people of color surveyed said no.

“They are the ones that are more vulnerable to this virus because of those health disparities that we have in our country,” said Urban. “That is something that we have to address as a nation. COVID-19 didn’t create that mess, that’s been there a long it just is putting the spotlight on it.”

Urban says one of the reasons for a lack of trust in the process is the lack of understanding between the terms of approval and authorization. It’s two separate processes the FDA has, but he says both processes are safe and that it’s very rare for the FDA to deauthorize a drug.

We asked him what is the magic number to eradicating COVID-19 since 59% is low. He says that would require everyone to either become infected and build immunity naturally or get vaccinated as we do with chickenpox.

“The higher the better,” said Urban. “Obviously, the best will be a hundred percent.”

But he says whether religion or politics, people will still have their reasons not to take the vaccine.

RELATED: Mistrust of medical industry could lead Black communities to resist COVID-19 vaccine

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