PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Recent polls show that the more people get vaccinated against COVID-19, the more it influences others.
Kelly Madden Daily, a communications professor at La Salle University, said one reason why some people want the vaccine as soon as possible and others don’t want it at all is the lack of clear information.
“There hasn’t been one clear message coming from the government about how, when and why you’re getting the vaccine,” she said.
But Madden Daily said an ongoing survey of more than 1,500 people nationwide from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows 47% of those surveyed had already been vaccinated, or want to be.
She believes that will have a trickle down effect.
“So if they see their friends or their family members get vaccinated, they see the vaccine is safe, it protects their friends and family members from getting COVID, then they are more likely to get the vaccine,” she explained.
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The Kaiser COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor Dashboard for January shows 13% of those surveyed say they will “definitely not” get the vaccine, while 31% percent say they will “wait and see” how the vaccine rollout proceeds, and 7% will only get it if required.
However, on the other end, 13% say they don’t want to get it at all.
“I think you’ll generally start to see less resistance to the vaccine as more and more people are vaccinated,” she said. “And we see that the vaccine is safe, it’s effective and we see our friends and family members getting vaccinated, that’s going to be a really big influence.”
Of those who said they would “wait and see,” their primary reason was their concern about side effects — 55% of the “wait and see” group were Black adults, 47% were Hispanic adults and 34% were white adults.
The dashboard also showed that since December, the number of people who want to get the vaccine as soon as possible went up 7%.
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