Understanding Vaccine Hesitancy

The Spread of Covid-19 and Emergency Services

The spread of covid-19 has developed havoc in the lives of people across the globe. Every citizen, including doctors, were not very sure about what would help eradicate the disease. Most services were closed except for emergency services. Extensive research helped develop vaccination that said, if taken in time, can prevent if not the virus but fatal effects of the virus. Lockdown and social isolation were called for across globe.  Many have been hesitant in taking the vaccine. This presentation will discuss and explore the various reasons for vaccine hesitancy through understanding psychology.

It has been seen that people are doubtful in taking or are delaying in taking the vaccination. According to the Vaccine Hesitancy Determinant Matrix, the three C’s under vaccine hesitancy include Compliance, Confidence and Convenience. Though a majority of the population has accepted the vaccination, a small section of the population is still not accepting it, (MacDonald, 2015).

Various medical journals have discussed the ill effects of refusing vaccination in 2009. Vaccination serves as the preventive measure to vaccine-preventable diseases. Success of immunization though the same is most effective in preventing diseases depends on the high rates of acceptance of the same. There is an increase in the rate of cases where inhabitants of the United States have been refusing to take vaccines. Reasons for vaccine hesitancy includes public concern regarding the perceived adverse impact of vaccination. Such concern is increasing the refusal to take the vaccination, (Omer et al., 2009).

Vaccination hesitancy has been evident even before the time of Covid-19. The reasons might include the perceived fear of parents, who have been questioning the safety of their children after the vaccination. Often dismissing patients from Paediatric care is practiced for those who are hesitant to take vaccination at the correct time, (McClure, Cataldi & O’Leary, 2017).

Vaccination hesitancy is increasing at an alarming rate among US citizens. However, just discussing that hesitancy is increasing will not be enough, as knowing the reason leading to the behaviour is an important factor. One of the reasons for vaccine hesitancy includes the belief that people are less likely to be infected with Covid-19, (Khubchandani et al., 2021).

When the vaccine was introduced during the height of Covid-19, the concept of vaccine hesitancy was again visited. People lacked confidence and were worried about its future complications. They were not aware of possible side effects of the vaccine and were also were concerned how severe the side effects could be. The rumors and misinformation about the vaccines were prevalent around social media, which made people hesitant in receiving the vaccine. 

The Importance of Vaccination

Certain ethnic groups have higher vaccine hesitancy due to less access or negative interactions with healthcare professionals. They have less belief in political explanations as well. Males have accepted vaccination more readily compared to females. Women are more likely to avoid vaccination, thinking that it might affect their unborn children. The psychological reason why young people are more vaccine-hesitant compared to the elderly and also those who fall under the lower economic group is hesitant to vaccination as they think they are less likely to get infected, (Khubchandani et al., 2021).

Psychology suggests that there are two types of people, one group is anti-vaccination and the other is pro-vaccination, but research has suggested another group is just delaying the process of vaccination. Due to health disparity people in Poland often lie in the middle continuum, as they are unsure of the side effects of the vaccine, (Stasiuk et al., 2021).

People in Chile due to the disproportion of medication services, often are in a dilemma of if there will be negative side effects of the vaccination. Thus, differentiated vaccination services are needed for the undecided group stressing the factors, which answer their reason to be hesitant about vaccination. (Cerda & García, 2021).

In countries of the African continent, the deployment of COVID-19 is on peak but it has also led to cases of vaccine hesitancy. Vaccine hesitancy is because of shortage of vaccines, and it has led to low rates of vaccination in the continent (Carcelen, et al., 2021). In Central Asia, the vaccination rate in Kazakhstan is 8.3 per cent, whereas in Russia, it is 8.7 per cent and in India, it was around 9.4 percent. In the countries of South Asia that are wealthy and developed such as Korea and Japan the rate of vaccination is 6.9 and 2.2 per cent respectively (Oxford Analytica, 2021). If Middle Eastern countries are considered, then it is around 23 per cent and 28 per cent in Kuwait and Jordan, respectively.

Psychological reasons promoting vaccination hesitancy among the people of Ireland and the United Kingdom indicate that they have disbelief about the traditional sources of information on vaccination, (Murphy et al., 2021).

Vaccine hesitancy is also found in the healthcare workers who are thought to be more educated in every aspect. The healthcare workers are also concerned about the safety and efficiency of the vaccine of COVID-19. Some healthcare workers also have preference over natural immunity more than immunity provided by vaccination. One of the main factors in terms of healthcare workers are acceptance of the vaccine and distrust in the governance (Aoun, et al., 2021).

Reasons for Vaccine Hesitancy

Nursing students in Michigan, however, had positive feedback and concept about the vaccination and did not show hesitancy about it since they are the front-line warriors of Covid. It is difficult to say there is no medication discrepancy that they face, especially if there are nurses from a minority community. However, research suggests that there is still a need to promote an educational curriculum to deal with vaccination hesitancy among that share of the population, (Lucia, Kelekar & Afonso, 2020).

Though we do not have information about all the countries at large, vaccination efficiency and mistrust about the safety that entails proves to be the greatest problem due to medical discrepancies, (Sallam, 2021). One of the major psychological factors playing the most crucial role in vaccine hesitancy is the socioeconomic condition. Thus, many American and Canadian people are more interested in developing natural immunity than vaccination. They also have safety concerns due to a lack of clarity in the information, (Aafp.org, 2021).

Poor experiences like side effects in the past due to vaccination have led to vaccination hesitancy. Such risk perception and experiences of discrimination among the US population have led to Covid-19 vaccination hesitancy. Experiences of racial discrimination increase the rate of hesitancy among the population and due to lack of clear communication about the lack of side effects, the fear among the population persists (Savoia et al., 2021).

Doubt in vaccination is due to media coverage of issues that remain unclear to them. People are less likely to be hesitant when they are exposed to a consensual statement. Exposure to different false narratives about the origin of the virus and the effect of the vaccine on them leads to the treatment of the diseases. They believe some sort of information is important to them to dissolve their confusion and help them to get into either the group of vaccine-hesitant or the group of vaccine acceptors, (Chadwick et al., 2021).

Various fake information made rounds initially. It was circulated that the African descendants are immune to the disease, and they are less likely to be infected and thus, do not need vaccination. Many African Americans have disbelief about the medical community. The lack of confidence combined with false information may have led to the mistrust of vaccination and resulted in hesitance to vaccinate (Wells & Gowda, 2020).

People with mental health problems are also discriminated against in terms of vaccination. It is the added job responsibility of the mental health professionals to look after social challenges and assassinate the vaccination drive of the mentally ill people. Vaccination is adversely affected by misinformation leading to vaccination hesitancy. Health inequity is faced by patients suffering from mental health problems, and thus, researchers suggest to the global mental health fraternity to meet the gap effectively, (Banerjee et al., 2021).

Impact of Vaccine Hesitancy in Different Countries

Not disclosing health-related information transparently, is a common issue in patient-health provider connections and a reference of deep mistrust. While professionals are often concerned that complete disclosure will end up causing mental anguish in patients, the rewards for lack of clarity during the COVID-19 disease outbreak are more related to the huge pressure to finish the pandemic as soon as possible, and thus to incentives to not reveal details that may jeopardise vaccine acceptance (Petersen, et al., 2021).

Vaccination hesitancy is in itself a big issue. It has been mandated that everyone needs to be vaccinated. Nearly all employment sectors have mandated their employees to get vaccinated by a certain deadline. U.S Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health, stresses that vaccination policy needs to be implemented and enforced on every employee, keeping in mind their Occupational Safety and Health Hazards. A temporary emergency standard (ETS) was also established, which states that employees can choose between getting vaccinated, or getting weekly testing, and medical check-ups free of cost. ETS also provides time off to get vaccination doses.  In certain cases, due to the absence of federal and state policy clearly articulated about the importance of vaccination, private employers have adopted their vaccination policy to reduce the risk of the disease. Vaccine mandates are claimed to be the best public policy, (Mulligan & Harris, 2021).

There have been controversies due to the vaccination mandates. Vaccination mandates are not new. The policy has a complicated history in the United States.  Parents are worried if the vaccination will have any adverse effects on their child due to which rate of vaccination goes down. With the the rate of immunization, the rate of infection continues to rise. Which makes the people of all racial communities think and worry more about the implications and the complications of the viruses. Medical discrepancies for different age groups have been present all through history. Research suggests that there needs to be a presence that guides policies that would mandate the teenagers being vaccinated that are just mere encouragement. For health workers, there have been many debates focusing on the strength of the mandates made by the institution, (Lantos et al., 2010).

If low-income countries had comparable rates of vaccination as high-income countries, an acceleration in ramping up production and ability to share sufficient doses of vaccines could have added $38 billion to their GDP forecast for 2021. At a time when richer countries have paid trillions in stimulus to prop up faltering economies, now is the time to ensure vaccine doses are distributed quickly, all barriers to increasing vaccine manufacturing are removed, and financing support is secured so vaccines can be distributed equitably and a truly global economic recovery can occur.

Psychological Factors Contributing to Vaccine Hesitancy

The Biden administration's COVID-19 "emergency temporary standard" (ETS)—better widely recognized as the vaccine requirement by Biden, faces the scrutiny of the constitution. The regime, that would demand organisations with more than 100 employees to require vaccination or testing done every week that began from January 4, has been met with legislative and administrative objection. The obligation is likely to end up on the emergency proceedings of Supreme Court sooner rather than later, due to both federalism and separation of powers concerns. The federal government lacks a general public health power, and Congress hasn't even attempted to legislate workplace vaccination.

There has been evidence of discrepancies based on racial discrimination of Black Americans. Black Americans nationwide are reluctant to take the vaccination, even those fighting the viruses every day. There is a history of exploiting people of color at the hands of the white US community or the healthcare system, and thus, the trust in the mandates passed by them is less among minorities. Discrimination has caused general mistrust in the health care system among the black community. Thus, past and present injustices have to be reviewed and the gap needs to be met to bring more Black Americans under vaccination by developing trust among them. Though vaccine confidence among them has increased, mistrust plays an important role in holding the ethnic minority community and economically challenged people back from vaccination, (Rusoja & Thomas, 2021).

There are some misconceptions regarding vaccinations, which is a result of ill effects of vaccination in the past. Such concepts need to be dealt with. Due to inequality in income, many are reluctant to take vaccinations and are more interested in developing immunity naturally. Free vaccinations can solve problems as Covid-19 vaccination is needed as a precautionary measure of the virus. Research suggests that at the community level, communication strategies need to be implemented which is based on evidence to meet vaccination hesitance.

The Assembly Committee on Human Services cited Stanford University's Basic Income Lab in its study on legislative changes to generate a "universal basic income" (UBI). Universal basic income (UBI) is a government program in which every adult citizen receives a set amount of money regularly. The goals of a basic income system are to alleviate poverty and replace other need-based social programs. However, in the meantime, we must broaden access beyond the physical being.  Researchers have also proposed that openness from those in power is required to help develop new trends of trust. At the height of the pandemic, working or learning remotely became a way of life. There is much to be said about adapting such methods to life to not only battle vaccine hesitancy, but affords people the ability to continue to earn a living and or gain the education needed to succeed in life. There may be other factors that could play a great factor in easing tensions concerning COVID-19 vaccinations; it will take more research to see what they are.