What we can learn about overcoming COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy from the Americans who are just now deciding to get their shots.
ne in four American adults is unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated, and that number isn’t budging much these days. Fewer than 80,000 adults are getting their first shot every day—a 96% drop from the more than 2 million a day in April 2021. It’s easy to believe that anyone who hasn’t gotten a shot by now is unlikely to get one in the future—but there is still a group of people, however small, just finally coming around to the vaccine.
But the overall numbers don’t tell the whole story. TIME’s deeper analysis reveals that some subgroups of the unvaccinated population have more potential to come off the fence than others. Fisher didn’t feel that he was at risk of getting COVID-19 given that he worked outdoors at a cranberry marsh and steered clear of intimate gatherings. So he settled into a months-long wait-and-see mode. Gradually, he felt more comfortable with the idea as more of his acquaintances got vaccinated. “Once I started chatting with other people that have gotten it and it hasn’t really affected them or interfered with anything then I figured it was all right to go get it,” he says.
As the holidays approached, Fisher’s desire to see his grandparents—who are in their 80s and in poor health—and Patricia’s insistence that in order to do so, he needed to get vaccinated, won him over. Just before the New Year, he got his first shot and made plans to visit them after getting the second shot.
Early in the vaccine rollout, immigrants faced many logistical challenges in getting vaccinated. Not all of the resource materials were available in Spanish. There weren’t many vaccination sites, and some of them were difficult to get to, and often didn’t have a Spanish speaker to translate or answer questions., organizing information campaigns and vaccine drives at convenient hours and locations. Olea thinks vaccine mandates are a good approach for this particular demographic.
“I’m not worried any more,” Rodriguez says. “I’m more worried about catching COVID in crowded places.”Courtesy Monique Burroughs
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