By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay reporter
FRIDAY, July 16, 2021 (HealthDay News) – Public health officials and government officials are doing everything they can to promote the COVID-19 vaccination – placing advertisements, press releases, money lotteries and, in some, even offering incentives such as free beer, joints or donuts.
But nothing impresses a vaccine-reluctant person more than a word with a family member, a friend or their own doctor, as a new survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) shows.
Survey results show that such conversations were the game changer for most people who continued with the jab, even though they originally planned to wait a while.
“It really seems that talking to friends and family members – seeing friends and family members being vaccinated and visiting without major side effects – was a major motivator, as was talking to their doctors,” said Ashley Kirzinger, associate director of the research team for public opinion and polls for the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
For the survey, which was released on July 13, the researchers revisited people who had announced their intention to either receive the vaccine or wait in another survey in January before shots were available to most people, Kirzinger said .
In the follow-up survey in June, the KFF researchers found that many people stuck to their original intentions.
Those vaccinated during the six-month interval included:
- 92% of those who wanted to get vaccinated “as soon as possible”.
- 54% of those who said they would “wait and see”.
- 24% said they would only get the vaccine when needed, or they would definitely not.
But these results also mean that about half of the wait and see crowd and a quarter of solid heel runners have changed their minds and taken their shots.
What happened?
Most often, people who had a change of heart said they received the vaccine after being talked into by a family member, with 17% saying their relatives influenced them, the survey shows.
Conversations with others in their life also proved convincing, including conversations with their doctor (10%), a close friend (5%), or a work colleague or classmate (2%).
A quarter also reported that it was influenced to see how people around them received the vaccine without any bad side effects.
Some of the responses the pollsters got were:
- “That it was clearly safe. Nobody died,” said a 32-year-old Republican from South Carolina, initially in the “wait and see” category.
- “I was visiting my family members in another state and they were all vaccinated with no problem, which encouraged me to get vaccinated,” said another “wait and see” guy, a 63-year-old independent from Texas.
- “My husband annoyed me about getting it and I gave in,” said a 42-year-old Republican from Indiana, who previously said she was “definitely not” going to get the vaccine.
- “Friends and family talked me into it, as did my job,” said a 28-year-old “definitely not” man from Virginia.
“These interpersonal relationships seem to be the greatest motivators,” said Kirzinger. “That’s not to say that spreading the news about vaccinations is not good, but what will convince people the most is people’s relationships with their friends and family members.”
For Dr. This finding was no surprise to Amesh Adalja, a senior scientist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore.
“There has never been any meaningful data to support financial or other incentives for vaccinations,” said Adalja. “So it’s not surprising to me that friends, family members, and trusted people were the biggest factor in determining how likely someone was to get vaccinated. As we try to increase vaccinations, it will be very important to motivate these types of people to motivate, “the vaccine reluctant.”
About a third of the first adult survey group remains unvaccinated, the survey found. When asked what is holding them back, these people most often cited their fear of the possible side effects of the shot or their skepticism about the health threat posed by the pandemic.
“COVID wasn’t the pandemic it was thought to be and I’m not being vaccinated against it,” said a 26-year-old Republican from Iowa, who planned to get the vaccine as soon as possible back in January.
Newer, more contagious COVID-19 variants such as the Delta variant that struck India last spring could create a “greater sense of urgency,” said Kirzinger, but she is not entirely convinced of this notion.
“If the cases rise again, they may reconsider those decisions and think, oh, now is the time to protect yourself,” said Kirzinger. “Or it can be the downside where they say, well, I didn’t mean to get the vaccine and now the vaccines aren’t even working, so why should I get them now?”
More information
You can find the survey results of the Kaiser Family Foundation here.
SOURCES: Ashley Kirzinger, PhD, Associate Director, Public Opinion and Survey Research Team, Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation; Amesh Adalja, MD, Senior Scholar, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, Baltimore; Kaiser Family Foundation, survey, July 13, 2021
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