![]() We want as much of the general population to get this vaccine. Is it frustrating that we have this vaccine that is proven safe, is more available but not everyone will take it?Īs an infectious disease epidemiologist, I’m so excited to see so many people - over 100 million Americans - have gotten COVID-19 vaccine shots so far. Any of those reasons might be behind why they don’t get the vaccine and that’s different from vaccine hesitancy. If they’re in a rural area or in some inner cities where there’s lack of access to vaccination centers, vaccine access may be more difficult. People might not have easy access to vaccines and that could depend on the area of the country they’re in. There are a number of reasons why people might not be vaccinated. There could also be overconcerns about safety and effectiveness. This could be due to mistrust in government health officials or in health care providers. There are a number of reasons why people might not want to get a vaccine. And only when those conditions are met, can we start thinking about whether somebody is vaccine hesitant or not. When we’re talking about vaccine hesitancy, it’s really important for us to understand that the vaccine needs to be available and needs to be convenient and easily accessed. Vaccine hesitancy is when people are rejecting a vaccine or when they are deciding to delay it, even when it is available. In this video, Abram Wagner, research assistant professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health, discusses the challenges of reaching herd immunity. We’re not vaccinating children, so when we’re talking about attaining a certain proportion of the population vaccinated, we need to realize that we’re not even able to vaccinate the children at this point in time and it’ll be probably a few more months before a vaccine is readily available for all ages of children. The other thing is that children could be transmitting SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19. And that could be due to access or could be due to a vaccine hesitancy. There’s going to be some areas where there’s a higher percentage of the population vaccinated, in some areas less. And we know that that’s not the case in the U.S. ![]() There needs to be equal mixing of vaccinated and unvaccinated people in the population. There’s a number of things that need to be true for this concept to actually work. It refers to what proportion of the population needs to be vaccinated in order to completely eliminate local transmission of disease, to snuff out outbreaks as they occur. ![]() Herd immunity is a theoretical concept in infectious disease epidemiology. Do you think herd immunity is attainable in the U.S.? Since the beginning of the pandemic, herd immunity has been portrayed as the holy grail to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic.Ībram Wagner, research assistant professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health, explains why reaching herd immunity might not be as simple as we thought, and what vaccine hesitancy and availability have to do with it. ![]()
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