Abstract
Introduction: Vaccines has been a highly effective treatment for certain diseases. There has been controversial debate about the effects of vaccines. As a result, during the Covid-19 pandemic the world is in need for a vaccine treatment. This paper aims to answer the question “Will people be willing accepting a Covid-19 vaccine?”
Body: There are three survey-based articles that is used to answer this question. Each representing a different sample sizes in the populations of United States and France. They test for variables including demographic characteristics, attitudes and beliefs, gender and ethnicity etc. to see how they impact people’s choice accepting a Covid-19 vaccine.
Conclusion: There would be majority of people within the population of each country to be willing to accept a Covid-19 vaccine. The key factor that would sway people’s choice in accepting a Covid-19 vaccine would be the information provided about its effects. There is also more research to be done to see if these variables correlate to people choice in accepting the Covid-19 Vaccine.
In the year 2020, we are faced with the Covid-19 global pandemic. It is highly infectious disease that is infecting millions of people around the world and is causing a global economic crisis. Vaccine development is the most effective strategy to prevent and eliminate any infectious disease. Therefore, they are various vaccines under development to treat the Covid-19 Virus. Vaccines is helpful for allowing us to acquire herd immunity. It is proven to strengthen our immune systems and allow our body to produce antibodies to fight off viruses and other infectious diseases. Even though, vaccines have played a critical role in medicine and our physical wellness, it has been placed under scrutiny. Many have indicated how vaccines have negatively affected us in the past and others have provided false allegations on the effect of vaccine.
Nevertheless, there is no denying the positive effects that vaccine may have on our health. The question that we should figure out during the Covid-19 global pandemic is “Will people be willing to accept a Covid-19 Vaccine?” There are three research articles that involves surveys that represent different sample size in the United States and France that attempt to answer this question. These include: “Determinants of Covid-19 Vaccine Acceptance in the United States” by Amyn A. Malik, Sarah Ann McFadden, Jad Elharke, Saad B. Omer, “ Intention to Participate in a Covid-19 Vaccine clinical trial and to get vaccinated against Covid-19 in France during the Pandemic” by Maelle Detoc, Sebastien Bruel, Paul Frappe, et. al, and “Acceptability of a Covid-19 vaccine among adults in the United States: How many People would get Vaccinated?” by Paul L. Reiter, Michael L Pennell, Mira L Katz. Reviewing these articles will aim to: answer how people feel about Covid–19 vaccine, discuss the factors affecting people decision of accepting Covid-19 vaccine and provide the limitation in methods use to answer the questions.
Methods use to analyze the people’s choice of accepting a vaccine
In the article “Determinants of Covid-19 vaccine acceptance in the US” by Malik et al, it provides information on the demographic of the United States by using an online survey on cloud research. It shows how people’s acceptance of the Covid-19 vaccine is influenced by socioeconomic factors including low income, educational standards, employment, race, ethnicity and age. It correlates the participants interest in taking the covid-19 vaccine to whether they have received the H1N1 flu vaccine in 2011. Additionally, the article “Acceptability of a Covid-19 vaccine among adults in the United States: How many People would get Vaccinated?” by Reiter et al, discusses the factors that may have an impact on American’s choice to accept the Covid-19 Vaccine. It uses a cross-sectional survey to assess participants demographic characteristic such as political leaning, health related characteristics such as personal history of Covid-19 diagnosis and recommendation of healthcare provider, as well, as their attitudes and beliefs. It correlates the acceptability of the Covid-19 Vaccine using these variables. Moreover, the article “Intention to Participate in a Covid-19 Vaccine clinical trial and to get vaccinated against Covid-19 in France during the Pandemic” by Detoc et al, discusses participants willingness to partake in Covid-19 Vaccine trial and to accept the actual Covid-19 Vaccine. It uses social media such as Facebook and Twitter to conduct a survey where it assesses a person decision to accept a Covid-19 vaccine. It considers factors including ager, gender, fears of Covid-19, Perceived individual risk, Vaccine hesitancy and whether or not the participant is a health care worker. All three articles are survey based that aims to analyze the specific factors that would influence people’s choice in accepting a Covid-19 Vaccine. Based on the articles: demographic characteristic, gender and age seems to be reoccurring factors that can influence people’s choice to accept a Covid-19 Vaccine.
How do people feel about the Covid-19 Vaccine?
Research found that majority of people within the estimates of the population of the survey would more likely be willing to accept Covid-19 Vaccine. According to M. Detoc et al “In this online survey, we observed that nearly three quarters of the respondents would accept a vaccine against COVID-19 although 35% of the respondents were qualified as ‘‘vaccine hesitant”” (2020 p.7003). This suggest that people are willing to receive the Covid-19 Vaccine even though that they are skeptical about its effects.
Therefore, the way information is released about a vaccine should be taken into consideration. In the article “Determinants of Covid-19 Vaccine acceptance in the US”, it suggests that 67 % of the participants were willing to accept the Covid-19 Vaccine. However, less Americans may actually take the vaccine than those that intend to vaccinate if they realize that they were being misinformed about the vaccine (Malik et al. 2020 p.5-6). This demonstrates that people will willingly take the Covid-19 Vaccine if they are adequately provided the reasons why they should take the Covid-19 vaccine.
Moreover, the way people think about the Covid-19 maybe influence by their political affiliations. According to Reiter et al “The finding concerning political leaning may reflect the polarization of issues related to COVID-19 by political leaning. Indeed, individuals with a conservative political leaning may perceive lower risk of Covid-19 infection and may be less likely to engage in protective behaviors” (2020, p. 6505). This concludes that they are certain ideologies that people may have that will influence their choice of choosing to accept a Covid-19 Vaccine.
All three articles suggest that majority of people within the population of the United States and France would most likely be willing to accept a Covid-19 Vaccine. The article “Determinants of Covid-19 Vaccine acceptance in the US” by Malik et al indicates that people’s acceptance of the Covid-19 vaccine has to do with how well they are informed about the effects of the vaccine. The article “Acceptability of a Covid-19 vaccine among adults in the United States: How many People would get Vaccinated?” by Reiter et al points out that people acceptance of a Covid-19 Vaccine will be hugely influenced by their attitudes and beliefs.
Factors that influence people choices in accepting a Covid-19 Vaccine
People’s acceptance of the Covid-19 vaccine is based on several factors. The first is social and economic factors that people face. Reiter et al states “Our findings for income and health insurance coincide with past research, which found uptake of other vaccines was lower among individuals with lower socioeconomic status or without health insurance” (2020, p.6505). Therefore, it can be suggested that racial disparities are factors that influence people willingness to accept a Covid-19 vaccine. Malik et al elaborates on this by saying “Historical oppression and current disparities in care are linked to a mistrust of the healthcare system among some Black Americans…Supporting this, our study found that Black Americans were less likely to get the influenza vaccine and are less likely to accept a potential COVID-19 vaccine”(2020,p.4). This suggest that black Americans which are among the race with the lowest income earners are less likely to support accepting a Covid-19 Vaccine.
The second factor that influences people’s choice in accepting a Covid-19 vaccine is the fear of attracting the virus and knowing the effects the Covid-19 vaccine will have. Detoc et al states that “expecting a low infection risk is associated with a lower willingness to get vaccinated” (2020, p.7004). This suggest that people who are more concern about the effects of the Covid-19 virus would be more willing to take the vaccine. Likewise, according to Reiter et al. “Several health beliefs were also correlated with vaccine acceptability (i.e., perceived likelihood, perceived severity, perceived vaccine effectiveness, perceived potential vaccine harms)” (2020 p.6505). This suggest people acceptance of the Covid-19 vaccine is determined by the fact that they understand the effects of the vaccines. They can see that the vaccine is helping others around them, which helps to eliminate their fear of taking the Covid-19 Vaccine.
The third factor that influences people’s choice in accepting the Covid-19 vaccine is the fact that they acquire proper information about the vaccine. According to Reiter et al “One of the strongest correlates of vaccine acceptability was whether participants thought their healthcare provider would recommend they get vaccinated against Covid-19” (2020 p.6505). This points out that individuals will most likely accept the vaccine if they adequately provided the information about it from people who they can trust. Therefore, it is important that people of higher authority should be mindful of how they present information to the public. Malik et al adds on by saying “To counter this misinformation and improve trust, thoughtful and targeted messaging needs to be developed and tested now to build on the current public interest and continue the momentum past the release of a vaccine” (2020 p.6). This article points out in order to sway the public opinion about vaccine it is important that you get the information right. The public should be confident in their approach and willing to trust the information they receive about the Covid-19 vaccine.
All these articles suggest that people willingness to accept a Covid-19 vaccine is determined by the way how they receive information about the Covid-19 vaccine. Reiter et al suggest that people who are in a low socioeconomic class are less likely to want to receive a vaccine. Malik et al. points that back American are the race among the lowest income earners. This can be hypothesized that as a result of their economic disparities they would be less concerned about the risk of Covid-19 vaccine as they are least likely to seek information from a health care provider. Detoc et al suggest that those who expect a low risk of virus would result in less vaccination. Therefore, Black Americans would be the ethnic group that are least educated about risk of the Covid-19 and would be least interested in taking the vaccine. As such, all three articles relate to the key idea that information that provided about the Covid-19 vaccine would be the key factor in swaying the public’s opinion especially to those who are less informed.
Limitation on the methods use to determine vaccine acceptabilitys
There are certain limitations found with the use of these online surveys. In the article “Determinants of Covid-19 Vaccine acceptance in the US”, it points out that the survey included 672 participants. This does not accurately represent the population of the United states. The survey was done on Cloud research, which suggest that poor and older people would be excluded from the survey. Moreover, that would lead to selection bias and may limit the generalizability of the sample. Additionally, the survey may be influenced by selection bias which indicates that people answers may reflect the answers they saw other participants chose. The article “Intention to Participate in a Covid-19 Vaccine clinical trial and to get vaccinated against Covid-19 in France during the Pandemic.” portray similar problems even though it has a larger sample size of 3259. Many individuals who answered the anonymous survey were health care workers which means it skew the result representing the people that would actually accept the covid-19 vaccine. However, in the article “Acceptability of a Covid-19 vaccine among adults in the United States: How many People would get Vaccinated?”, it uses a sample size of 2006 participants ranging from all 50 states which suggest the population of size was fairly represented. The limitation with this cross-sectional survey is the fact that there is a lack of information about the details that could affect vaccine acceptability. Based on the limitations summarized from these articles it suggests that the data provided by these studies are inconclusive. As a result, it is hard to decide if the results obtained are accurate because it is hard to tell whether the participants answers are true. There is more research that is needed to be done to see that these variables truly correlate to people’s choice in accepting a covid-19 vaccine.
Conclusion
Overall, the articles predict that there would be majority of the population within both countries would be willing to accept the Covid-19 vaccine. The factors that influence people’s choices include: their demographic characteristics such as income level, ethnicity, their attitude and beliefs including political leaning. Additionally, people trust in their health care provider and people of higher authority and how well they receive the information about the Covid-19 vaccine play a huge role in accepting a Covid-19 vaccine. However, there is more research that is needed to be done to see that these variables truly correlate to people’s choice in accepting a Covid-19 vaccine. These statistics may inaccurately represent the population that intend to vaccinate. Moreover, it is difficult to assess the accuracy of the answers within the survey because there is no way to influence to the participants to be truthful in their responses.
Reference
Detoc, M., Bruel, S., Frappe, P., Tardy, B., Botelho-Nevers, E., & Gagneux-Brunon, A. (2020, September 17). Intention to participate in a COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial and to get vaccinated against COVID-19 in France during the pandemic. Retrieved October 13, 2020, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X20312019
Malik, A., McFadden, S., Elharake, J., & Omer, S. (2020, August 12). Determinants of COVID-19 vaccine acceptance in the US. Retrieved October 13, 2020, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S258953702030239X
Reiter, P., Pennell, M., & Katz, M. (2020, August 20). Acceptability of a COVID-19 vaccine among adults in the United States: How many people would get vaccinat? Retrieved =October 13, 2020, fromhttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X20310847
