{"id":223728,"date":"2020-12-24T07:15:22","date_gmt":"2020-12-24T07:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=223728"},"modified":"2020-12-27T08:48:30","modified_gmt":"2020-12-27T08:48:30","slug":"covid-vaccine-hesitancy-widespread-even-among-medical-professionals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=223728","title":{"rendered":"COVID Vaccine Hesitancy Widespread, Even Among Medical Professionals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jeremy Loffredo \u2013 Children\u2019s Health Defense Nov 25, 2020<\/strong><\/h1>\n

As details on the latest COVID vaccine<\/a> contenders flood the news cycle on a daily basis, reports of concerns<\/a> regarding the safety and efficacy of the vaccine are widespread among many demographics, even including the professional medical community.<\/p>\n

As vaccine hesitancy grows agencies, including the World Health Organization (WHO), are stepping up efforts to build vaccine confidence through public relations and communications campaigns.<\/p>\n

Surveys reveal vaccine hesitancy<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Researchers from the University of California Los Angeles\u2019 Karin Fielding School of Public Health surveyed<\/a> healthcare personnel working in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. As the Washington Post reported<\/a>, they found that two thirds (66.5%) of healthcare workers \u201cintend to delay vaccination,\u201d meaning they do not intend to get the COVID<\/a> vaccine when it becomes available. They plan instead on reviewing the data once it\u2019s widely administered and proven safe.<\/p>\n

Seventy-six percent of the vaccine-hesitant healthcare workers cited the \u201cfast-tracked vaccine development\u201d as a primary reason for their concerns. Typically, vaccines take between eight to 10 years to develop, Dr. Emily Erbelding, an infectious disease expert at National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN<\/a> in an article titled, \u201cThe timetable for a coronavirus vaccine is 18 months. Experts say that\u2019s risky.\u201d<\/p>\n

The coronavirus vaccine frontrunners \u2014 Pfizer, <\/a>Moderna<\/a> and AstraZeneca<\/a> \u2014 are expected to make their debut in January. The pharmaceutical giants<\/a> have exponentially accelerated the average safety and review timeline for vaccine development and production, to get the vaccines to market in under a year. Erbelding admitted that the accelerated pace will involve \u201cnot looking at all the data.\u201d<\/p>\n

Susan Bailey, president of the American Medical Association, said in a video<\/a> that the number of physicians expressing hesitancy was \u201cunprecedented\u201d and \u201cposed a real risk\u201d to public confidence in vaccines.<\/p>\n

A recent Gallup poll<\/a> showed that only 58% of Americans plan on getting the COVID vaccine when it\u2019s available. An October poll conducted by Zogby<\/a> found that nearly 50% of Americans have concerns about the safety<\/a> of the coming COVID vaccines.<\/p>\n

A new collaborative survey project<\/a> by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Langer Research found that Black and Latinx Americans are overwhelmingly concerned about the coming COVID vaccine.<\/p>\n

The survey, as reported in the Washington post<\/a>, claims to be \u201cone of the largest and most rigorous conducted on this topic to date.\u201d It found that only 14% of Black Americans trust that a vaccine will be safe, while only 34% of Latinx Americans trust it will be safe.<\/p>\n

The survey also found, in the context of COVID, only 19% percent of Black Americans trust drug companies, while less than a third trust the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to \u201clook after their interests.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a group of medical experts who advise the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), fears surrounding the painful or harmful side-effects of the COVID vaccine are rooted in reality<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to CNBC<\/a>, during a virtual Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices\u2019 meeting on Nov. 23, Dr. Sandra Fryhofer told fellow CDC officials that patients need to be aware that the side effects from the COVID vaccines \u201cwill not be a walk in the park.\u201d Fryhofer acknowledged that side effects from the vaccines have been reported to mimic symptoms of a mild case of COVID, including muscle pain, fever, chills and headache.<\/p>\n

Fryhofer, who explained that both Pfizer\u2019s and Moderna\u2019s COVID vaccines require two doses, worries that her patients might not come back for a second dose after experiencing potentially unpleasant side effects after the first shot.<\/p>\n

As a participant of the Moderna vaccine trials noted \u201cit was the sickest I\u2019ve ever been<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Health officials try to combat vaccine hesitancy<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Despite this, officials at the forefront of the COVID response plan to combat vaccine safety concerns and hesitancy using, what some are calling<\/a>, questionable psychological techniques.<\/p>\n

For example, the WHO, which named \u201cvaccine hesitancy<\/a>\u201d as the top global public health threat, has hired the PR firm Hill + Knowlton<\/a> to identify micro-influencers, macro-influencers and \u201chidden heroes\u201d on social media who could covertly promote the organization\u2019s image as a COVID authority in order to \u201censure WHO\u2019s advice and guidance is followed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cass Sunstein, the chairman of WHO\u2019s Technical Advisory Group on Behavioral Insights, recently wrote<\/a> an article in Bloomberg in which he promoted the use of popular celebrities, athletes and actors as tools for vaccine persuasion against those who \u201clack vaccine confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTrusted politicians, athletes or actors \u2014 thought to be \u2018one of us\u2019 rather than \u2018one of them\u2019 \u2014 might explicitly endorse vaccination and report that they themselves have gotten the vaccine,\u201d Sunstein wrote.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the \u201cGuide to COVID-19 Vaccine Communications<\/a>,\u201d developed by the University of Florida and the United Nations that aims to help governments improve COVID vaccine uptake. The authors of the guide promote the tactic of covertly using trusted community leaders to help with pro-vaccine information.<\/p>\n

Citing vaccine hesitancy<\/a> among the African American community, the guide suggests that barber shops and hair salons in predominantly black neighborhoods might be tapped to help disseminate approved vaccine messaging.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The WHO has named \u201cvaccine hesitancy\u201d as the top global public health threat. As a recent survey finds that two thirds (66.5%) of healthcare workers in Los Angeles \u201cintend to delay vaccination,\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Health"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=223728"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":223819,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223728\/revisions\/223819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=223728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=223728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=223728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}