Large percentages of health professionals in several states said they would not get the COVID-19 vaccine, with some citing a distrust of political machinations behind the vaccine’s creation schedule.
The New York Post reported on Friday that health services in California, New York, Ohio and Texas are refusing to get the vaccine in large numbers. Workers are citing skepticism that the vaccine would work without side effects, given the speed with which it was developed and approved.
“Earlier this week, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine revealed that about 60 percent of nursing home workers in his state have so far decided not to get vaccinated,” reported the Post. “More than half of New York City’s EMS workers showed skepticism, The Post reported last month.”
In California, surveys of health professionals at several hospitals have also shown a reluctance to get the vaccine, although industry professionals are among the first in line to receive it. The Los Angeles Times reported that about 50% of workers at St. Elizabeth Community Hospital in Tehama County, refused to get the vaccine, although it was offered. About 20% of workers at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills have also declined, the agency said.
“About 20% to 40% of LA county frontline employees who received the vaccine did the same, according to the county’s public health officials,” the Times reported. “So many frontline employees in Riverside County refused the vaccine – about 50% – that the hospital and government officials met to devise strategies on how to better distribute unused doses, said Public Health Director Kim Saruwatari.”
The agency attested to the “safety and efficacy” of vaccines, which is supported by scientific evidence. A hospital worker in Providence Holy Cross told the agency that she will not get the vaccine because she is not sure how it would affect her since she is six months pregnant. She said other workers are refusing the vaccine because they have not yet caught it, despite being on the front lines and feeling they can survive it.
“I feel like people think, ‘I can still survive to the end without getting the vaccine,'” she told the Times.
In Texas, a doctor at the Houston Memorial Medical Center told NPR that at least half of the hospital’s nurses refused the vaccine.
The Times reported that part of the vaccine anxiety was reported in a recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which found that 29% of healthcare professionals were at least hesitant to get the vaccine:
“Even the name, Operation Warp Speed, attracts some concern to people about the rush to push it,” said Dr. Medell Briggs-Malonson, an emergency doctor at UCLA Health who received the vaccine. Still, she urged her colleagues to do the same.
“It is certainly disappointing,” said Sal Rosselli, president of the National Health Workers Union. “But it is not shocking, given what the federal government has done in the past 10 months. … Trust science. It is about science, reality and what is right ”.
The consequences are potentially dire: if few people are vaccinated, the pandemic will spread indefinitely, leading to future outbreaks, excessive pressure on the health system and ongoing economic consequences.
“Our ability as a society to return to a higher level of functioning depends on having as many people as possible protected,” said Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch.
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