Former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W Bush, and Barack Obama said this week they would publicly take a coronavirus vaccine, once it’s available in the US, to encourage skeptical Americans to do the same, NPR reports.
That might include getting vaccinated on TV, but precise details haven’t yet been worked out.
- Eleonora Badikyan at Van Nuys High School in California tells us what’s so special about these vaccines in The Mirror student newspaper. This student publication won awards last month from the National Scholastic Press Association.
According to a Gallup poll, concluded at the beginning of November, about 4 in 10 American adults are skeptical of being vaccinated.
Covid-19 has hit Black and Brown communities especially hard, where about 10 to 15 percent more people are hesitant toward the vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.
These were the top reasons for skepticism given by respondents:
- Concerns about rushed timeline
- Want to wait to confirm it is safe
- Don’t trust vaccines generally
- Want to wait to see how effective it is
Student reporter Maya Page at Glenbard South High School in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, interviewed several students and asked them their thoughts about the vaccines for Covid-19. When asked if they would be willing to get vaccinated when vaccine doses become available, here’s a sample of their responses:
I’m “willing to try the vaccine when it’s approved by the FDA and other credible doctors and scientists have also made sure that it’s completely safe” (a sophomore).
“I am definitely pro-vaccine, but I would need to research and educate myself more before I was willing to try it once it’s made available to the public.” Part of her “believes that perhaps the government administration is rushing the process in hopes of appeasing the public” (a freshman).
“After quarantining like everyone else for many months, being hospitalized for Covid, and watching people I knew and loved suffer, [I was] instantly elated [when I] learned about the two possible vaccines. … The companies making these vaccines definitely have monetary motivation, but the vaccines have been tested and approved by medical experts with no motivation to lie” (a junior).
How strange it is, the last student said, “to watch people complain (or ignore clear regulations) about the struggles this pandemic has brought, and then turn around and attack the one thing [the vaccine] that will get us back to some form of normalcy.”
