7 ms·

Vaccine Hesitancy for Covid-19: State, County, and Local Estimates

63 points by dfine 5y ago

darkwizard42 5y ago
This is a pretty interesting map/graph. I also like that they linked to the data in table form. Not really surprised at the areas that are darkest, but still feel worried that lots of areas near 20%. Specifically the levels of non-Hispanic Black hesitancy in the South is really rough. Hopefully over time this improves especially as private enterprises put some pressure on getting vaccinated
- ch4s3 5y ago
  The interesting thing that jumped out at me was the blurring of state borders between southern Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - mbg721 5y ago
    As someone who lives in Cincinnati, my perception is that the restrictions (reflecting to some extent public opinion) have been mostly middle-of-the-pack in both OH and KY. OH's governor is a moderate Republican who may lose his primary over having restrictions at all, and KY's governor is a Democrat who narrowly won the office in 2019 in a state that's generally pretty conservative. The blurred borders make total sense to me in that context, because not much changes across them.
  - jcims 5y ago
    Ohio border is clearly visible but KY/WV blends well. I don't get it though, why would Athens County, OH be almost 4 points higher on the hesitancy scale than Lewis County, KY despite having better vaccination stats?
- psychometry 5y ago
  I have much greater confidence that vaccination of non-white populations in the South will climb to acceptable levels than I do when it comes to GOP base of rural white people with no college.
  - adamrezich 5y ago
    completely baffling to see people imply that college attendance is a prerequisite for having informed views and perspectives on things like politics, in twenty twenty-one.
  - jcims 5y ago
    Why?
- losingmyjob 5y ago
  > Hopefully over time this improves especially as private enterprises put some pressure on getting vaccinated I really hope I don't lose my job because I don't want to take an experimental, unapproved vaccine for a disease that hospitalizes less than 5% of people across all age groups when I work from home, am a healthy weight, and am under forty. The risk for me is, in fact, comparable to the flu, and the vaccine has similar drawbacks to the flu vaccine. Also are you surprised that Black people in the South don't want this experimental vaccine after the Tuskegee Experiment? Combine that with the awful side effects documented on Reddit in r/covidvaccinated and the refusal of the drug company lawyers to accept liability if something is wrong, the very people pushing the vaccine still wearing two masks, the profit incentive of a new annual vaccine, and new reports of menstrual "changes" caused by the vaccines that are rolling in and you know what? I'll take my chances with COVID's death rate, since it's only killed 14000 Americans under forty. This comment will probably get removed but I'm done buying into #BlueAnon conspiracy theories.
  - standardUser 5y ago
    "The risk for me is, in fact..." In fact, the risk for you is that you infect someone you care about and they end up hospitalized or dead. That is a very real risk that has played out countless times during this pandemic and has cost thousands and thousands of lives.
    - abootstrapper 5y ago
      It’s been over a year of explaining this to people. OP is a lost cause.
      - giantg2 5y ago
        It's been way longer than a year for that concept. This concept has been around for other diseases, secondhand smoke, reckless/drunk driving, etc. Different people accept it to varying degrees, usually based on topic and personal beliefs.
      - losingmyjob 5y ago
greesil 5y ago
Why does the data change so much on the boundaries of states? I would expect the data to be locally correlated, and there wouldn't be discrepancies between neighboring rural counties that are in different states.
- ch4s3 5y ago
  I think some states have pretty distinct cultures and politics. But if you look ad Kentucky and West Virginia, you'll have trouble finding the border. There are also effects here around metro areas.
- whatgoodisaroad 5y ago
  Good question. It's less pronounced than Wyoming, but I wonder why Alabama looks so different from its neighbors.
- jp57 5y ago
  My thought exactly. If you took out the borders, many states would still be visible. I would expect the boundary between Tennessee and Kentucky, for example, to be more-or-less invisible, as between Texas and Arkansas. But even Oklahoma is distinguishable from northern Texas, despite basically no cultural or political difference across the Red River.
- renewiltord 5y ago
  Very good point. I wonder if there are local state policies in effect that artifact the data or if there is some sort of state-level estimator being used.
- adamrezich 5y ago
  people live in cities/towns/etc. which are exist in counties which exist in states. the data is per-county. vaccination policies/attitudes are largely defined by governors, who lead states. states often have a shared culture, but sometimes different parts of states have varying cultures. often, population density affects culture/attitudes toward these sorts of things. as with many such maps, adding an additional analysis layer denoting population density would yield interesting results. (though if you intuitively know the population densities of various "outlier" states, and you know where major cities are in the lesser-populated states, you can already intuitively draw some correlations yourself.)
jwilber 5y ago
As someone who moved from Seattle to San Diego recently, I am happy to see both areas doing very well with regards to vaccine hesitancy! Having grown up in San Diego, I actually find it somewhat surprising how low the hesitancy is.
- ultimoo 5y ago
  Why are you surprised at San Diego? I know very little about the culture there so I'm curious
  - spaetzleesser 5y ago
    There are a lot of military and right-wingers in the San Diego area.
    - bluGill 5y ago
      Until recently anti-vacccine was more a left wing thing. (it always has cut across the political spectrum)
      - spaetzleesser 5y ago
        Anti-vaxxers have traditionally been left wing but it seems that COVID has attracted many from the right wing to be anti-vaccine.
  - jwilber 5y ago
    Because San Diego leans right, and current conservatives are more likely to be anti-vaccine [0]. (This is interesting in and of itself, as in previous years, California’s antivax tended to be rich and liberal. Times change!) Downvoting won’t change this! [0] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-41-percent-of-republicans-dont-plan-to-get-the-covid-vaccine https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-41-percent-of-republic...
s09dfhks 5y ago
Good information about where to consider moving for remote work
djoldman 5y ago
Link to leaflet map: https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/interactive_hesitancy_county_week26_final_fixed.html https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/interactive_hesitan...
- mistrial9 5y ago
  this seems unusually simple (in the right way); great to see data https://data.cdc.gov/stories/s/Vaccine-Hesitancy-for-COVID-19/cnd2-a6zw https://data.cdc.gov/stories/s/Vaccine-Hesitancy-for-COVID-1...
howmayiannoyyou 5y ago
Tentative thinking... As someone who likely had CoV in early 2020, and who has had 1 of 2 Moderna vaccines, I am getting my antibodies tested every few months. At the point at which they start declining I would feel better get the 2nd dose; or if the booster is released beforehand. That aside, I can't see the upside in my second dose given the long haul reaction I had to dose #1. I wish the CDC would weigh in formally on 2nd doses for those who had Covid and/or high antibody responses.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
I hope this will change the more people have been vaccinated and are eligible. I know several people who a few months ago said that they would "never" get the vaccine and a few months they all got it or are in line. Every 4 years you also have a lot of people saying "if XXX wins the presidency I'll move to Canada/Mexico". They are all still there. It's good to ask people but they also change their minds quickly once they have more information.
standardUser 5y ago
You can see the same trends emerging on the maps on the NYT vaccine page: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-19-vaccine-doses.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-19-vaccine... If you scroll to the map with state-level data, you can see it has started to resemble the electoral college map. Having checked it out nearly everyday for months now, that resemblance is only growing stronger as time goes on. At a certain point, there may need to be some designation given to certain states or counties - something like a travel advisory - so people know if an area has or is likely to have a COVID outbreak due to low vaccination levels.
- henriquez 5y ago
  Travel advisories may not be sufficient. At some point we may need the federal government to round up individuals who refused to get vaccines and put them in remedial education camps. These camps could be taxpayer neutral through a mandatory daily forced labor quota for each resident. Due to the potential for virulent "super spreaders" among the populations, residents must be kept in solitary confinement for their own safety. The overarching goal here would be rehabilitation, and we could give it a catchy name like "Ministry of Truth."
  - standardUser 5y ago
    A CDC website noting areas with high chances of COVID outbreaks would be sufficient. The vaccines aren't 100% effective, so if you're in a high risk group you'd likely want to know which areas of the country to avoid.
    - henriquez 5y ago
      But how would a website help high-risk individuals to know which unvaccinated individuals to avoid? Another idea could be mandatory tattoos for science deniers - the tattoos would have to be on a conspicuous place like the hand or forehead and visible from a safe enough distance to give people time to put on extra masks. This could be more "humane" than putting them in solitary confinement, but it's more likely to incur a taxpayer expense.
kepler1 5y ago
Friends, tell me how I should be more positive or community minded in thinking about this. Because right now, I say -- "anyone who doesn't want a vaccine, well you live with the consequences and if you can't come to rational understanding that it's your own life being saved, then I shed no tears over your choice". People who do it out of religious (or Republican) dogma, I'm not sympathetic. People who believe in conspiracy theories, I'm not sympathetic. People who have some "cultural history" skeptical of government vaccines, well you have to learn to get over that, one way or another. I'm not that sympathetic. What's the likelihood that the entire US is being subjected to a racially based cruel experiment? You don't want life saving vaccine, produced from the effort and focus of an entire nation, to bring us out of the worst crisis in a generation? Well, I don't mind if there are fewer of you. Aside from the issue where people who are not vaccinated affect those who cannot get vaccinated, it's your own life you're gambling with. Go right ahead. Change my mind please?
- ianai 5y ago
  It’s not just about saving the life of the person being vaccinated. It’s about not giving the virus anymore “fuel” to burn through. Every infection is a roll of many dice. Statistically at some point someone’s mutation will overcome even the vaccines we’ve made. If that spreads we’d be back in February of 2020.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    "If that spreads we’d be back in February of 2020." You mean 'when'. There's no going back at this point.
    - ianai 5y ago
      You get the idea. The point is this isn’t about any individual persons life. This is about the vaccine being our only weapon that can actually stop this pandemic. If we just went on without a vaccine then we probably would see a variant arise that could live longer on surfaces or otherwise spread immensely more effectively or even more deadly. There’s nothing stopping a mutation from really killing 50-75% or more of people. The speed of evolution depends in part on the speed of replication -even in viruses. It’s a war of virus vs humanity.
Steltek 5y ago
It's a good day to be a Masshole. According to the spreadsheet, MA is least hesitant by state and together with VT, sweeps the first 14 counties (and the first 19, if you ignore SF).
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  They got vaccinated so quickly because such a large fraction of them needed to do so as a condition of employment. Healthcare is a massive industry in MA.
  - Steltek 5y ago
    Not even close to true. Demand is so high here, MA was only able to offer vaccines to the general public starting this week. If you were lucky enough to even be eligible last week, you needed to use bots to find an appointment. Compare that to Texas, where shots are going begging at freaking Walmart. It's extremely infuriating. MA's vaccination rate is solely limited by available doses and meanwhile vaccines are expiring unused on the shelf in other states. We could have hit herd immunity by now if we were given the chance.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      Demand is high because all the low risk people in healthcare (and all the other industries that got priority) got in line right away and are/were competing with the high risk people and seniors. Basically we dumped a ton of volume into the vaccination funnel from the get go (because we were vaccinating such a wide range of people so early on because of the employment based qualification criteria) so while there was a backup we were always running the "actually vaccinating people" part of the system at full tilt. Other states poured a comparative trickle into the funnel. While there was no backup up top you didn't have the bottom of the vaccine pipeline running at 100%.
      - Steltek 5y ago
        But early eligibility != required to do your job. The vaccine system was only as "full tilt" as we had doses available. We had capacity for substantially more shots in arms but there was nothing to give. That said, I do agree with the State's priorities. As much as it pains me personally, retail is higher than my comfy WFH butt.
troelsSteegin 5y ago
This is the survey question, as part of a broader Household Pulse Survey: “Once a vaccine to prevent COVID-19 is available to you, would you…get a vaccine?” No mention of a follow up for rationale. via https://data.cdc.gov/stories/s/Vaccine-Hesitancy-for-COVID-19/cnd2-a6zw https://data.cdc.gov/stories/s/Vaccine-Hesitancy-for-COVID-1...
- Lammy 5y ago
  Thanks for sharing. That seems like a divisive question to begin with since people then get to argue about what “prevent” means.
jwineinger 5y ago
The contrast of the Dakotas to Minnesota indicates to me the impact of state leadership / communication.
- rubidium 5y ago
  They are vastly different in the urban areas. Agreed on the rural.
- da_big_ghey 5y ago
  political culture in dakotas very different from that in minnesota. i am having little surprise here.
h2odragon 5y ago
"Hesitancy" nice word. The implication that everyone does want this vaccine is nice; after all, not wanting it would be some sort of mental defect right? "My body, my choice" ain't just a political slogan; it makes sense. I'm glad these vaccines are available, but I had this crud early and I'll pass on the vaccine thx.
oramit 5y ago
I've heard and read a lot about this in the past couple weeks and I sincerely hope public health officials and media don't freak out. We need to stay the course on this and emphasize the positive. 1. Vaccines are still difficult to get in a lot of places. I and my partner only just got appointments for this weekend for our first dose. As long as appointments are required and you have to fight to get a spot at 9am it is going to be difficult to get hesitent people to sign up. I think hesitency will go down dramatically when you can just walk in without an appointment and get it. 2. I really don't understand why Public Health officials keep downplaying the vaccines. They are still talking about everyone masking for months, limited gatherings, no vacations, etc. Why is it always doom and gloom? There is no evidence to support this level of paranoia and the messaging should be the exact opposite. These vaccines are scientific miracles. Get the vaccine and go out and have fun again! 3. The worst thing we can do at this point is to start shaming people for being hesitant. I don't think it has started just yet but I can see it bubbling in certain circles. I was just in a work meeting where we were talking about vaccines and everyone on the call was on board BUT some people only wanted the JandJ one because it used older tech and they didn't want to try the new mRNA ones. This was with a group of all college educated software developers... There is no evidence at all to support this form of hesitancy and yet there it is. Are they Anti-vax? Kind of, but would it have helped matters to argue that they were wrong and that they were helping kill their neighbors by only wanting one of the vaccines? No, let them have their hesitancy, continue vaccinating, and in 6 months when hundreds of thousands of people have it and nothing bad happens they will quietly go get it done. We know the vaccines work. Just make them widely available and the proof will be in the results.

63 points by dfine 5y ago

This is a pretty interesting map/graph. I also like that they linked to the data in table form. Not really surprised at the areas that are darkest, but still feel worried that lots of areas near 20%. Specifically the levels of non-Hispanic Black hesitancy in the South is really rough. Hopefully over time this improves especially as private enterprises put some pressure on getting vaccinated

ch4s3 5y ago
The interesting thing that jumped out at me was the blurring of state borders between southern Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mbg721 5y ago
  As someone who lives in Cincinnati, my perception is that the restrictions (reflecting to some extent public opinion) have been mostly middle-of-the-pack in both OH and KY. OH's governor is a moderate Republican who may lose his primary over having restrictions at all, and KY's governor is a Democrat who narrowly won the office in 2019 in a state that's generally pretty conservative. The blurred borders make total sense to me in that context, because not much changes across them.
- jcims 5y ago
  Ohio border is clearly visible but KY/WV blends well. I don't get it though, why would Athens County, OH be almost 4 points higher on the hesitancy scale than Lewis County, KY despite having better vaccination stats?
psychometry 5y ago
I have much greater confidence that vaccination of non-white populations in the South will climb to acceptable levels than I do when it comes to GOP base of rural white people with no college.
- adamrezich 5y ago
  completely baffling to see people imply that college attendance is a prerequisite for having informed views and perspectives on things like politics, in twenty twenty-one.
- jcims 5y ago
  Why?
losingmyjob 5y ago
> Hopefully over time this improves especially as private enterprises put some pressure on getting vaccinated I really hope I don't lose my job because I don't want to take an experimental, unapproved vaccine for a disease that hospitalizes less than 5% of people across all age groups when I work from home, am a healthy weight, and am under forty. The risk for me is, in fact, comparable to the flu, and the vaccine has similar drawbacks to the flu vaccine. Also are you surprised that Black people in the South don't want this experimental vaccine after the Tuskegee Experiment? Combine that with the awful side effects documented on Reddit in r/covidvaccinated and the refusal of the drug company lawyers to accept liability if something is wrong, the very people pushing the vaccine still wearing two masks, the profit incentive of a new annual vaccine, and new reports of menstrual "changes" caused by the vaccines that are rolling in and you know what? I'll take my chances with COVID's death rate, since it's only killed 14000 Americans under forty. This comment will probably get removed but I'm done buying into #BlueAnon conspiracy theories.
- standardUser 5y ago
  "The risk for me is, in fact..." In fact, the risk for you is that you infect someone you care about and they end up hospitalized or dead. That is a very real risk that has played out countless times during this pandemic and has cost thousands and thousands of lives.
  - abootstrapper 5y ago
    It’s been over a year of explaining this to people. OP is a lost cause.
    - giantg2 5y ago
      It's been way longer than a year for that concept. This concept has been around for other diseases, secondhand smoke, reckless/drunk driving, etc. Different people accept it to varying degrees, usually based on topic and personal beliefs.
    - losingmyjob 5y ago

greesil 5y ago

Why does the data change so much on the boundaries of states? I would expect the data to be locally correlated, and there wouldn't be discrepancies between neighboring rural counties that are in different states.

ch4s3 5y ago
I think some states have pretty distinct cultures and politics. But if you look ad Kentucky and West Virginia, you'll have trouble finding the border. There are also effects here around metro areas.
whatgoodisaroad 5y ago
Good question. It's less pronounced than Wyoming, but I wonder why Alabama looks so different from its neighbors.
jp57 5y ago
My thought exactly. If you took out the borders, many states would still be visible. I would expect the boundary between Tennessee and Kentucky, for example, to be more-or-less invisible, as between Texas and Arkansas. But even Oklahoma is distinguishable from northern Texas, despite basically no cultural or political difference across the Red River.
renewiltord 5y ago
Very good point. I wonder if there are local state policies in effect that artifact the data or if there is some sort of state-level estimator being used.
adamrezich 5y ago
people live in cities/towns/etc. which are exist in counties which exist in states. the data is per-county. vaccination policies/attitudes are largely defined by governors, who lead states. states often have a shared culture, but sometimes different parts of states have varying cultures. often, population density affects culture/attitudes toward these sorts of things. as with many such maps, adding an additional analysis layer denoting population density would yield interesting results. (though if you intuitively know the population densities of various "outlier" states, and you know where major cities are in the lesser-populated states, you can already intuitively draw some correlations yourself.)

jwilber 5y ago

As someone who moved from Seattle to San Diego recently, I am happy to see both areas doing very well with regards to vaccine hesitancy! Having grown up in San Diego, I actually find it somewhat surprising how low the hesitancy is.

ultimoo 5y ago
Why are you surprised at San Diego? I know very little about the culture there so I'm curious
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  There are a lot of military and right-wingers in the San Diego area.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    Until recently anti-vacccine was more a left wing thing. (it always has cut across the political spectrum)
    - spaetzleesser 5y ago
      Anti-vaxxers have traditionally been left wing but it seems that COVID has attracted many from the right wing to be anti-vaccine.
- jwilber 5y ago
  Because San Diego leans right, and current conservatives are more likely to be anti-vaccine [0]. (This is interesting in and of itself, as in previous years, California’s antivax tended to be rich and liberal. Times change!) Downvoting won’t change this! [0] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-41-percent-of-republicans-dont-plan-to-get-the-covid-vaccine https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-41-percent-of-republic...

s09dfhks 5y ago

Good information about where to consider moving for remote work

djoldman 5y ago

Link to leaflet map: https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/interactive_hesitancy_county_week26_final_fixed.html https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/interactive_hesitan...

mistrial9 5y ago
this seems unusually simple (in the right way); great to see data https://data.cdc.gov/stories/s/Vaccine-Hesitancy-for-COVID-19/cnd2-a6zw https://data.cdc.gov/stories/s/Vaccine-Hesitancy-for-COVID-1...

howmayiannoyyou 5y ago

Tentative thinking... As someone who likely had CoV in early 2020, and who has had 1 of 2 Moderna vaccines, I am getting my antibodies tested every few months. At the point at which they start declining I would feel better get the 2nd dose; or if the booster is released beforehand. That aside, I can't see the upside in my second dose given the long haul reaction I had to dose #1. I wish the CDC would weigh in formally on 2nd doses for those who had Covid and/or high antibody responses.

spaetzleesser 5y ago

I hope this will change the more people have been vaccinated and are eligible. I know several people who a few months ago said that they would "never" get the vaccine and a few months they all got it or are in line. Every 4 years you also have a lot of people saying "if XXX wins the presidency I'll move to Canada/Mexico". They are all still there. It's good to ask people but they also change their minds quickly once they have more information.

standardUser 5y ago

You can see the same trends emerging on the maps on the NYT vaccine page: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-19-vaccine-doses.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-19-vaccine... If you scroll to the map with state-level data, you can see it has started to resemble the electoral college map. Having checked it out nearly everyday for months now, that resemblance is only growing stronger as time goes on. At a certain point, there may need to be some designation given to certain states or counties - something like a travel advisory - so people know if an area has or is likely to have a COVID outbreak due to low vaccination levels.

henriquez 5y ago
Travel advisories may not be sufficient. At some point we may need the federal government to round up individuals who refused to get vaccines and put them in remedial education camps. These camps could be taxpayer neutral through a mandatory daily forced labor quota for each resident. Due to the potential for virulent "super spreaders" among the populations, residents must be kept in solitary confinement for their own safety. The overarching goal here would be rehabilitation, and we could give it a catchy name like "Ministry of Truth."
- standardUser 5y ago
  A CDC website noting areas with high chances of COVID outbreaks would be sufficient. The vaccines aren't 100% effective, so if you're in a high risk group you'd likely want to know which areas of the country to avoid.
  - henriquez 5y ago
    But how would a website help high-risk individuals to know which unvaccinated individuals to avoid? Another idea could be mandatory tattoos for science deniers - the tattoos would have to be on a conspicuous place like the hand or forehead and visible from a safe enough distance to give people time to put on extra masks. This could be more "humane" than putting them in solitary confinement, but it's more likely to incur a taxpayer expense.

kepler1 5y ago

Friends, tell me how I should be more positive or community minded in thinking about this. Because right now, I say -- "anyone who doesn't want a vaccine, well you live with the consequences and if you can't come to rational understanding that it's your own life being saved, then I shed no tears over your choice". People who do it out of religious (or Republican) dogma, I'm not sympathetic. People who believe in conspiracy theories, I'm not sympathetic. People who have some "cultural history" skeptical of government vaccines, well you have to learn to get over that, one way or another. I'm not that sympathetic. What's the likelihood that the entire US is being subjected to a racially based cruel experiment? You don't want life saving vaccine, produced from the effort and focus of an entire nation, to bring us out of the worst crisis in a generation? Well, I don't mind if there are fewer of you. Aside from the issue where people who are not vaccinated affect those who cannot get vaccinated, it's your own life you're gambling with. Go right ahead. Change my mind please?

ianai 5y ago
It’s not just about saving the life of the person being vaccinated. It’s about not giving the virus anymore “fuel” to burn through. Every infection is a roll of many dice. Statistically at some point someone’s mutation will overcome even the vaccines we’ve made. If that spreads we’d be back in February of 2020.
- giantg2 5y ago
  "If that spreads we’d be back in February of 2020." You mean 'when'. There's no going back at this point.
  - ianai 5y ago
    You get the idea. The point is this isn’t about any individual persons life. This is about the vaccine being our only weapon that can actually stop this pandemic. If we just went on without a vaccine then we probably would see a variant arise that could live longer on surfaces or otherwise spread immensely more effectively or even more deadly. There’s nothing stopping a mutation from really killing 50-75% or more of people. The speed of evolution depends in part on the speed of replication -even in viruses. It’s a war of virus vs humanity.

Steltek 5y ago

It's a good day to be a Masshole. According to the spreadsheet, MA is least hesitant by state and together with VT, sweeps the first 14 counties (and the first 19, if you ignore SF).

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
They got vaccinated so quickly because such a large fraction of them needed to do so as a condition of employment. Healthcare is a massive industry in MA.
- Steltek 5y ago
  Not even close to true. Demand is so high here, MA was only able to offer vaccines to the general public starting this week. If you were lucky enough to even be eligible last week, you needed to use bots to find an appointment. Compare that to Texas, where shots are going begging at freaking Walmart. It's extremely infuriating. MA's vaccination rate is solely limited by available doses and meanwhile vaccines are expiring unused on the shelf in other states. We could have hit herd immunity by now if we were given the chance.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Demand is high because all the low risk people in healthcare (and all the other industries that got priority) got in line right away and are/were competing with the high risk people and seniors. Basically we dumped a ton of volume into the vaccination funnel from the get go (because we were vaccinating such a wide range of people so early on because of the employment based qualification criteria) so while there was a backup we were always running the "actually vaccinating people" part of the system at full tilt. Other states poured a comparative trickle into the funnel. While there was no backup up top you didn't have the bottom of the vaccine pipeline running at 100%.
    - Steltek 5y ago
      But early eligibility != required to do your job. The vaccine system was only as "full tilt" as we had doses available. We had capacity for substantially more shots in arms but there was nothing to give. That said, I do agree with the State's priorities. As much as it pains me personally, retail is higher than my comfy WFH butt.

troelsSteegin 5y ago

This is the survey question, as part of a broader Household Pulse Survey: “Once a vaccine to prevent COVID-19 is available to you, would you…get a vaccine?” No mention of a follow up for rationale. via https://data.cdc.gov/stories/s/Vaccine-Hesitancy-for-COVID-19/cnd2-a6zw https://data.cdc.gov/stories/s/Vaccine-Hesitancy-for-COVID-1...

Lammy 5y ago
Thanks for sharing. That seems like a divisive question to begin with since people then get to argue about what “prevent” means.

jwineinger 5y ago

The contrast of the Dakotas to Minnesota indicates to me the impact of state leadership / communication.

rubidium 5y ago
They are vastly different in the urban areas. Agreed on the rural.
da_big_ghey 5y ago
political culture in dakotas very different from that in minnesota. i am having little surprise here.

h2odragon 5y ago

"Hesitancy" nice word. The implication that everyone does want this vaccine is nice; after all, not wanting it would be some sort of mental defect right? "My body, my choice" ain't just a political slogan; it makes sense. I'm glad these vaccines are available, but I had this crud early and I'll pass on the vaccine thx.

oramit 5y ago

I've heard and read a lot about this in the past couple weeks and I sincerely hope public health officials and media don't freak out. We need to stay the course on this and emphasize the positive. 1. Vaccines are still difficult to get in a lot of places. I and my partner only just got appointments for this weekend for our first dose. As long as appointments are required and you have to fight to get a spot at 9am it is going to be difficult to get hesitent people to sign up. I think hesitency will go down dramatically when you can just walk in without an appointment and get it. 2. I really don't understand why Public Health officials keep downplaying the vaccines. They are still talking about everyone masking for months, limited gatherings, no vacations, etc. Why is it always doom and gloom? There is no evidence to support this level of paranoia and the messaging should be the exact opposite. These vaccines are scientific miracles. Get the vaccine and go out and have fun again! 3. The worst thing we can do at this point is to start shaming people for being hesitant. I don't think it has started just yet but I can see it bubbling in certain circles. I was just in a work meeting where we were talking about vaccines and everyone on the call was on board BUT some people only wanted the JandJ one because it used older tech and they didn't want to try the new mRNA ones. This was with a group of all college educated software developers... There is no evidence at all to support this form of hesitancy and yet there it is. Are they Anti-vax? Kind of, but would it have helped matters to argue that they were wrong and that they were helping kill their neighbors by only wanting one of the vaccines? No, let them have their hesitancy, continue vaccinating, and in 6 months when hundreds of thousands of people have it and nothing bad happens they will quietly go get it done. We know the vaccines work. Just make them widely available and the proof will be in the results.