What We Can Learn From America ’s Most Recent COVID-19 Vaccine Converts

One in four American adults is unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated, and that number isn’t budging much these days. Fewer than 80,000 adults are getting their first shot every day—a 96% drop from the more than 2 million a day in April 2021. It’s easy to believe that anyone who hasn’t gotten a shot by now is unlikely to get one in the future—but there is still a group of people, however small, just finally coming around to the vaccine. Who are these people? And why did they delay the shot for so long? To find out, TIME analyzed vaccination survey data of U.S. adults from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The survey, which began in late April 2021, shows how willing people have been to getting the shot, and how vaccination rates among various demographics have changed over time. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Certain segments of the population were slow out of the gate, but managed to catch up to—or even surpass—the national average by January 2022, according to TIME’s analysis. Mostly, these are America’s marginalized communities: Black and hispanic people, LGBTQ people, those living in under-resourced counties, and the uninsured. Vaccine uptake among these groups didn’t happen in a sudden rush in early 2021 but rather at a slower, steadier pace over much of the last year. Community health organizations say that’s because certain demographics have required more personal out...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 healthscienceclimate Source Type: news