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After the holidays, vaccines against the corona virus also start in Germany. But many are skeptical. The willingness to vaccinate has even decreased since the spring. How can that be and what can you do?
By Sandra Stalinski, tagesschau.de
The first people in Germany will be vaccinated against Corona on December 27. “Finally”, you could say. Because since the spring, when the first wave in Germany had already caused tens of thousands of infections and several thousand deaths, almost no topic has dominated the headlines more than the question of an available vaccine.
According to the “Covid-19 Snapshot Monitoring” project (Cosmo), almost 80 percent of Germans would have been willing to get vaccinated at that time if a vaccine had already been available. Now that you’re there, according to the survey, only 49 percent want to get vaccinated. How can that be, given the dire images of intensive care units and the ever-increasing death rate?
Most important factor: confidence in safety
Cornelia Betsch, professor of health communication at the University of Erfurt, is not surprised at first. “Precisely because vaccination is now so tangible and real, the concerns are greater,” says Betsch, who leads Cosmo’s (two) weekly poll, in an interview. tagesschau.de. “What is still far away often seems desirable. The closer it gets, the more we think about practical problems and implementation issues.”
The most important factor in willingness to vaccinate is confidence in the safety of the vaccination. “People have an incredibly high need for information, and those who need more information tend to be a little more skeptical,” says Betsch.
According to experts, a vaccination rate of 60 to 70 percent is needed to immunize the population. Therefore, the federal government hopes that as many as possible will be vaccinated.
“New dangers create fear”
Fear researcher Borwin Bandelow from the University of Göttingen has another explanation for the low willingness to vaccinate: “Whenever a new danger arises that seems uncontrollable, people are very afraid of it.” You saw it in March, when people did irrational things like hoarding toilet paper, says Bandelow. Now vaccination is perceived as the new unknown danger, it has already gotten used to Corona.
“In a crisis, the fear brain takes over. But the fear brain is not good at statistics, it cannot be achieved with facts and figures,” he explains in an interview with tagesschau.de. Interestingly, even medical personnel who are disproportionately exposed to the coronavirus do not show a greater willingness to vaccinate. In the Cosmo survey and also in the data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) there are even indications of an even lower willingness to vaccinate than in the normal population.
Common vaccination reactions occur
The facts and figures speak for themselves. Biontech / Pfizer’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccine, which is now getting started, has gone through the usual three phases of vaccine development and approval. Tens of thousands of people in the US, Canada, Great Britain and other countries outside the EU have already received it. For example, the usual local vaccination reactions also found with flu vaccines – pain at the injection site, fatigue, and headaches and chills – occurred in about a third of those vaccinated. Occasionally there were also stronger allergic reactions.
Do celebrities get vaccinated?
In contrast, there is a comparatively high risk of suffering a severe course of Covid-19 or dying from it. In Germany, 1.6 percent of all people to whom the confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection was transmitted died in connection with the disease. Now there are more than 27,000 people. Countless and in some cases still unclear the long-term consequences of Covid 19 infections are documented. No one has died as a result of Covid 19 vaccination.
“The likelihood of getting sick or dying from Corona is many times greater than the chance of having side effects from vaccination,” concludes fear researcher Bandelow. This risk assessment can only be done by the “brain of reason.” The simply woven fear brain, on the other hand, can be reached with more conspicuous means. “For example, it’s certainly good when celebrities like Joe Biden get vaccinated in front of the camera,” he says. That helps people gain confidence. The possibility of carrying out a campaign with prominent vaccinated people in Germany could also be considered. Of course, you must first stick to the order and find celebrities over 80.
“Say what we know and what we don’t know”
However, people need to weigh the risks based on the available data, says Julia Neufeind, an expert in vaccination prevention and communication at RKI. Transparency is also essential here. “It is important that we say what we know and also what we do not know.” But since it is assumed that we have a good and safe vaccine, it must also be emphasized “that the very low risks of a vaccine contrast with a potentially serious and life-threatening disease.” If the risks are too inflated, the picture is skewed.
What is really lacking are long-term studies, because the vaccine hasn’t been around for so long. Therefore, there is still no information on the possible long-term effects of vaccination. Above all, the speed with which vaccine development was carried out and the urgency with which vaccines are now being launched create skepticism among people, Neufeind said in an interview with tagesschau.de. “And that there are questions is completely normal.” People’s need for information, which is great in this pandemic, cannot be met so quickly.
Doctors in private practice play an important role
Communication expert Betsch believes that doctors in private practice are likely to play an important role in the early days. There probably won’t be a visit to the doctor in the near future that doesn’t raise the question of whether to get vaccinated or not. That is why it is important to provide them with enough information.
However, all three experts assume that willingness to vaccinate will increase once vaccinations are started. As more and more people get vaccinated, vaccination will become more normal and fears will decrease. Thorough monitoring of vaccinations and all irregularities that occur is also vitally important to building continued confidence in vaccination.
