As coronavirus deaths fall to the single digits in Israel and the United Kingdom, the possibility arises that the vaccination rate required to reach herd immunity might be much, much lower than scientists earlier believed. The United States might even be close to reaching it, but only if we can convince another 10% to 20% of the U.S. population to go get the jab.
Some of those still unvaccinated are just the standard anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists, and these are probably a lost cause. But a significant number are simply not eager to get the vaccine, or they are on the fence due to the unprecedented speed of the vaccine’s production.
In the past month, I’ve spoken to a number of the vaccine-hesitant. In a few cases, I’ve successfully convinced them to get the vaccine. In all of these cases, the vaccine they’ve settled on is the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
I’m not a doctor or a scientist, but I try to convince people of opinions for a living. Based on my completely anecdotal evidence, these are a few ways to convince different kinds of vaccine-hesitants to get the jab.
The obvious selling point for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is that, unlike Pfizer and Moderna, you only need a single shot. One man I know, a driver, said he didn’t have the time to get two vaccines and, in addition, risk suffering the temporary flu-like symptoms that sometimes accompany them. I directed him to the local pharmacy where I got my single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Unlike the large walk-in sites to which many people go, I was in a booth, vaccinated, and free to go within three minutes.
Another man I spoke with was shocked to learn that I got the J&J jab after the federal government’s unwarranted freakout over blood clotting supposedly associated with the vaccine. I explained to him that even assuming the correlation was not spurious, the Uber I had taken was more likely to kill me than my shot. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, of the 8.7 million recipients of the shot, just 28 have developed serious blood clots, and just three of those patients died. That’s a risk of just 1 in more than 300,000 for clots (you are more than twice as likely to die by lightning strike) and a risk of death of just 1 in nearly 3 million.
A common fear I’ve heard from the vaccine-hesitant — who again, are not the same as the perennial anti-vaxxers — is of the novel mRNA technology in the Pfizer and Moderna shots. Although I try to explain that mRNA vaccines have been in development for decades and that some patients in vaccine trials received their Pfizer and Moderna shots a year ago with no side effects, the single most effective argument is just to convince people to take the Johnson & Johnson shot.
And if that doesn’t work, remind them of the ultimate bottom line: Take the vaccine made by American scientists to avoid contracting a virus that likely came from a Chinese lab. In the end, that’s the path back to normalcy.
