One in three Americans say they won't get coronavirus vaccine, and one in two Russian doctors won't take it either

J. Edward Moreno
The Hill
Fri, 14 Aug 2020 09:46 UTC

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More than 1 in 3 Americans surveyed in a NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist poll released Friday say they will not get a coronavirus vaccine once it is available.

Thirty-five percent of respondents said they would not take the vaccine, 60 percent said they would and 5 percent said they were unsure.

Those with college degrees are 19 points more likely to take a vaccine than those without, 72 percent to 53 percent. Democrats were also more likely to be willing to take the vaccine than Republicans, 71 percent to 48 percent.

The poll noted that in 2009 only 51 percent said they would take a vaccine for H1N1, though that disease was less deadly and had a narrower impact on daily life.

Comment: The difference in "deadliness" between H1N1 and Covid-19 are close to negligible.

Dozens of vaccines around the world are in the process of being developed, with a handful of them in the final phases of trials. The timeline is crunched significantly compared to the production of other vaccines, and even then, one is not expected to be available until early 2021.

In an interview with The Hill, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins said if "half the nation says, 'No, I don't want this vaccine,' then this coronavirus pandemic could go on and on and on, to the great detriment of our country, and putting vulnerable people at risk."

Comment: More nonsense from the NIH.

"I'm surprised, frankly, that the resistance to this vaccine has reached the level that it has. I thought when people saw the terrible tragedies and suffering that's around us from this illness that maybe some of the resistance that we've seen to other childhood vaccines would not kick in," Collins added. "But at the moment, it seems to be quite prominent."

Comment: What's especially prominent is the numbers of people waking up to the fact that Collins, and those of his ilk, are shills for Big Pharma, and whores for their positions of power.

Three-fourths of Americans polled said they trust information coming from public health officials, and 62 percent said they trust state elected leaders. President Trump and the news media don't fare as well, at 31 percent and 46 percent, respectively.

The poll has similar results to one published by Gallup earlier this month. In that poll, 35 percent said they would not get the vaccine while 65 percent said they would.

The NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist poll was conducted among 1,118 registered voters Aug. 8-11 and reported a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.

Comment: And clear across the world one out of every two Russian physicians state that they will not take the new Coronavirus vaccine being rolled out in their country:

Despite official claims that the world's first coronavirus vaccine is completely safe, 52 percent of Russian doctors who responded to an online survey indicated that they're not ready to take Sputnik V.

That has led to a sharp rebuke from the head of the team that developed the solution. Alexander Gintsburg, of the Gamaleya Institute, explained to the TASS news agency that doctors who refuse the vaccination must understand the consequences. According to Gintsburg, if medical professionals reject the vaccine, the only way for them to get antibodies is to "get severely sick, because the mild form does not give long-term protection."

"Catching a severe form of Covid-19 is likely to have consequences for the rest of one's life and, in a certain number of cases, as doctors know, death," Gintsburg added. "Therefore, there's a choice: refuse to be vaccinated and follow this path, or get the vaccine. "

Of the more than three thousand participants in the survey ... only 24.5 percent said they'd agree to vaccination, with many worried at the pace of development and the lack of data proving its efficacy. Meanwhile, 48 percent of respondents were wary that the vaccine had been created in such a short time, with only 20 percent saying they'd recommend the vaccination to patients, colleagues, and acquaintances. Of those surveyed, 66 percent said there was insufficient data on its effectiveness.

The survey, which received 3,040 responses, was conducted via a service for the medical profession called 'Doctor's Guide'. The service is a phone app that offers calculators, recommends reference books, and provides medical news and other helpful resources for healthcare professionals. The app is completely free and, according to its creators, is used by more than 400,000 doctors.

On August 11, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that the country had registered the world's first Covid-19 vaccine, named Sputnik V. Due to be available to the general public from January 2021, it will first be administered to medical workers and teachers who voluntarily choose to take it. Sputnik V's rapid development has been criticized by some Western countries and medical experts, who believe that production has been rushed and that the vaccine has not yet been proven safe. However, Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko has called such criticism "groundless."

The vaccine was produced by Moscow's Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, which tested its safety and efficacy in conjunction with the country's Ministry of Defense.

Gintsburg also noted that Sputnik V went through all the necessary procedures to prove its effectiveness and safety, and that information about the vaccine will soon be published for all to read.

So Russia has its share of Covid-19 hysteria-believers too (as well as skeptics). But imagine what the Russia-haters would say if the great country to the east followed the lead of Sweden?!