Vaccine Hesitancy

Vaccine Hesitancy is a propagandistic euphemism used to describe the “delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccines despite availability of vaccine services”.¹⁾ The term is used as an excuse for “low vaccine uptake”,²⁾ dismissing any genuine concerns as the result of a “complex interaction of different social, cultural, political and personal factors”³⁾ - factors more simply summarized as “complacency, convenience and confidence”.

On September 14, 2020, the Globe and Mail published an opinion article titled “A vaccine may not be the simple solution we are hoping for” written by Dr. Zain Chagla (an Associate Professor at McMaster University, Dr. Isaac Bogoch (associate professor at the University of Toronto, and Dr. Sumon Chakrabarti (lecturer at the University of Toronto.) The authors argued that the most likely scenario for COVID-19 was a vaccine that “prevents some but not all person-to-person SARS-CoV-2 transmission,” and that “high rates of immunization are needed for maximum effectiveness”. To accomplish this, the authors suggest “proactive messaging” to achieve “high vaccine uptake globally”, and using a campaign to mass-vaccinate with the influenza vaccine as an opportunity “to troubleshoot for an effective COVID-19 vaccine rollout campaign”.⁴⁾