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This is an interesting graph on vaccine hesitancy, the numbers of 'no' and 'don't know' were a lot higher back at the end of last year, but I guess the combination of having such a bad winter, and the amazing success of the vaccine roll-out, seeing so many millions getting the jab without much problem, has changed a lot of minds.

So, the overall hesitancy (no/don't know) is around 10%, but I can see the possibly of that dropping even further as & when younger people actually get their invites, and the peer pressure feeling, as almost all their mates & family members are jabbed.

So, it's feasible we could see an uptake of perhaps around 95%, when there was plenty of talk of needing 70-80% to get to some form of 'herd immunity', it's looking very positive.

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It's taken from this report on vaccine hesitancy, which is worth reading in full.

Yet both Downing Street and local MPs cautioned on Monday that the public should not draw damaging conclusions about anti-vaccination sentiment, particularly among minority ethnic communities in two key towns, Bolton and Blackburn.

Bolton has the highest case rate in the country as of 11 May, with 255 cases per 100,000 residents, though its vaccination rate was in line with the national average, with 88.9% of people aged 40 and over having received their first dose. The rate is significantly higher than parts of London, including Westminster, where the rate is 63%.

While the Bolton-wide vaccination rate is in line with the England average of 89.8%, there are large variations within the local authority. In Lever Edge, which has the highest case rate in Bolton, 84.7% of those aged 40 and over are vaccinated.
Case rates in Bolton are significantly higher in areas of high deprivation, while vaccination rates are lower in poorer areas and in those with higher black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) populations, in line with national trends.

Yasmin Qureshi, the Labour MP for Bolton South East, said the issue in the town was “incredibly complex” and it was “wrong” to suggest people from BAME backgrounds were to blame for the increased cases of the B.1.617.2 variant first detected in India.

Qureshi claimed there had been problems with the rollout of the vaccine in her constituency, something which she had raised with board members of the Bolton clinical commissioning group (CCG), NHS England and the local authority in February.


 
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All that noise about having to show vaccine status to go inside pubs and things never amounted to anything did it.

No, because the idea went down like a shit sandwich. It was left down to individual businesses to decide and having had over a year of all sorts of crippling restrictions they weren't about to self-impose anymore. Turkeys and Christmas spring to mind. Its a shit situation but I don't blame them, thrown under the bus yet again.

I'm pretty sure there will be passports of some sort for international travel and I suspect they will largely be a failure as well as the system will inevitably be simple to circumnavigate.
 
These figures are incredibly impressive!

The race to tackle an outbreak in Bolton of the virulent new strain of Covid-19 first identified in India began with a flurry of phone calls on Thursday afternoon. The urgency at senior levels was clear to those on the ground, who were told: “If we throw every bit of Pfizer at you that we can find, how many [people] can you jab this weekend?”

In one meeting, Michael Smith, the chief officer of Bolton’s GP federation, told NHS England they could jab 5,000 people in one weekend – eight times the average rate. “Everybody’s faces were a bit like: what? Really?”

By Sunday evening more than 6,200 people had received a jab at a makeshift mass vaccination site
in south-west Bolton. Smith, one of those leading Bolton’s vaccine drive, told the Guardian he wanted another 15,000 people to have received a jab by next Sunday. If that target is met, roughly one in 10 of the town’s adult population will have received their first Covid-19 vaccination in just eight days.

‘A mammoth undertaking’: Bolton steps up Covid jabs to tackle outbreak
 
Here's a 'no shit Sherlock' moment...

Experts initially thought there was a reluctance among people to get their jab but after knocking on doors and speaking to residents within the community, they now believe it is more likely to be related to social factors and the availability of the vaccine.

"To go to the main site you've got to ring your GP, get through to somebody, get an appointment booked and then plan that into your life," Dr Wall added.

"If you're working shifts, if you're doing low paid shift work you can't just nip out for a vaccine because you've got an appointment, you can't always know what your shifts are going to be, you can't plan that, so there's so many barriers."

Again, worth reading the whole article, a belated light bulb moment!

 
This is an interesting graph on vaccine hesitancy, the numbers of 'no' and 'don't know' were a lot higher back at the end of last year, but I guess the combination of having such a bad winter, and the amazing success of the vaccine roll-out, seeing so many millions getting the jab without much problem, has changed a lot of minds.

So, the overall hesitancy (no/don't know) is around 10%, but I can see the possibly of that dropping even further as & when younger people actually get their invites, and the peer pressure feeling, as almost all their mates & family members are jabbed.

So, it's feasible we could see an uptake of perhaps around 95%, when there was plenty of talk of needing 70-80% to get to some form of 'herd immunity', it's looking very positive.

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It's taken from this report on vaccine hesitancy, which is worth reading in full.


I feel like a stuck record here, but none of those graphs show vaccine heistancy. Vaccine hesitancy is defined by the WHO's SAGE Working Group on Vaccine Hesitancy as being the difference between actual take-up of a vaccine and its availability in a region. Those graphs show polled vaccine hesitancy. It's not the same thing. Asking somebody, "do you intend to take a vaccine" is not reading off of their true future behaviour from some kind of internal dashboard. It's getting them to make a perfomative act of positioning within the discourse that is framed by the question. As such, their response will depend on a hell of a lot of things, not least how they feel about the current political situation and the message that is important for them to give in that context. In short, they don't know how they will behave when asked to take the vaccine. They don't even know that they don't know. Hell, they don't know that they don't know that what they are answering isn't the question they think they are answering.

It's the same mistake as was made in December, when we also had polled vaccine hesitancy running at 20-30% and subsequent actual hesitancy (in over-50s so far) at less than 5%.

This problem is not just in reports in the Guardian. There are a lot of proper scientific analyses that make this mistake (this being a key influential one). The nature of the way our political responses are constructed in this neoliberal world is that governments like quantitative studies performed by people who buy into the same neoliberal model of humanity that they do. The study I linked to has absolutely zero social psychologists included within its collaborators. It's all psychologists who use individualised, universalist models of human behaviour (like CBT) combined with epidemiologists, biomedics and mathematicians. Nobody was involved who understands how information actually gets into the public discourse and affects social behaviour.
 
Here's a 'no shit Sherlock' moment...



Again, worth reading the whole article, a belated light bulb moment!


It is interesting because it was well known that in areas of high immigration there would be language, cultural and practical barriers in the way of a high vaccine take-up. I was reading something the other saying the lowest take up is amongst the black afro-Caribbean community. One of the main reasons given that the government had focused its efforts of the South Asian origin communities and hadn't prioritized black communities the same way.

Given the above it seems off that the ducks were not all in a row in places like Bolton and Blackburn given how much they've suffered over the last 15 months.
 
I feel like a stuck record here, but none of those graphs show vaccine heistancy. Vaccine hesitancy is defined by the WHO's SAGE Working Group on Vaccine Hesitancy as being the difference between actual take-up of a vaccine and its availability in a region. Those graphs show polled vaccine hesitancy. It's not the same thing. Asking somebody, "do you intend to take a vaccine" is not reading off of their true future behaviour from some kind of internal dashboard. It's getting them to make a perfomative act of positioning within the discourse that is framed by the question. As such, their response will depend on a hell of a lot of things, not least how they feel about the current political situation and the message that is important for them to give in that context. In short, they don't know how they will behave when asked to take the vaccine. They don't even know that they don't know. Hell, they don't know that they don't know that what they are answering isn't the question they think they are answering.

It's the same mistake as was made in December, when we also had polled vaccine hesitancy running at 20-30% and subsequent actual hesitancy (in over-50s so far) at less than 5%.

This problem is not just in reports in the Guardian. There are a lot of proper scientific analyses that make this mistake (this being a key influential one). The nature of the way our political responses are constructed in this neoliberal world is that governments like quantitative studies performed by people who buy into the same neoliberal model of humanity that they do. The study I linked to has absolutely zero social psychologists included within its collaborators. It's all psychologists who use individualised, universalist models of human behaviour (like CBT) combined with epidemiologists, biomedics and mathematicians. Nobody was involved who understands how information actually gets into the public discourse and affects social behaviour.
While I agree with your post, on the ground people have been acting quite differently, as in there have been concerted efforts to discover which groups have been not taking up the vaccine and think of ways to get to them. What happened in Tower Hamlets was a good illustration of that. Early in the process, back in February, it was discovered that take-up among the Bangladeshi community was very low. The response was to get the imam at the East London Mosque to get his vaccination publicly, then to open a big vaccination centre in the mosque. A few weeks later, the take-up among Bangladeshis had almost entirely caught up.

I give local authorities some credit here. They've been trying to come up with solutions. The blockages are coming from the fixation on centralised control exhibited by the government and PHE.
 
While I agree with your post, on the ground people have been acting quite differently, as in there have been concerted efforts to discover which groups have been not taking up the vaccine and think of ways to get to them. What happened in Tower Hamlets was a good illustration of that. Early in the process, back in February, it was discovered that take-up among the Bangladeshi community was very low. The response was to get the imam at the East London Mosque to get his vaccination publicly, then to open a big vaccination centre in the mosque. A few weeks later, the take-up among Bangladeshis had almost entirely caught up.

I give local authorities some credit here. They've been trying to come up with solutions. The blockages are coming from the fixation on centralised control exhibited by the government and PHE.
Yes, and the way they have tackled it is to understand the discourse producing the concern. As opposed to the big studies like Freeman et al (2020), which were conceptualising hesitancy in terms of fixed attributes and attitudes, like “conspiratorislism”, which is why they saw it as something that could be measured using surveys.
 
Surely that's vaccine refusal and most people who were hesitant end up getting vaccinated.
Not according to the WHO’s SAGE Working Group on Vaccine Hesitancy, who are about as strong an authority on this as you could really hope for.
 
Not an authority on lexical semantics though. Poor choice of words if you ask me.
Maybe you should read their 64 page report, which includes a chapter in how they arrived at that definition and why, and then we can have a chat about it. Here you go:


(Here's their full definition in Section 3:

Definition: Vaccine Hesitancy
Vaccine hesitancy refers to delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccines despite availability of vaccine services. Vaccine hesitancy is complex and context specific, varying across time, place and vaccines. It is influenced by factors such as complacency, convenience and confidence.

There's then a series of follow-up clarifications followed by an explanation of why they have taken that definition)
 
It's taken from this report on vaccine hesitancy, which is worth reading in full.

https://www.theguardian.com/society...-low-in-uk-despite-concerns-government-claims

Yet both Downing Street and local MPs cautioned on Monday that the public should not draw damaging conclusions about anti-vaccination sentiment, particularly among minority ethnic communities in two key towns, Bolton and Blackburn.

Yes and I've just quoted that bit in particular because I noticed that the press were quoting the shit Andrew Lloyd Webber comparing the unvaccinated to drink drivers, and todays fucking Daily Mail had a front page headline about 'Now vaccine refuseniks threaten freedom'. The latter is very much part of their recent framing of everything with shit along the lines of 'Tory MPs warn Johnson not to delay unlocking'. Its certainly a popular stance at the moment to pin the largest hopes of defeating the India variants third wave potential on vaccines, but of course the right-wing, anti-lockdown press have their own shrill and shitty version of this.
 
Here's a 'no shit Sherlock' moment...



Again, worth reading the whole article, a belated light bulb moment!

IINM, Hancock claimed that the redlist decision regarding Pakistan & Bangladesh was based upon those two countries of origin yielding significantly higher rates of test positivity than India at that time.

Sounds like BS; hope he's asked to produce the data to support the claim.
Unsurprisingly, it would appear that Hancock was lying and misled Parliament:

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Those graphs show polled vaccine hesitancy.

'Well, of course it's a poll of vaccine hesitancy, I didn't think that needed spelling out, considering the graph is clearly marked as being based on a yougov survey.

The interesting point is, as you say back in Dec the polls were showing vaccine hesitancy running at around 30% in the the younger age groups, whereas now it's showing at around half that number, and will probably end up being even less than that.
 
As an aside, having never watched that programme, in all the clips I've ever seen on here the woman presenter appears to have no other role than move her head from side to side an occasionally nod. It seems to have a very macho MO.
I don't often watch it but Suzanna Reid often gives it out too.
 
'Well, of course it's a poll of vaccine hesitancy, I didn't think that needed spelling out, considering the graph is clearly marked as being based on a yougov survey.

The interesting point is, as you say back in Dec the polls were showing vaccine hesitancy running at around 30% in the the younger age groups, whereas now it's showing at around half that number, and will probably end up being even less than that.
The whole point of what I wrote is that polled vaccine hesitancy is not the same thing at all as actual vaccine hesitancy. The point is that vaccine hesitancy was not running at 30% in December. That’s just what polling showed. It’s a demonstration that the polls are an unreliable method of estimating what actual hesitancy will be. It’s not a demonstration that things changed in the space of two weeks.
 
I've been watching a great example of actual hesitancy in my friend at the moment, she's properly scared of the rare clot thing, she thinks she has reason to be (due to medical / family stuff that i don't really understand) and so she's been getting the gp to test her platelets etc, and she has so far booked and then cancelled her first jab three times! She says she definitely wants to get it done. Whatever's going on for her is obviously really stressful.
 
I've been watching a great example of actual hesitancy in my friend at the moment, she's properly scared of the rare clot thing, she thinks she has reason to be (due to medical / family stuff that i don't really understand) and so she's been getting the gp to test her platelets etc, and she has so far booked and then cancelled her first jab three times! She says she definitely wants to get it done. Whatever's going on for her is obviously really stressful.

Sounds like some variant of health anxiety. How old is she? Maybe she can get the Moderna?

I have a friend who's hesitant. Due to her 'not trusting' the mRNA stuff in 'all the vaccines'. Even when I pointed out that they're not all mRNA ones they still couldn't quite articulate a logical position and mumbled something about it being her choice. I expect she will get one eventually, but she's being a bit random why she hasn't so far...
 
I've been watching a great example of actual hesitancy in my friend at the moment, she's properly scared of the rare clot thing, she thinks she has reason to be (due to medical / family stuff that i don't really understand) and so she's been getting the gp to test her platelets etc, and she has so far booked and then cancelled her first jab three times! She says she definitely wants to get it done. Whatever's going on for her is obviously really stressful.

Being worried about the blood clot thing is not an unreasonable position to take. This is especially the case the younger you get as the risk v benefit calculation is much less clear.

My g/f is 36 and is a neuroscientist who works in the larger pharma industry. She's used to looking at all this stuff and interpreting it and she was quite relieved when it became apparent that she was likely to be given a choice of az or another. She would happily have gone for az if that was the only option but 1 in 100,000 risk doesn't sound so bad but 1 in 60,000 (or whatever the numbers were) is beginning to get a bit real.
 
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