Cliff’s Take: Vaccine Hesitancy May Be Weakening
We are heading into the long Labor Day weekend. This is a lazy, restful time – the end of summer, the beginning of school, and the home stretch for the year. Many of us have youth sports tournaments to cheer on this weekend; others are meeting up with family and friends. It’s time to recharge.
Our polling data is striking right now. America is on the move. The hesitants, who have held up our progress, are reassessing and adjusting based on changing realities. Namely – the Delta variant and new vaccine mandates.
But even so, our national divide still persists when it comes to COVID. It shouldn’t be the case. But it is. Again, these are COVID rules.
Below I detail the most relevant polling data of the week.
- The dam breaks? Vaccine hesitancy still holds at around one in five American adults. But, among these Americans, the most resistant of all are now at 14%, down from 18% in late June. Progress is slow, but the wheels are turning.
- Mandates matter. Our polling with Axios finds that the unvaccinated are now more responsive to vaccine mandates. Nudging the unbudgeable is working. Employers, businesses, and the FDA– they all have an impact. As we have seen many times with COVID, policy is a leading indicator of public opinion. Mandates are no different.
- The virtue of familiarity. Which came first the chicken or the egg? This causal logic holds for COVID as well. Which came first, being vaccinated, or being less informed about COVID? It really doesn't matter. At this point, information is having an effect. More for the vaccinated than the unvaccinated.
- Partisan cueing. One of COVID’s complicating factors is partisanship, as I’ve written many times before. Vaccine hesitancy has become a political statement in and of itself. Look at the data. How do we get past it? I'm not too sure. This is our tale of two Americas—one blue and the other red.
- Simpler time. But let’s remember that it wasn’t always this way. For a brief moment in time, partisans were roughly equally concerned about COVID’s potential impact on them – how things change. Can we claw back time on this one? I don’t think we can. Can we get past it? I'm not too sure either. Political cueing has done its damage.
It’s not surprising that mandates are an essential tool in furthering larger public health goals. After all, vaccine skepticism is nothing new – it’s been around since the time of smallpox vaccines. I've been saying as much for some time now.
But as I told Axios, “Schools, organizations, companies, governments implementing mandates are forcing people to deal with them.” See how quickly the calculus changes with this in play.
As always, take care and be well.
