The global protest movement against vaccination may evaporate in the face of the new cononavirus, experts predict.
“If a vaccine were made available tomorrow, everyone would jump to get it,” author Laurent-Henri Vignaud, an expert on anti-vax groups in France, told Reuters.
Public opinion on the question is already shifting, according to polling data collected by the Vaccine Confidence Project (VCP), which tracks attitudes on immunization around the world.
A third of those polled in France in 2018 said they believed vaccines to be unsafe — but a new survey there, conducted last month, found that only 18 percent of French respondents would refuse a COVID-19 vaccine.
VCP surveys found opposition to coronavirus immunization in the single digits in Austria, the UK and Australia.
And the anti-vax movement has “virtually disappeared” in hard-hit Italy, virologist Dr. Roberto Burioni said.
But in the United States, where anti-vaxxers have staged gruesome protests in state legislatures and were blamed for the city’s 2019 measles outbreak, the COVID effect is not yet clear.
“I don’t think this virus fundamentally changes people’s deeply held concerns about vaccines,” said Mary Holland, vice-chair of the vaccine-critical group Children’s Health Defense.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost...ld-be-the-death-of-the-anti-vax-movement/amp/
“If a vaccine were made available tomorrow, everyone would jump to get it,” author Laurent-Henri Vignaud, an expert on anti-vax groups in France, told Reuters.
Public opinion on the question is already shifting, according to polling data collected by the Vaccine Confidence Project (VCP), which tracks attitudes on immunization around the world.
A third of those polled in France in 2018 said they believed vaccines to be unsafe — but a new survey there, conducted last month, found that only 18 percent of French respondents would refuse a COVID-19 vaccine.
VCP surveys found opposition to coronavirus immunization in the single digits in Austria, the UK and Australia.
And the anti-vax movement has “virtually disappeared” in hard-hit Italy, virologist Dr. Roberto Burioni said.
But in the United States, where anti-vaxxers have staged gruesome protests in state legislatures and were blamed for the city’s 2019 measles outbreak, the COVID effect is not yet clear.
“I don’t think this virus fundamentally changes people’s deeply held concerns about vaccines,” said Mary Holland, vice-chair of the vaccine-critical group Children’s Health Defense.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost...ld-be-the-death-of-the-anti-vax-movement/amp/
