Polls
Majority want vaccination, many others want side-effect reassurance
Note: this survey was conducted in February, before vaccination had started in earnest.
This survey from Leading Tech looked at COVID-19 vaccine awareness.
Note also that an overused trope about Japan is its vaccine reluctance with respect to COVID-19 in particular. I attribute this to lazy journalism, as most of the evidence I have seen points to a general acceptance of the necessity of this vaccine, and Japan is not an outlier given that many other countries are finding the last 30-40% of the population difficult to reach, and lets not talk about the politicisation of it in the USA…
As noted above, since the survey was conducted vaccination of the over-sixties has begun without much incident or excessive dwelling by the press on side-effects, and hopefully within a couple of months we can see a significant decrease in serious cases and deaths, this persuading more people that the jab is worth it. In fact, on this evening’s television there was a short report of the latest figures showing even in the youngest age group about 45% wanted to get vaccinated soon, 35% were waiting to see how things go, and just 20% not planning to get it.
For myself, I’ll be getting it as soon as they open up appointments for my age group, which might be mid-August or so. My workplace is also planning on conducting vaccination of the staff, but I don’t know how long it will take to get it all set up.
