Yahoo News/YouGov coronavirus poll: Number of Americans who plan to get vaccinated falls to 42% — a new low - Yahoo News

So far, most of the conversation about COVID-19 vaccines has focused on the question of whether researchers can develop an effective vaccine in record time. .

For a COVID-19 vaccine to actually stop the pandemic, scientists estimate that at least 60 percent of the population — and probably more like 75 or 80 percent — would need to be vaccinated, a number that depends on many factors, including the efficacy of the vaccine itself and how widely the virus has already spread. .

In early May, 55 percent of Americans said yes, they would get vaccinated.

Now the latest Yahoo News/YouGov poll, conducted July 28 to 30, shows that just 42 percent of Americans plan to get vaccinated for COVID-19 — the smallest share to date. .

The efficacy of the measles vaccine is 95 percent to 98 percent, which means that If 100 people who haven’t been exposed to the measles were given that vaccine, 95 to 98 of them wouldn’t get infected (on average).

The more effective a vaccine is, the fewer vaccinated people it takes to stop a pandemic.

Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it would be willing to approve a COVID-19 candidate vaccine with an efficacy of 50 percent.

If, say, only 42 percent of Americans got such a vaccine, then many lives would still be saved.

Experts are optimistic that the efficacy of whatever COVID-19 vaccines emerge will be higher than 50 percent.

Given the unprecedented speed of the current development process — it’s possible that a COVID-19 vaccine could arrive three years faster than any previous vaccine — the public’s anxiety about cutting corners is understandable.

The evidence that would convince me to get a COVID-19 vaccine, or to recommend that my loved ones get vaccinated, does not yet exist.”.

And once a vaccine that regulators deem safe and effective is actually widely available — and once people see other people getting vaccinated without incident — then uptake will snowball.

Would you take a vaccine if it was only 60 percent effective at preventing COVID-19 infection? 

Again, just 39 percent said yes.  

Across the board, information about the potential downsides of vaccination — discomfort, inconvenience, less-than-total protection against the virus — reduced the number of people who said they would get vaccinated by several percentage points (3 to 7) while slashing the number who said they were unsure by more (7 to 13). 

This suggests that Americans are just as ready to reject a potential COVID-19 as embrace it — especially because every one of these conditions is more likely than not to apply

To make a COVID-19 vaccine work, Americans of all ideologies will need to get vaccinated

For months, we’ve been talking about the medical side of vaccination — and despite encouraging signs, there’s still no guarantee that a safe, effective vaccine will arrive on schedule.