A new survey from a University of Oregon policy research center shows that nearly one-quarter of Oregon residents do not plan to get the COVID-19 vaccine, while another one-third of residents “might” get vaccinated.
UO’s Institute for Policy Research and Engagement studied the attitudes of Oregonians toward wearing face masks, social distancing and the coronavirus vaccine. IPRE released the survey results in December.
The survey showed concerning results regarding people’s social behaviors and their attitudes toward getting vaccinated.
IPRE’s co-executive director, Benjamin Clark, and Robert Parker, the institute’s director of strategy and technical solutions, worked together to prepare the survey and process the results.
Both Clark and Parker said one of the most important findings of the survey was about Oregonian’s attitudes toward the COVID-19 vaccine. According to the survey, 24% of respondents said they “will not” get vaccinated, and 33% said they “might” get vaccinated.
“Probably the most important finding was about individuals who are vaccine hesitant,” Parker said.
The results said at least two-thirds of the population need to get vaccinated in order to achieve “herd-immunity,” which is the societal protection that can occur when enough of the population gets vaccinated for the disease, Clark said.
Nearly all Oregonians in the “maybe” category regarding getting vaccinated have to be moved into the “yes” category to reach the level needed for herd immunity, Parker said. To do this, Clark said public health messaging needs to address the reasons people are hesitant about the vaccine.
Respondents made it clear that their primary reasons for being hesitant were concerns about side effects or even contracting COVID-19 from the vaccine — which is not how vaccines work, Clark said.
“[Vaccines] just build an immune response to [the disease] that sometimes feels like you may have some of the symptoms,” Clark said, “but the disease itself is not there.”
While Clark has noticed local public health messaging start to address people’s concerns about the virus head-on, information about the cost of the vaccine, for example, hasn’t gotten through.
“The federal legislation — the CARES Act — made it clear that the vaccine was going to be free to everybody,” Clark said. “And so it became clear to us that people weren’t getting that message.”
Other reasons for hesitation stem from misinformation about vaccines in general, Parker said, including conspiracy theories and ideas from science fiction movies.
The survey also identified a small yet significant group of Oregonians who continue to practice unsafe behaviors and disregard guidelines on masking and social distancing.
The survey found that 11% of people attend gatherings of 10 or more people at least once a week. Between 20 and 30% of respondents never socially distance with friends inside or outside and also never wear masks inside or outside with friends.
“That’s not surprising,” Clark said of the results. “This pandemic has been politicized in a way that is very sad and disappointing, and I think that we would not have seen multiple surges of COVID if we had a more reasoned approach to it.”
Clark acknowledged that he can’t blame politics entirely, and said human nature—and the nature of the virus itself—have also contributed to the spread.
Some of the survey results showed promising trends, and Parker said he remains optimistic that people’s attitudes about the virus and getting vaccinated are changing, especially because 88% of respondents said they know someone who has contracted COVID-19.
“Nearly everybody’s been touched in a tangible way by this disease,” he said.
These results are just the first set of results released from the initial survey of Oregonians, Clark said. The survey also asked questions about childcare and employment status, and Clark and Parker are working on processing the data from those answers to release in the coming weeks.
Based on survey responses, Parker said it was “pretty clear that childcare was an underappreciated element of our economic system.”
Clark and Parker also worked on a separate survey of UO students, Clark said, which they hope to publish in the coming weeks. Clark said the results were similar to those from the general population, and, similarly, there is just a small group of people practicing risky behaviors.
“There’s a lot of really frustrated students about those types of activities,” Clark said.
Both Clark and Parker encourage Oregonians to get the vaccine when it becomes available, and they encourage government and health organizations to practice more aggressive public health messaging.
Parker hopes UO students choose to practice safe behavior and get vaccinated when they can, too.
“The university can’t tell people to get vaccinated,” he said, “but it’s the one thing [people] can do that will get you back to the college experience that you so desired when you enrolled at the University of Oregon.”