As Italy and France increased the number of mandatory vaccinations for children, in 2017 and 2018 respectively, hesitant parents denounced the high number of mandatory vaccines for newborns, evoking disproved theories that link vaccines to autism and other diseases, and warning against the overload of the immune system in children.
In the spring of 2020, when the pandemic struck, the announcement of the vaccine did not evoke the expected reaction. In fact, it was quite different from the triumphal one that followed the announcement of the American medical researcher Dr. Jonas Salk in April 1955, who went on national radio to say that he had successfully tested a vaccine against polio. While the polio vaccine immediately gained overwhelming public acceptance, this did not happen last year after the first positive data from the phase I/II study of the Covid-19 RNA vaccine, or when studies showed that the vaccine was 95% effective in preventing symptomatic Covid-19. Instead, upon the first talks of a vaccine, a new wave of skepticism took shape. A cross-border survey conducted by Kantar in May 2020 found that 14%, 23% and 24% of the British, German and French public, respectively, said they probably or certainly would not get vaccinated. Moreover, a survey carried out by Imperial College London in November 2020 found that, in Germany and France, "only a minority of the public across major economies will ‘definitely’ take a vaccine for Covid-19 when it becomes available".
Comparing then and now
What explains this difference in the initial reaction? It must be said that in the second post-war period, between the 1940s and 1950s, there was hope and a deep respect for science and scientific discoveries. For the first time, antibiotics gave hope for the elimination of infectious diseases that had spanned the centuries and decimated populations. The polio vaccine strengthened the social consensus on the reliability of scientists.That remains equally crucial today: the role of scientists in building trust in vaccination is key. A study in Nature Human Behaviour stated: "Our key finding is that, in countries where trust in science is high, people are also more confident about vaccination, even accounting for their own level of trust in science". In other words, there are clear links between the mistrust in science and the doubts over whether Covid-19 vaccines, developed too quickly, are safe. The incredibly timely development of the Covid-19 vaccine may give off the impression that scientists have favored speed over everything else, even though researchers around the world had started to work on the development of the vaccine since the early phases of the pandemic.
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