Many factors that are now driving vaccine hesitancy have been around for centuries, such as uneasiness with injecting a foreign substance into a healthy body and the impossible expectations for vaccines to be ‘100% safe,’ says Alison Buttenheim, a professor of nursing and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania. ‘What’s different now,’ she says, ‘is the double whammy of the politicization of the pandemic and COVID vaccine and now the new [federal] administration.’
Buttenheim suggests people pay attention to state legislative bills about vaccines, get to know their state legislators and ‘learn how to have productive conversations about difficult topics with people you love.’ But, she adds, have realistic expectations. ‘Beliefs and identity are tightly interwoven, so changing beliefs may require a painful—or impossible—shift in identity,’ she says.