Why Parents Resist COVID Vaccines

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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. At this stage in the pandemic, kids are being hospitalized for COVID in record numbers. Even though COVID vaccine authorization for the youngest children is still a ways off, many kids, ages five and up, can be vaccinated as you know. Despite the protection offered by vaccines, however, less than half of parents intended to get their children vaccinated at all at least as of last fall.

A new study looks at why some parents are rushing to get the vaccine for their kids, while others are hesitating. It includes racial and ethnic differences and attitudes about pediatric vaccines and parents who have rushed to get the vaccine for themselves, but not for their kids.

With me now is Celia Fisher, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Center for Ethics Education at Fordham University, and one of the authors of the study. Hi, Professor Fisher. Welcome to WNYC.

Celia Fisher: Hi, Brian. It's a delight to be here.

Brian Lehrer: What questions did you set out to answer with this study?

Celia Fisher: We wanted to know why some parents were eager to get their child vaccinated, others were unsure, and some were just highly resistant and were going to refuse. We felt this was incredibly important, as you pointed out, because, in order to get to some level of pre-pandemic normalcy, we're going to have to get at least 70% of our children vaccinate.

Brian Lehrer: We see that some parents who themselves are vaccinated against COVID wanted to wait and see how others reacted to the vaccine before they're getting their child vaccinated. About a third of parents surveyed just before the FDA authorized the Pfizer vaccine for children ages 5 to 11 fell into that group. Since you're a psychology professor and a bioethics professor, what are the psychology and ethical concerns that feed the parents who have gotten themselves vaccinated, but not their kids?

Celia Fisher: Well, I think that all parents are very worried about their children and sometimes they're more protective of their children than they are themselves. However, clearly, parents who have been vaccinated themselves were more likely to vaccinate or plan to vaccinate their children, but I think the COVID pandemic has presented unique challenges to parents.

First of all, we found that most parents had already had their children by vaccinated with traditional pediatric vaccines for childhood infections, but what is different this time is a rather pervasive distrust of the FDA and science in general. I think what's made this time unique is that, for the first time, parents have actually been witness to the process of vaccine development and given the lack of science health literacy in this country to see how clinical trials are actually run, that you're not sure in the beginning that you have to do many trials and the results come out somewhat differently, I think have fed into a mistrust of the science.

We found that those parents who were most resistant felt that the pharmaceutical companies were lying about the effectiveness or safety of the vaccine, or felt that their children were just Guinea pigs or being experimented on when the vaccine would be readily available. I think that in terms of public health messaging, science literacy, especially vaccine science literacy is going to be something very important to help some parents get over that humph of being resistant to vaccinations.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we have time for a few phone calls on the topic of pediatric vaccine hesitancy on the part of parents, 212-433-WNYC. Any parents out there with stories of overcoming vaccine hesitancy? Anybody who got a vaccine for yourself, but has not, or has been waiting to get a vaccine for your child? 212-433-WNYC, your questions for Celia Fisher, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Center for Ethics Education at Fordham. 212-433-9692.

We see this study did measure racial and ethnic differences in attitudes about the COVID vaccine, what did you learn in that respect?

Celia Fisher: What we found was-- In the beginning of the pandemic, there was a large concern about Black and Hispanic parents and adults being more resistant or not having access to the vaccine. However, that gap is closing, and what we found in our study that Asians were more likely to be positive about the vaccine and non-Hispanic white parents were the least likely to be positive. What we also found that was probably responsible for those differences were differences in financial security, and also in terms of community support.

A lot of the white parents found that other parents in their neighborhoods and their own family members were not supportive of getting children vaccinated. I think that what's important there in terms of public health messaging is that we really have to go into the communities themselves. We found that a lot of white communities also had a more individualistic approach to vaccines.

They were more likely to endorse a statement that getting the vaccine for my child would violate our family's rights, whereas other parents, Asian parents and other ethnicities, were more likely to endorse something that said, "I'd get my child the vaccine because it would help protect the community and others."

I think looking at parental values and attempting public health messaging that speaks to what's important to them and how to engage the community in supporting these decisions is going to be very important moving forward.

Brian Lehrer: That might be the most interesting thing I've heard all day about the individuality and how it differs from community to community individualism. I don't know if you want to go this broad, but it seems to me that, as a general proposition, if you are in a community that is much more likely to be successful than people in other communities, which is to say if you're white in America, it's more easy to think of your choices as having to do with you and what's best for you as an individual and not have to worry about the effects on the community as a whole.

If you're in a more disadvantaged community, you're more likely to be community connected and to see your plight, if you see it as a plight of disadvantage or marginalization as something that is a community function, and so take what seem to be individual decisions into account in a community context. Do you think I'm overstating that?

Celia Fisher: No, absolutely not. I think that that's right on point. I'd also point out that there is also a general lack in physicians, and so part of what you've been talking about in terms of these cultural and neighborhood differences also have to do with access to medical care and valuing what that access means and the extent to which one sees severity of the disease in one's community.

We found that too many parents were not interested in a physician recommendation for getting the vaccine. I found that very interesting given at least the public health messaging I've seen keep saying, "Ask your physician," but for many parents, especially in rural communities, they're not seeing their pediatrician, especially during COVID and pediatricians are not giving out the vaccine, and so you have pharmacies and popup government spots that are giving the vaccine. These kind of public health communications are also not working and has to get back to what you were talking about in terms of focusing on the values of the community itself.

Brian Lehrer: Bobby in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Bobby, thank you for calling in.

Bobby: Thanks for having me. I have a question. As far as-- Traditionally, every vaccine like polio and chickenpox and everything else have been around for forever, and there was, if you are not vaccinated, obviously, the effects could be deadly or crippling, but now, there's a push to vaccinate our kids for something that they're really not at danger for. I mean, even from the beginning of the pandemic, they were the least susceptible to having any sort of-- forget the mortality rate, it's completely negligible but, all of a sudden, there's a push out of nowhere-- I can understand protective elderly and the people with underlying conditions, but now to protect kids that most of them have had COVID and they're completely asymptomatic. They haven't had any long-term effects from it and, like I said, the mortality rate actually keeps getting better as treatment of COVID becomes more standardized.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Now, my guest, I should say, is a psychology and bioethics professor, not a virologist or an MD, but if you listened to the show last hour, Bobby, when we had an emergency room physician from New York Presbyterian, and some doctors and nurses calling in from other institutions, one of the things that we learned, and we're seeing it in the press in general, is that there are more young children being hospitalized now than at any other time in the pandemic because Omicron is so transmissible. While it tends to be very mild in children, there's a percentage of kids who are going to get very sick, and that pediatric hospitalization rate is peaking right now.

I don't know if that informs your take on it, but there's also the fact that these kids come in contact with their elderly relatives or teachers or other people as well. There's a community concern to even vaccinate people who are relatively low-risk themselves.

Bobby: Correct, and I agree with them. I completely understand that, but if you have the elderly that are vaccinated at a higher rate, they shouldn't have anything to worry about, they're vaccinated.

Brian Lehrer: Bobby, thank you very much for your call. Is that typical, and again, I don't want to put you in a position of being a vaccination expert more than you are, you're a psychology professor, but is that typical of the conversation or one of the conversations that you heard with subjects in your survey?

Celia Fisher: Absolutely. People who are more resistant to getting their children vaccinated are more likely to think that children are not susceptible to the disease at all, or that if they are that the symptoms are going to be very mild. This is very typical. The greater you think the severity is-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: We'll just acknowledge that you have an answering machine going off in the background.

Celia Fisher: Oh, my God, it’s ridiculous.

Brian Lehrer: That's okay. She'll call you back.

Celia Fisher: Yes, I know. I tried to disconnect it, but anyhow, this is very typical. Parents make very different kinds of decisions for their children. They take a very different risk-benefit perspective. I think that this caller is more typical of those who are resistant.

Brian Lehrer: From your research, it look like, from what I saw that prior studies of vaccine hesitancy lump people who prefer to wait and see how the vaccines were working out for other people in with those who are definitely going to refuse to take a COVID vaccine. Did your study suggest that these two distinct sets of parents were influenced by different factors and could be approached differently?

Celia Fisher: I think that the people who are unsure are more likely to be influenced by more information about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine as they see. Some parents are worried that there are long-term health problems for their children from the vaccine, even though there's no evidence that that's the case but also, we haven't had the vaccine around for a long-time. Some of them who are very-- their natural disposition is to be worried about their child's health in an extreme way are going to be waiting.

I think the more they see that other children are not negatively impacted by the vaccine, the more there is information out there, and the more they get support from other parents, the more likely they are to get their vaccine.

I did also want to point out there was one other interesting fact that people who were resistant to the vaccine were also not going to be that influenced by school mandates for vaccination for COVID. I think that that speaks to not only the values that we were talking about, but also that we may be premature in some of the localities talking about mandating vaccinations for children, because there may be parent groups that will be very resistant to this in terms of school board. I think that may not be approached, that's going to be nationally effective.

Brian Lehrer: I know that Mayor de Blasio did not want to impose a vaccine mandate on children even though he did on education staff because he thought it would be more damaging to kids to have them stay home from school than to be in school with those risks. Mayor Adams so far is taking the same position in New York City, but giving it a second look. Let's take one more phone call from a parent. Koreen in Islip Terrace, you're on WNYC. Hi, Koreen.

Koreen: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. I just wanted to push back on Ms. Fisher's statement about a lot of parents being maybe not pro-science. I am not one of those people, I’m very pro-science. I'm vaccinated myself. I have a soon-to-be five-year-old son. He'll be five next month. My husband and I have been really hemming and hawing about what to do, do we go on February 25th, the day after his birthday, and give them the jab, or do we wait a bit until there's a little bit more longitudinal studies as far as long-term effects in children for the vaccines? I think it's less pro-science speaking for myself.

It's more distrust in the pharmaceutical companies honestly, and a little bit in the government too right now. Why do we have scarce tests that are so expensive when you can go to Europe and find them on every street corner for $2? I feel like our government doesn't value public health like most things, it is a very partisan thing. It's not all government, but just as far as trying to align all of us to be on the same page and place the societal good, our public health above politics and fears and all of that. It's a crazy time. [laughs]

I really think that we will get our little guy vaccinated just to help push this along for the betterment of society, for him to be able to have safer playdates and feel more comfortable at school. It's not easy being four and wearing a mask at preschool.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, for sure. Koreen, thank you so much. Thank you for your thoughtful call. I appreciate it.

Koreen: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: That kind of ambivalence, that kind of maybe not knowing where to put the trust is understandable. Certainly, distrust of pharmaceutical companies is understandable. We have other callers like that on the board, one saying, "Look at the opioid crisis." They pushed these opioids on people saying they were safe when they weren't safe in terms of addiction. Yet, this is a very different situation, objectively speaking, because there is so much good science already about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines. There is so much I think that should be the bottom line message.

We hear how other things in society contribute to the psychology of vaccine hesitancy on the part of parents. We have one minute left, Dr. Fisher, for a last thought.

Celia Fisher: I totally agree with you that there's a history, unfortunately, of distrust in the pharmaceutical companies, especially for parents who are very concerned about their children's safety. This is going to be something that I think is going to continue. It speaks to a larger systemic problem that the FDA, the CDC, and the government faces in terms of how they regain the trust in terms of the extent to which pharmaceutical companies are going to be trusted by parents in terms of safety and efficacy. I think the caller made an excellent point. Hopefully, we move on to a more trusting country so that we can move ahead with some kind of health and normalcy.

Brian Lehrer: Celia Fisher, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Center for Ethics Education at Fordham University and one of the authors of the study on parental vaccine hesitancy regarding their children. Thank you so much for coming on with us.

Celia Fisher: Thank you so much.

 

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