Page 12 - DMN3Q21

The novel Covid-19 vaccine has created quite a media buzz. It feels like every news outlet, government agency, and social media personality produces daily content intended to sway our opinion on all things vaccine related. As an individual, this is dizzying. As an American, raised to value my individual freedoms, I also feel a certain sense of threat. Agency is defined as the capacity for a person to exert one’s own will (aka choose) to generate actions. Currently, the question of vaccination, and further the enhanced pressure of employer mandate, seems to threaten the very notion of self- agency.
Vaccine hesitancy is not new. In fact, the drivers of hesitancy have been well documented over time: trust, sanctity of self, fear, and education being in the top tier. In fact, in 2019 (before Covid), hesitancy was seen by public health experts as one of the top 10 global health threats. (Gallager, 2019) Currently, if you Google Vaccine Hesitancy, there are over 16 million hits. The volume of thought leadership has blossomed in the last 15 months. Not surprising, as the importance of this topic, like so many other public health concerns, was brought into focus by crisis.
I cannot help but observe that so much of the American experience with pandemic has been about consent and agency. We have been thrown into global grieving over the way we lived before 2020: perceived safety, self-determination,
12 Detroit Medical News
connection, and community among topics we have been faced to make peace with in a distanced and infected world. Our collective mental health as evidence of our struggle. Each of us has a unique experience. And... the simultaneous reckoning that pandemic has brought, brings us together in a ‘knowing’ and disorienting way. Thus, opening millions of uncomfortable conversations.
Late 2020, we were just getting used to this ‘new normal’ of pandemic when the novel Covid-19 vaccine was thrust upon us. Both exhilarating (considering a light at the end of the tunnel) and terrifying (considering an unknown injection inside my body). The early adopters flocked. The fence sitters have slowly gotten their information and come to the clinic for their shot. The hesitant, in so many cases, have dug into their resistance. Science would tell us that the lack of herd immunity (vaccinate rate above 80%) is a direct threat to our ability to manage the consequences this disease. We are at an impasse. One that terrifies each of us in a unique way.
Science has declared vaccine safety, but hesitancy isn’t typically about science or facts. Hesitancy is more typically rooted in deeply held personal, religious, and cultural beliefs. Hesitancy is almost impossible to ‘defeat’ with science. This puts Western health care delivery in a complicated position. Science is the Western Medicine tool... our go-to... our hammer. Without science, we are forced to dive quickly
Third Quarter 2021