The push to vaccinate: Coloradans hesitant about vaccine describe what calmed their concerns - Denver Gazette

Since the COVID-19 vaccines became first available for use in December, policymakers, health providers, prominent officials and celebrities, and reporters across the country have worried over vaccine hesitancy.

Initial polling pointed to a country that was leery but not fully resistant. A national survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation in December found that nearly 40% of respondents nationwide had adopted a wait-and-see approach. Nearly a quarter were either entirely opposed or would be vaccinated only if it were required. 

In Colorado, a September poll found 34% of respondents were waiting-and-seeing, a higher share than the proportion who said they'd get it as soon as possible (32%). 

Both nationally and locally, those numbers have shifted. The most recent Kaiser results, released earlier this month, found that the wait-and-see crowd had dropped from 39% to 15%. In Colorado, 62% of residents were either vaccinated or waiting to do so as soon as possible, according to a March survey. Another, released earlier this month, found. that nearly three-quarters of the state was either vaccinated or planning to become vaccinated.

And yet, concerns about hesitancy remain. The rate of vaccine uptick in Colorado has slowed, even as more people are eligible to be inoculated. Five months after the first doses rolled into Denver, roughly half of the state has received at least one dose. Hundreds of thousands of more doses are needed for the state to reach the 70% mark, which experts say is the minimum needed for herd immunity.

Gov. Jared Polis, among others, have highlighted the ways hesitancy can be combatted. The state has pushed out messaging campaigns, set up phone lines, made mass vaccination sites walk-in friendly. Experts have talked about the need to have open conversations, to hear out hesitant friends or family. Celebrities -- from Britain's Prince William and Sir Ian McKellen to Martha Stewart and Willie Nelson -- have all touted their vaccination status, some in a bid to promote confidence in the public.

In order to better understand what works to address hesitancy, the Gazette spoke with several Coloradans who were initially wary of the vaccine but ultimately decided to receive them. 

Several described the importance of interpersonal relationships: They saw friends or loved ones getting vaccinated, respond well, and describe their experiences positively. Others said they felt like they needed to, for the benefit of society and to ensure they didn't sicken anyone else. Some described it as a purely personal decision, influenced by nothing other than independent research and some words from friends.

Put off by speed

Susan Anderson's first "go-around" with a major vaccine push was polio. 

"I was a child," she said. "This was something -- you went to school, you got your sugar cube. They were fighting polio."

A retired teacher and Colorado Springs transplant, Anderson trusted science and was never hesitant about vaccines before. But the COVID-19 inoculation gave her pause. The disease had emerged in early 2020, and doses were ready to fight it off before the year was out. She was worried, too, that there would be long-term side effects.

"This was all a little scary," she said.

Mike Varnet, the CFO of the Pikes Peak Library District, said it felt rushed. His daughter is a doctor and lives in Texas, and she was all for it, he said. Plus, he didn't know how long the dose would be effective for. The lack of a concrete answer to that question spurred his hesitancy, too.

Varnet and Anderson are not alone. Earlier this month, the Kaiser Family Foundation, a national health care think tank, published its most recent survey of Americans' views on the COVID-19 vaccine. Three-quarters of those surveyed said they were concerned about long-term side effects. That number includes people who're highly motivated to get vaccinated, as well.

Experts in Colorado and elsewhere have said there are a few reasons for the speed of the doses' development. For one, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which were the first approved and form the bulk of the doses distributed nationwide, are based on technology that's been developed for decades, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the first products from this technology were created in 1999, according to the University of Chicago.

That, coupled with the vast financial backing and near-total time commitment by members of the vaccine community, explain much of the speed of the development. The vaccine still jumped through the federal government's various regulatory hoops. 

Much of that information was already floating out in the world when Anderson and Varnet were feeling their concerns. Varnet said his wife insisted he be vaccinated and that his physician daughter encouraged him, too. There was never a "full-blown conversation" between him and his family about getting vaccinated, other than that they all supported it and encouraged him to. His daughter said he couldn't be around their children until he was inoculated, which contributed pressure to the encouragement.

What was equally effective as the inter-personal push, he said, was his internal sense of his broader role to play.

"I don't want to get anybody sick, that’s why I wear masks," he said. "I know there’s talk about the mask helping. But I’ve always worn masks because I don't want to accidentally pass this on to somebody else. And I feel the same way about the vaccine.

"I just don't want to get anybody sick, even inadvertently. If anything can do to prevent that or mitigate that, I was happy to do it, even though I did have hesitancy."

For Anderson, the experts talking didn't matter much to her, she said, because she didn't know them personally. Ditto with celebrities or prominent officials publicly getting their own doses.

"I'm not implying they were making anything up," she said. "I just didn't know them, so I didn't have the respect of saying, 'I know this is somebody who has ben really working with us and knows what they're talking about."

But two things did help change her mind and led her to get vaccinated.

First, like Varnet, people around Anderson were getting vaccinated. Their experience -- and lack of adverse side effects -- helped calm her anxieties.

"There were enough people to say, 'OK, they've taken the vaccine, they haven't had reactions," Anderson said. 

Second, she rationalized with herself. If she's supportive of vaccines that treat other illnesses, why not trust this one? If her friends weren't seeing reactions and vaccines are the key to end the pandemic, "why am I hesitant about this one?"

"It just seemed like I was being two-faced about it," she said. 

Inner debate

Twice-retired veteran Suzanne Brannon was heartened by early conversations about vaccine development. She praised President Donald Trump's approach and was interested in how the Human Genome Project was helping drive understanding of the virus.

But, like many others, the speed concerned her. She said she knows people who had adverse effects from the vaccine.

"Without being in the science community, it's hard to stand there and say, 'This is a solid vaccine, I feel confident there won't be any outlying issues,'" she said. 

Messaging from experts didn't move her, either, because "everything is so politicized, especially this last year." She doesn't believe any politician, but she wants to believe the scientific community hasn't become politicized. She wished she'd had access to more data, which would've helped her make her decision faster.

She had a tough time getting an appointment when her group came up months ago, and she gave up for a couple of weeks. 

"F- this, I have other things to do than sit on the computer for two hours and figure out how to get a vaccine," she said. "They made it hard, I have to say."

Outward pressure didn't work, either; Brannon's independent, she said, and wasn't to make those decisions herself. But she listened to what her friends told her about their lived experience getting vaccinated, and she tried to do as much independent research as she could. Finally, interested but frustrated by wait times, she went to Summit County "because they're pretty organized up there."

Access to the vaccine has, from the beginning, been a problem for officials, in Colorado and across the country. Data has consistently shown that minority groups have received doses at lower proportions than their white peers, and Gov. Jared Polis and other Colorado officials have repeatedly said the state would work to improve the ease with which residents should get inoculated.

According to the most recent national Kaiser survey, many respondents voiced various access-related concerns. Fifteen percent of all respondents said it would be difficult to travel to get a vaccinated. Forty-eight percent said they feared they'd have to miss work if their dose made them feel sick, and 32% said they were concerned about getting the vaccine somewhere they didn't trust. 

Internet wildfires 

Before the vaccines were approved in December, Tabitha Isabel Martinez Pacheco was already reading conspiracy theories online about the vaccines containing a chip and other, even more out-there anxieties. The speed gave her pause, too. 

Her husband was previously a pharmacy tech, she said, and had no doubt about getting inoculated. She works for McDonald's on weekends, and the corporation was talking about reopening its restaurants' lobbies.  The family had planned to go to Puerto Rico this summer to see some family but wanted to be vaccinated first. 

All of that washed over Martinez. 

"So my husband starts telling me about Puerto Rico having this crazy surge in cases," she said, "and I've got my managers in my ear about opening the lobby."

She was still resistant. But she didn't want to get sick in Puerto Rico and be stuck there, and there was still fear about what the virus could do to her. So one day she just decided, almost spur of the moment, to do it.

"It's not that I think I would die if I got it, but it's just that fear," she said. "I have two little kids, kids go to school. I think it was just mostly a lot of fear."

Martinez still has mixed feelings about the vaccine, even after receiving it. She had a reaction after the second shot and felt sick. Though there are still reservations, she felt that if she contributed, the pandemic -- and its life-altering effects -- could be over faster. She didn't want to be one of the few to be unvaccinated and lead others to get sick.

"If we all just get vaccinated, the sooner, the sooner we can be done with it," she said. "I'm getting pretty tired of wearing a mask."

Reasonably hesitant

Karin White had a severe reaction to a flu vaccine four years back. She said doctors didn't identify what went wrong but advised her to steer clear of the influenza jab. When COVID hit and vaccines inched closer to reality, she said, she went back to her providers and started asking about the doses again.

"I heard different answers from everybody I talked to," she said. 

She's neither anti-vax nor classically hesitant. Her anxiety is more informed by what's happened to her body previously than what's happening in her mind now. But she has asthma and the prospect of breathing difficulties is particularly serious for her.

"My regular physician talked to me about the risk of COVID versus the risk of anaphylactic shock," she said. The former was worse.

Her husband was vaccinated. Though she lives in Colorado Springs, she reached out to National Jewish Health in Denver, a hospital that specializes in respiratory illnesses, and they agreed to give the first dose incrementally: That first jab was divided into three doses, each separated out, while providers monitored White for reactions.

She had none, and she got her second jab all at once. No issues.

"No side effects whatsoever," she said. "Nothing."

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