Vaccine fatigue is real, writes Stephanie Dubois in CBC News on August 23, 2022. However, this is not a medical side-effect from having a booster. It is rather a sense of deja vu, of having been there before and losing interest in the matter. Today we ask the question is vaccine fatigue cooling booster interest. Are we so blasé about the pandemic we no longer care anymore?
Is Vaccine Fatigue Cooling Booster Interest and Why
Dubois graphically describes how vaccine interest is showing signs of tailing off in Canada.
- About 82% of Canadians completed their primary vaccine series.
- Some 57% of residents received at least one additional booster
- But only about 12% of the population have had two additional doses.
Is vaccine fatigue cooling booster interest Dubois wonders, because of mixed messages flowing over the country? Some experts advise accepting the first available shot. But others recommend we wait for bivalent boosters to specifically target Omicron.
Vaccine fatigue in this context is being bombarded by too much information on the subject. Of it overwhelming us to the extent we feel like tuning COVID vaccines out of our lives. This is akin to what many North Americans are feeling about forgetting about the pandemic, and moving on.
How Will This Affect Future Vaccination Roll Outs?
Dubois cites some virologists and public health experts saying government messages must be more specific. They need to explain why people need vaccinations at this stage of the pandemic, and their benefits too. However, the public response may not be what they expect.
Therefore, they also need to put programs in place that make boosting easier, and that won’t take a long time either. ‘If we can make getting a COVID booster as easy as it is to get a flu shot or some other regular health behavior,’ says one expert. ‘Then I think that will reduce the barriers quite a lot.’
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