At a noisy summer block party in Providence in July, community health worker Rosa Roman tried to interest a middle-aged handyman in a free tetanus shot. But he was scared.
The man, who gave only his first name, Armando, 42, is an immigrant from Puerto Rico. He said he spent the last 20 years living in Florida. And what he knows about vaccines, he said, comes from Fox News and social media.
“The people that got vaccinated for COVID,’’ he said, “I hear the people now, they’re dying.”
Those “reports” are false –- and dangerously misleading. And research shows that this type of vaccine misinformation is especially pervasive in Spanish-language digital and social media.
But Roman did not try to correct Armando. Instead, she explained that the vaccines they were offering that day –- Tdap , MMR and Hep B –- were to protect against other diseases, such as tetanus, diphtheria, whooping cough, measles and hepatitis B.
As the man turned to walk away, Roman’s co-worker, Yesenia Hawes, called out in Spanish: “If you change your mind, we’re here until 2 o’clock. All we’re trying to do is get you healthy!”
Nearly four years after the first COVID-19 shots, large swaths of adults in the United States are still awash in misinformation about vaccines, according to surveys by Kaiser Family Foundation. That is making it harder to inoculate people against other conditions.
Nationwide, routine vaccination rates have declined since the pandemic, whether due to vaccine hesitancy, disruption in routine healthcare or an increase in the uninsured rate. And it’s taking a toll on public health. Measles outbreaks have been reported in states including Chicago Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Oregon.
And yet a recent Gallup poll found that 40% of Americans say that vaccinating their children is important, down from 58% in 2019.
With new COVID shots available this month in Rhode Island, the painstaking work of persuading a reluctant public to accept another round of vaccinations begins. And this time may be harder still.
This story was reported by The Public’s Radio. You can read the entire story here.
