Overcoming Vaccine Hesitancy
By Stewart Lonky, M.D. If ever a government project lived up to its moniker, Operation Warp Speed would be it. The first coronavirus vaccines arrived less than a year after the pandemic began and blew away the previous delivery record of four years, a distinction held by the MMR vaccine. Now, here’s the tricky part: compliance. It’s one thing to have a vaccine. It’s another matter to convince people to take it. This point is critical because somewhere between 60 and 90 percent of U.S. adults and children must be vaccinated or have antibodies resulting from infection to arrive at the herd immunity safe harbor. Writing in the Wall Street Journal , Marty Makary, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health , says a recent drop in cases—77 percent in just six weeks—means we’re on course to achieving herd immunity by April, allowing most people to return to normal life. Dr. Makary believes cases are dropping because far more people than
