Following on from yesterday’s report on the low rate of Covid-19 vaccinations in the borough (14%) today the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has published data and analysis concerning ‘vaccine hesitancy’ or ‘negative vaccine sentiment’ if you prefer.
You can read the full report, Coronavirus and vaccine hesitancy, Great Britain – ONS, or if you do not fancy a statistics geek session or your slide rule is a bit sticky we have extracted some highlights.
Sorry about all the charts and statistics but our community (that’s you) needs to know what is going on and it is the only way to get to grips with the nastiness of Covid-19.
Exciting, huh?
The scepticism of the young?
Oddly it is younger people (adults aged 16 to 29 years) who are most likely to report vaccine hesitancy. Maybe too much exposure to nonsense theories circulated on social media networks?
Black or Black British adults were most likely to report vaccine hesitancy (44%), please see the ethnicity breakdown at bottom of page.
Index of Multiple Deprivation
Adults living in the most deprived areas of England (based on the Index of Multiple Deprivation) like Tower Hamlets or Newham were more likely to report vaccine hesitancy (16%) than adults in the least deprived areas (7%).
Negative vaccine sentiment
There are many reasons for negative vaccine sentiment / vaccine hesitancy / don’t fancy a jab thanks.
To be clear this is not a matter of attaching blame to anyone for not getting vaccinated. They have their reasons which are just as valid as those who do get vaccinated without a second thought.
Problem is that until everyone does get vaccinated we are all at risk, so those who refuse to be vaccinated need to have their concerns heard and then be persuaded that the Covid-19 vaccines are safe. This author has had his as well as the Wapping Mole. (He had a jab especially adapted for Moles of course.)
Around 1 in 20 (4%) adults reported negative sentiment (“No thank you very much!) towards the coronavirus vaccine. This refers to adults who have been offered the vaccine and decided not to be vaccinated and those who reported being very or fairly unlikely to have the vaccine if offered.
Previously on the Enquirer
Yesterday’s news story about the low rate of Covid-19 vaccinations in the borough (14%) did not got into any depth as to why the vaccination rate in Tower Hamlets is so low.
One popular reason given on the Twitter Spheres is that our borough has a very young population, which it has. However we do not believe anything until we have had it checked for authenticity.
So Moley checked with some real statisticians on the Inter Tweets and the formal explanation of this is that in the NHS figures quoted there is no allowance for ‘different age profiles in highly-deprived BAME Communities (Shorter Life Expectancy)’.
All much clearer then.
Reality is this stuff takes a lot of analysis, checking, double checking and triple checking so we will be looking into this and any issues with vaccine hesitancy in the borough and report back.
Who knows what Moley will find? As ever he can be contacted on hello@eastendendquirer.org and is totally discrete if there is anything you think we should know.
And if either Tower Hamlets council or Tower Hamlets CCG would like to help out with an explanation we would be delighted to publish it of course.
Ethnicity breakdown
The ONS survey uses the five-category ethnicity breakdown as below:
- White: White British, White Irish, Other White;
- Mixed/Multiple ethnic groups: White and Black Caribbean, White and Black African, White and Asian or Any other Mixed/Multiple ethnic background;
- Asian or Asian British: Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Chinese or any other Asian background;
- Black or Black British: African, Caribbean or Any other Black/African/Caribbean background;
- Other ethnic background group: Arab or Any other ethnic group;
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