The country's COVID-19 booster rollout is making many vaccine-hesitant Americans even more skeptical of the shots, The New York Times reported Oct. 11.
Seventy-one percent of unvaccinated Americans said the need for boosters suggests COVID-19 vaccines are ineffective, according to research the Kaiser Family Foundation published Sept. 28.
Christopher Poe, a 47-year-old who works at a manufacturing plant in Lima, Ohio, is unvaccinated and says he has concerns about COVID-19 vaccines that have been amplified by the country's latest guidance on boosters.
"It seems like such a short time and people are already having to get boosters," Mr. Poe told The New York Times. "And the fact that they didn't realize that earlier in the rollout shows me that there could be other questions that could be out there, like the long-term effects."
The country's booster plan could also decrease vaccine confidence among a key group: parents with young children.
On Oct. 7, Pfizer submitted its request for the FDA to extend its vaccine's emergency use authorization to include children between ages 5 and 11, but most parents of children in that age group are skeptical about vaccinating their children, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's polls. In August, just 26 percent of parents of children in that age group said they would vaccinate their children as soon as they became eligible.