What drives those who refuse to vaccinate ?: "Many seem not to see their social responsibility"

Professor Betsch, in the spring everyone complained that we didn't have enough vaccine.

There is now more than enough vaccine, but there are not enough people who want to be vaccinated.

What led to this change?

Lucia Schmidt

Editor in the "Life" section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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The willingness to vaccinate does not decrease;

to put it that way is wrong.

The willingness to vaccinate among Germans has risen continuously since the vaccines were approved.

What is decreasing is the rate of vaccination.

There are many people who are willing to be vaccinated;

they just don't do it right now.

It is important to distinguish between them.

As a society, we have to understand that we urgently need to be vaccinated now and not sometime in autumn.

So there is still enough readiness?

We have enough readiness and enough vaccine.

The only question is: how do we get both together?

As an expert in health communication, what would you advise?

What works well is getting the vaccine to where the people are without it.

This is also increasingly being done: in front of the café, in front of the stadium or in the shopping center.

You can pick up people who are basically ready, but have not yet made an appointment.

Do you get these people to the second vaccination, which is so crucial for the delta variant, if they just took the first vaccination with them somewhere?

In fact, I don't know exactly how this is organized.

But what we see: Those who already have a vaccination are most open to getting a second vaccination as quickly and easily as possible, no matter where.

But there are also many people who do not want to be vaccinated.

We have to achieve this in order to significantly increase the vaccination rate.

Lots?

We have around three to five percent of people in Germany who generally reject vaccinations.

As far as the corona vaccination is concerned, around ten percent of adults say that they definitely do not want to be vaccinated.

This group should not be our primary concern.

These are those who are often the loudest, but it is much more important to get those on board who have not yet actively arranged an appointment or are still undecided or who still have unanswered questions and doubts.

And how do you reach the undecided?

You have to explain clearly to them what the benefit of vaccination is - on the one hand the individual and on the other hand the social one. I am always shocked when I see that many still do not know that a double vaccination prevents a severe course relatively safely, even with the Delta variant. People do not differentiate between easy and difficult course because they do not know such facts. It is exactly what it is all about: namely not to get seriously ill. When it comes to social benefits, the following questions arise: How do we want to spend the next few months? What do we want for our children who have not yet been vaccinated? Do we want another year without education? As a vaccinated adult, you can do your part to push the wave and burden of infection,from which the children also benefit.

But many fear side effects, have wrong information on their minds, or don't trust the vaccine.