Surveys Show Northeast, West Coast Most Likely To Accept COVID-19 Vaccine
Carnegie Mellon Researchers' Daily Question: Would You Get the Shot?
By Byron Spice
Carnegie Mellon University researchers have begun daily nationwide surveys to determine U.S. acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines and pinpoint those states and localities where people are most skeptical of the shots.
The CMU surveys, which Facebook distributes daily to a portion of its users, thus far have shown that the greatest resistance to the vaccine is in the Deep South, while people in the Northeast and West Coast are the most inclined to receive the vaccine, if it were available to them.
Among over one million respondents who have taken the survey nationally since late December, 71% indicate that they would definitely or probably receive the vaccine if it were offered to them. The rate exceeds 80% in states such as Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Washington, and is more than 88% in the District of Columbia. Some states, including Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama, have rates under 65%, suggesting much lower acceptance of the vaccine in their populations.
The deep disparities in the findings are consistent with previous public surveys, said Alex Reinhart, assistant teaching professor in the Department of Statistics and Data Science and a member of the Delphi Research Group that conducts the surveys. The power of the CMU surveys, he added, is that they are distributed to a wide swath of Facebook users each day, enabling researchers to track changes in attitudes in real-time as the pandemic progresses and vaccine distribution continues.