Poll: 1 in 4 Americans Know Someone Who Died From COVID Vaccine

Several recent polls suggest that Americans are increasingly wary of COVID-19 vaccines.

Following the FDA and CDC’s approval of the latest booster shots manufactured by Moderna, Pfizer, and Novavax in September, recent data indicate that uptake appears to be relatively slow.

According to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), approximately 15 million people in the United States, including children and adults eligible for the vaccine, had received the most recent shot as of Oct. 27. This equates to more than 4.5 percent of the US population.

“As of Oct. 27, more than 15 million Americans have received the updated COVID-19 vaccine, and over 19 million vaccines have shipped to pharmacies and other locations, with 91 percent of Americans 12 years and older living within 5 miles of a vaccination site,” the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said in a

According to CDC data, approximately 23 million people had received the initial updated booster shot by Oct. 26 of last year. The 2022 fall vaccination campaign began about 10 days before the 2023 season. Last year’s booster reached approximately 56.5 million people, or 17% of the US population.According to the poll, approximately 42 percent said they would “likely” join a class-action lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies for side effects related to vaccines, while 24 percent said they would “very likely” join. 47 percent of respondents said they would not join the lawsuit, while 11 percent are unsure.

Increasingly Wary

The survey, carried out by the Annenberg Public Policy Center with the University of Pennsylvania, polled 1,500 American adults between Oct. 5 and Oct. 12. It found that about 63 percent of Americans think that getting the COVID-19 vaccine is safer than getting the virus itself—a drop of 12 percentage points from April 2021 when 75 percent held that viewpoint.
It also found that Americans who view the shot as unsafe increased from 18 percent in August 2022 to 24 percent during last month’s poll.

The number of Americans who correlate vaccines to autism has gone up from 10 percent in April 2021 to 16 percent during the October 2023 poll, according to the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Notably, more Americans believe that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine is linked to autism. Nine percent of respondents in June 2021 believed that statement, but 12 percent now say that statement is true, the poll found.A new poll found that roughly a quarter of Americans believe someone they know died as a result of COVID-19 vaccines, while another recent poll found that an increasing number of Americans are wary of the shots.

According to a Rasmussen Reports poll, about a quarter of Americans, or 24 percent, “believe someone they know died from COVID-19 vaccine side effects,” the pollster said on Nov. 2. Approximately 69 percent said they did not know anyone who died as a result of the vaccine.
According to Rasmussen, roughly half of Americans, or 47 percent, know someone who died from the COVID-19 virus, while 49 percent don’t know anyone who died from the illness.

According to the report, “among those who say someone they know died from the COVID-19 virus, 41 percent also say they know someone who died from side effects of the COVID-19 vaccine.”

“By contrast, among those who say they don’t know anyone who died from the virus, only nine percent (9 percent) say they know someone who died from COVID-19 vaccine side effects,” Rasmussen said in a press release.

The pollster noted that there were no political differences in the questions. 25% of Republican voters said they knew someone who died as a result of alleged vaccine side effects, while 24% of Democrats and unaffiliated voters said the same. When polled, government employees were “more than twice as likely as private sector workers” to tell the pollster that they knew someone who died as a result of the side effects.

At the same time, the number of Americans who back using ivermectin—a drug that was often demonized by media outlets and even some federal health officials—to treat COVID-19 has risen from 10 percent in September 2021 to 26 percent last month, pollsters found.

The public policy center claimed that the increased skepticism toward COVID-19 vaccines and other shots is due to an increase in “belief in health misinformation,” though federal agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have also been accused of spreading misinformation. Courts have also ruled that the CDC, the White House, and a number of other federal agencies cannot communicate with social media companies about COVID-19 or vaccine-related posts, though the Supreme Court recently halted those lower court orders.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, said in the poll news release that “growing numbers now distrust health-protecting, life-saving vaccines,” although her group did not appear to try to address why Americans increasingly distrustful of the shots.