1 in 4 Britons would say No to Covid-19 vaccine 'tomorrow'
A survey of over 17,000 Britons by Findoutnow.co.uk reveals that 25% would decline “If the government made a Covid-19 vaccine available tomorrow”.
More than half as many more females (29.91%) said they would reject the vaccine compared to males (19.45%).
Those aged 25-44 were more reluctant to take the vaccine, with over 65’s the least.
The West Midlands and Greater London have nearly 50% more potential vaccine rejectors than The North East of England and Scotland.
The starkest contrast though, are between voters for different parties in the 2019 General Election. One third (33.3%) of Brexit Party voters wouldn’t take the vaccine, compared to just 9% of Liberal Democrat voters. Only 1 in 5 Conservative voters (19.77%) would say No, compared to over 1 in 4 Labour voters (26.42%).
Covid-19 vaccine scepticism increases as we go down the social-economic scale, with 27.5% of non-workers rejecting, compared to 22.5% of higher managerial, administrative or professional workers.
Most rejectors of the potential Covid-19 vaccine cited lack of testing, but a small minority expressed doubt about the science behind a potential vaccine, several cited distrust of BIll Gates, a fear of needles, and one respondent claimed “it will probably kill me, coronavirus is FAKE”.
We went on to ask the rejectors “Are you against vaccines in general?” and only 1 in 10 said they were, suggesting specific caution around the potential Covid-19 vaccines, and perhaps a willingness to hold-out for a “better” alternative, something that CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta likened to waiting for the next iPhone model with the “kinks ironed out”. He went on to stress that any vaccine is likely to be a better alternative than waiting.
About the survey
The survey of 17,706 members of Pick My Postcode was conducted on Monday 20th of July. Find Out Now selected a nationally representative sub-sample of 2,000 within +/-2% of ONS quotas for Age, Gender, Region, SEG, and 2019 vote, using machine learning. No weighting was applied. Full nationally representative results available here.