Visualizing change in covid vaccine sentiment, Ontario 2021-2022
Reflective intro added April 4, 2023 (in italics)
April 4, 2023: as of March 26, 2023, 27% of Ontarians have been double-boosted. Ontario does not publish statistics on bivalent rollout - which would currently be required in order to be “up to date,” so calculating ongoing vaccine enthusiasm at this point is more challenging.
I have previously described individuals who continue to receive covid vaccines according to the vaccine manufacturers’ schedules as “vaccine enthusiasts.” This label captures the rather trusting approach of this group. We will ignore the fact that many people got vaccinated in order to be able to work, travel, or visit parents in the nursing home - “enthusiasm” probably doesn’t quite capture their attitude toward the vaccines they received.
What about everyone else? What to call them?
One label from early in covid was “anti-vaxxer.” This label is problematic for many reasons, not the least of which is that covid vaccine non-enthusiasts have in the majority of cases received several covid vaccines.
So let us refer to this group as “vaccine satisfied” or “vaccine skeptics.”
To evaluate how people are feeling about covid vaccines, one datapoint is the percentage of the population who are migrating into/ out of the enthusiast group, and into/out of the skeptic/satisfied group. This can be seen by how many people received vaccine number 1, 2, 3, 4 (and soon 5).
Here is Ontario’s data:
What we can see is that the “enthusiast” group was quite a majority in 2021 - somewhere in the vicinity of 85% of Ontarians. However, in 2022, we see that “enthusiasts” - measured by the size of population who are double-boosted - has dropped to 15%.
Despite what we hear on the news, the vast majority of people in Ontario - over 80% are either satisfied or skeptical with covid vaccines at this point. And enthusiasts are becoming a rapidly dwindling minority.