Washington Examiner - Political News and Conservative Analysis About Congress, the President, and the Federal Government More than half of active-duty military families won’t get the COVID-19 vaccine, according to a poll conducted among more than 800 military personnel, spouses, and veterans.
Fifty-three percent of the 810 active duty personnel and relatives surveyed intend to reject the vaccine, according to the Blue Star Families poll. Additionally, 40% of 57 active-duty service respondents said they would get the vaccine, while 49% said they wouldn’t. Another 11% said they were undecided.
A spokesman for the military advocacy group told the Washington Examiner the margin of error for the 49% who would not receive was plus or minus12.98 percentage points. Among the 53% of families who said they would not receive it, the margin of error was plus or minus 3.8 percentage points. The survey was conducted between Dec. 10-14.
Jennifer Akin, a Blue Star Families researcher, conducted the poll after seeing social media posts by military family members that seemed skeptical about the vaccine, she said.
“This is a divisive topic … but at the end of the day, if we as military families can recognize that this is a readiness issue, it can be very helpful,” Akin told Military.com.
Among the public, 1 in 4 people said they wouldn’t get the vaccine, according to a poll published Wednesday by Monmouth University.
Fifty percent of the public plans to get the vaccine as soon as they are eligible, 19% said they would let other people go first to see how it goes, and 24% said they will never get the vaccine if they can avoid it, the poll found.
The survey was conducted by telephone from Jan. 21-24 with 809 adults. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
Many military troops and Defense Department staff have refused the vaccine, but numbers are unavailable regarding just how many refusals there have been. The Defense Department received 769,000 doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and vaccinated around 320,000 people as of Jan. 28.
The coronavirus has infected more than 26 million people across the country and killed 456,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus tracker.
More than 27 million people have received a first dose of the vaccine, and more than 6 million are fully vaccinated, according to the New York Times.
President Biden, who has touted a goal of giving out 100 million shots in his first 100 days in office, increased that goal to 150 million.
