Survey data on Vaccine hesitancy in my part of the world:
Some ~88% are vaccine-accepting (not all of those are fully vaxxed) and ~12% are vaccine-hesitant.
Of those fully unvaxxed, ~80% believe they'll never catch Covid (sounds familiar?).
Some of the remaining 20% are probably unvaxxed due to logistics, inconvenience or peer pressure - they'll probably get vaxxed if it were more convenient and were vaxxed in groups (aka sheeple).
On the whole we're doing OK, but it will still take some work to get the message across to the ~12%. Another Covid wave would help in convincing some of the fence-sitters.
Lol - I can't really blame her, but it depends on when and where she visited. Trips to Southern India in Dec/Jan should be OK.
There's an old joke about Indian immigrants to the US. Their (native-born) neighbours ask them the secret to how well-behaved and high-achieving their kids are.
Ans: Any time the kids misbehave, the parents drop hints that their next vacation is going to be in India. After that the kids remain on their best behaviour, to avoid that punishment.
I've watched a number of travel vlogs on you tube that document experiences there in India. If I were a hundred years younger, I'd like to visit.
I have a successful lawyer friend/acquaintance (female) who went there. She is a bit eccentric and could be ranked somewhere on the "Karen" scale in some of her perceptions. TO be racist I guess, she is "Ultra white" in terms of her body definition. However, she does have a spark of genius that ignites from time to time.
She's one of those privileged to be among the well-traveled types. She went to India and upon return said (paraphrasing here), "It was Hell". lol.
Yup, AZ Covishield and the homegrown Covaxin are the ones being used in the Govt. public-health programs (taxpayer-paid). In addition, the Russian Sputnik as well as Moderna are also available as paid shots in some for-profit hospital chains, but they're not the high-volume shots.
At the moment, mix-and-match is not recommended/permitted in the public-health program - the booster has to match the 2 previous shots as recorded in the vaccination card.
India started later, and the 3rd (booster) shot was opened for the general public only on April 10th 2022. So yes, there is a lag even for the first 2 shots - 65% is about right. But the remaining 35% are not all AntiVa or even vaccine-hesitant - it may just be inconvenient for some of them to go to the nearest town for their 2nd shot.
There is some distributed disinformation on social media, but no significant organized AntiVa sentiment. There is some of the same stuff including the magnetic memes, and even some medical personnel advising against the booster, but it is definitely a smaller minority than the US. No major AntiVa sentiment attributable to religion so far.
What is the disinformation like over there? Is social media as rife with it? If so, what political group is benefiting from the chaos? I’d think quite a few foreign assholes would find tearing at seams to be beneficial. India has been so robbed for assets, the looters certainly wouldn’t stop now.
India appears to have a similar vaccination rate as the US. 65% or so fully vaxxed. I'd actually have thought it would have been higher.
Best wishes in convincing the hesitant folk.
Here is how "hesitant" I was to get vaccinated...
Crazy world we live in! Stay well!