There are a bunch of issues surrounding the Covid vaccine and vaccine hesitancy and vaccines in general. For years, my company participated in annual flu vaccinations administering millions of vaccines annually.

So, let's expand the issues around vaccines so the public has a better understanding of them.

Risks: every vaccine is risky. Our government and other public health care focused entities tend to dismiss the risks of vaccine in favor of the greater good. While the risks are usually small relative to the societal and individual benefits that accrue from a vaccine, that does not take away, that generally speaking the individual bares all the risk and society derives much of the benefit in the form of herd immunity.

Most adverse reactions are relatively insignificant, and the public is made aware of them. Injection site soreness, flu-like symptoms for a few days, etc. We know the drill. No big deal. But some people experience very severe reactions, which while rare can in some cases contribute to death or permanent disability.

So, arguing that vaccines are safe (for the vast majority of people) and serious adverse reactions are rare is not really adequate. If it were, then no one would buy lottery tickets, since the chance of winning is "rare", but the chance of losing is high but for most people it simply means they are out a few dollars. People view risks and benefits differently often magnifying the risk and underestimating the benefit or vice versa.

There are plenty of examples of pharma companies not discovering the risks till long after the damage is done. There are other cases like with the Covid vaccine of the government promoting vaccines even where the benefits are tiny, and the risks may outweigh them. For example, the benefit/risk profile of the Covid vaccine for someone like me who is old with comorbidities is far higher, than for a 14-year-old young boy with no health issues, who has already had asymptomatic Covid. Yet our government has failed to account for those. That causes people to distrust the government and its advice. California went so far as to dictate what physicians could or could not tell their patients undermining the trust normally present in a physician patient relationship.

So, a good first step is total transparency with regard to vaccines, there risks and there benefits almost to the individual level.

Fear: One reason people get vaccinated is they fear getting sick. Great. We understand fear is a powerful motivator to encourage people to take steps to prevent getting sick. But fear including irrational fear also relates to getting vaccinated. Some people have an extreme fear of needles and will come up with a host of reasons not to get vaccinated, when the simple reason is fear. Dismissing those fears won't address the issue.

Some religions and some personal beliefs influence people’s "fear" towards vaccines. While the risk of them contracting a disease is low, the certainty of their fear being triggered by a vaccine is 100%. Understanding and addressing these fears can be difficult, but it needs to be done.

I have daughter that fears needles. My other three daughters are health care providers and very comfortable being injected and injecting others. Some family, same upbringing, different outcomes.

For the daughter that fears needles, the "spray" vaccine for the flu solves her concerns about flu vaccines. But it is always a "big deal" when she needs to get vaccine boosters. Shaming these people is not the answer. Dismissing their fears is also not the answer. Worse, equating vaccines is really dumb. Someone like my daughter that had asymptomatic Covid and fears needles, could be prone to thinking, if Covid was not that bad, how bad could other viruses be... the answer... very bad. Let's meet people where they are and help them, not with a one size fits all answer, but to deal with their individual risks, benefits, and fears around a given vaccine.

Patriotism: Patriotism has gotten a bad rap from the political left. But a major reason to get vaccinated is to protect those around you.

Liability: liability can be a big issue with vaccine. Many companies stop making vaccines in the past because when adverse events occurred the legal awards were crippling, not because of negligence, but because the individual getting the vaccine had a serious adverse reaction. As a society, we want vaccines to be affordable and available, but the term "affordable" needs to be understood as "affordable" to patients and "affordable" to suppliers.

To me the only solution is that the government address how patients who have suffered adverse events not related to negligent manufacturing or administration of the vaccine should be compensated for severe adverse reactions. A 25-year-old professional athlete earning $25 million a year, and is healthy, and if they contract Covid unlikely to develop moderate or severe disease, but if they get myocarditis from the vaccine could suffer a career ending event would be entitled to millions if that government "profile" recommends that person get vaccinated for Covid. But even your average bus driver could experience a reaction that precludes them from working for a period of time due to an adverse event. In simple terms, if we are asking people to get vaccinated for "the greater good", than the public has an obligation to make them whole in the case of an adverse event.

These are just some of the issues that we tend not to address as we try to shame people into getting vaccinated. We have politicized the general subject of vaccines, but not really sought to understand some of the causes behind vaccine hesitancy and address them. Vaccine hesitancy can be a rational and/or irrational response, but we are unlikely to solve it by dismissing it and trying to bully people to get vaccines. We need to help people get over their concerns by addressing them and also realize that in many cases, we should not be asking people to get vaccinated if the benefits don't outweigh the risks.