​Marin Ad Blitz To Take Aim At Vaccine Hesitancy

MARIN COUNTY, CA — Marin County is by just about every metric experiencing a wildly successful vaccine rollout, and Health Officer Matt Willis wants to keep it that way.

And with supply expected to flood the nation in the coming months, Willis announced the launch of an outreach campaign that aims to address vaccine hesitancy.

Willis trumpeted the “Get Vaccinated Marin” initiative at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting in which he announced Marin is expected to move into the orange tier by March 24 and could enter the yellow tier by April 14.

Willis promised an aggressive blitz that will include billboards, signs at bus stops and on Golden Gate Transit along with advertising in The Marin Independent Journal and on social media.

Ads will appear in Spanish and English, Willis said.

“We’ve reached the point now where we’re anticipating that the supply of vaccine will continue such that people who are seeking the vaccine will be more easily be able to access the vaccine and we’ll start reaching into that population that may be more hesitant,” Willis said.

“Up to this point, the supply has been so limited that that hesitancy hasn’t been that as much of an issue for us, in fact it’s been the opposite. There have been many more people who have been eager to get vaccinated than have been able to get vaccinated thus far.”

Thus far, Marin County is crushing the rollout.

As of Tuesday, around 32 percent of the county’s population has received at least one vaccine and around 40 percent of the county’s eligible population (16 years of age and over) have received at least one vaccine, Willis said.

Marin County’s vaccination rate is outpacing the global effort by a greater than tenfold margin, Willis said, citing data from World Health Organization, estimating just 3 percent of the world’s population has received at least one dose.

Marin is outpacing the state and the nation by wide margins too.

As of Thursday, 23 percent of California residents have received at least one vaccine and just 11.4 percent are fully vaccinated, NPR reports, citing data from the CDC.

The state’s rollout roughly matches that of the nation, which as of Thursday has administered at least one vaccine to 23 percent of its population and fully vaccinated 12 percent according to data compiled by The New York Times.

How To Get The Coronavirus Vaccine In California

Vaccine hesitancy figures to be a formidable challenge throughout the United States, which is expected to have enough supply to vaccinate every American adult by the end of May.

Politics has been a big factor driving hesitancy, with self-identified Republicans expressing much greater levels of mistrust in a vaccine that is proven to be safe and effective according to the CDC.

In an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, 42 percent of Republicans told pollsters they were unlikely to get the vaccine or probably wouldn’t, compared with 17 percent of Democrats who expressed hesitancy in the same poll.

Former President Donald Trump, who has been criticized for not taking a more active role in promoting a vaccine that his administration played a role in developing, advocated for vaccinations Tuesday in a FOX News interview, Business Insider reports.

"I would recommend it, and I would recommend it to a lot of people that don't want to get it, and a lot of those people voted for me, frankly," Trump said in a phone interview with Maria Bartiromo.

"It is a great vaccine. It is a safe vaccine, and it is something that works."

Some evangelical Christian churches have propagated misinformation fueling vaccine hesitancy falsely claiming it contains fetal tissue or microchips or that its ingredients are associated with the devil, The Washington Post reports.

Vaccine hesitancy could prolong the crisis that has already left most of the world socially isolated for more than a year, Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told The Associated Press.

“This is going to be the big issue,” Jha said. “And if we get stuck at 60 or 65% vaccinated, we are going to continue to see significant outbreaks and real challenges in our country, and it’s going to be much, much harder to get back to what we think is normal unless we can get that number higher.”

Read more:

• Marin Co. Nears Orange Tier
• Marin County Creates Vaccine Call Center
• Marin County To Start Offering Vaccines To Teachers