A "SIDE EFFECT": VACCINE HESITANCY

The pandemic brought with it a change in social behavior that ranges from restrictions on individual freedom, the expansion of social exclusion and poverty, changes in the labor market, the forced implementation of distance learning, inadequacy in the public transport system and problems from logistics, to the return of inflation and a series of “new rules” that produce countless social and psychological effects in post-modern societies. Among so many forced and/or necessary changes, we will discuss in this policy brief a “side effect” that emerges within the Covid-19 pandemic: the phenomenon of vaccine hesitancy. Such apparently harmless behavior implies irreparable loss of life considering the speed of mutation of the virus and the spread of the disease. Although the COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the greatest challenges faced by humanity since the second world war and the development of vaccines to combat SARS-COV-2 has represented an extraordinary advance for the international scientific community and saved millions of lives around the world, there is a portion of the population that delays the decision to receive the immunizing agent. The success of the vaccination campaign will depend on when hesitantly they are vaccinated and, in the course of the fourth wave, on the speed of decision-making of these individuals