A potential coronavirus vaccine could be a hard sell here in Texas.
If you listen to mainstream media, you'd think everyone is clamoring for a vaccine amid the pandemic. But that's not the reality. The latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll finds less than half of Texas voters say they'd get a vaccine if one were widely available, and 41% believe a vaccine will be announced before it's proven to work. That's not just Republicans who are hesitant.
“The big drop in the share of the Texas Democrats who said that they would get a vaccine from 73 to 51 percent I think is more a function of worries about the vaccine not being ready,” Jim Henson, head of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, said.
He says those fears will (eventually) need to be addressed.
“It’s going to be incumbent on the manufactures and particularly the government to go out of their way to illustrate to people that it’s safe and effective and testing and the vetting of the vaccine is done in a way people can trust,” Henson added.