Poll: 49% of Americans would get COVID-19 vaccine

49% Americans say they would get a COVID-19 vaccine if the scientists working furiously to create one succeed, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

That's surprisingly low considering the effort going into the global race for a vaccine, but more people might eventually roll up their sleeves: The poll found 31% simply weren't sure if they'd get vaccinated. Another 20% said they'd definitely refuse.

"It means that there's still uncertainty around the side effects of a potential vaccine," said Caitlin Oppenheimer, senior vice president, public health, at NORC at the University of Chicago. "There's a lot of myth about the vaccines and whether or not they might get coronavirus from taking the vaccine."

Among Americans who say they wouldn't get vaccinated, 70% worry about safety.

"To get a COVID-19 vaccine within a year or two ... causes me to fear that it won't be widely tested as to side effects," said Melanie Dries, 56, of Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Dr. Francis Collins, who directs the National Institutes of Health, wants to put that fear to rest.  The NIH is creating a master plan for testing the leading COVID-19 vaccine candidates in tens of thousands of people, to prove if they really work and also if they're safe.

"I would not want people to think that we're cutting corners, because that would be a big mistake. I think this is an effort to try to achieve efficiencies, but not to sacrifice rigor," Collins told The AP.

Among those who want a vaccine, the AP-NORC poll found protecting themselves, their family and the community are the top reasons.

"As a father who takes care of his family, I think, you know, it's important for me to get vaccinated as soon as it's available to better protect my family," said Brandon Grimes, 35, of Austin, Texas.

And 72% of all Americans say life won't go back to normal without a vaccine. A site foreman for his family's construction business, Grimes travels from house to house interacting with different crews, and said a number of his coworkers also are looking forward to vaccination to minimize on-the-job risk.

The new coronavirus is most dangerous to older adults and people of any age who have chronic health problems such as diabetes or heart disease. The poll found 67% of people 60 and older say they'd get vaccinated, compared with 40% who are younger.

And death counts suggest black and Hispanic Americans are more vulnerable to COVID-19, because of unequal access to health care and other factors. Yet the poll found just a quarter of African Americans and 37% of Hispanics would get a vaccine compared to 56% of whites.

42% of people who don't want a vaccine say they're concerned about catching COVID-19 from it. But most of the leading vaccine candidates don't contain the coronavirus itself, meaning there's no chance people could get infected from those shots.

Over 5 million people worldwide have been confirmed infected by the virus, and more than 330,000 deaths have been recorded, including over 94,000 in the U.S., according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University and based on government data. Experts believe the true toll is significantly higher.

And while it's true that most people who get COVID-19 have mild cases and recover, doctors still, months into the pandemic, are discovering the coronavirus attacks in far sneakier ways that just causing pneumonia — from blood clots to heart and kidney damage to the latest scare, a life-threatening inflammatory reaction in children.

Whatever the final statistics show about how often it kills, health specialists agree the new coronavirus appears deadlier than the typical flu. Yet the AP-NORC poll suggests a vaccine would be no more popular than the yearly flu shot.