Loss of Trust in Government Related to Vaccine Hesitancy, Australian Study Shows

A health care worker fills a syringe with the Pfizer vaccine on the opening day of a COVID-19 mass vaccination clinic at the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre in Perth, Australia on Aug. 16, 2021. (AAP Image/Richard Wainwright)

New research published in the Australian Journal of Political Science has revealed that individuals who have less faith in their government officials are more likely to doubt vaccine safety and effectiveness.

Experts from the University of Western Australia (UWA) used data from a cross-national study of 22 countries conducted prior to the emergency of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

The analysis compared a dataset of citizens’ attitudes towards government civil servants and compared it with the same peoples’ views on vaccines.

UWA Associate Professor of Social Sciences and report co-author Katie Attwell explained that the connection between vaccines and government were inseparable.

“Vaccine initiatives have long been the responsibility of national governments and public servants, who coordinate development, distribution and implementation,” Attwell said.

A view of Winthrop Hall at the University of Western Australia in Perth, Australia. (Adwo/Adobe Stock)

“So vaccine acceptance can be expected not just to reflect people’s thoughts about the vaccines themselves, but also how they feel about governments since they control almost every aspect of the vaccination programs.”

Attwell suggested that public attitudes towards the government should be studied when estimating the acceptance and success of future vaccination rollouts.

“This study confirms that future analyses of vaccine hesitancy and of citizen support or resistance to vaccination must include individuals’ views of governmental agencies,” she said.

UWA Professor of Social Sciences and report co-author Tauel Harper highlighted the importance of governments to consider public opinion and the treatment of their citizens.

“Another lesson is that it is important for governments to build and maintain people’s trust by acting responsibly, transparently and honestly at all times, so that when they need to ask the public to trust them, the trust is there,” Harper said.

Fears Vaccination Mandates Cause Loss in Public Confidence

Concerns have grown that making Australians choose between getting the jab and losing their job may have caused a loss in trust towards authorities.

One of the strictest of such policies is in Western Australia (WA), where vaccination is required across industries and venues such as health, law enforcement, mining, construction, hospitality, entertainment, fitness, courtrooms, and government.

However, an internal survey conducted by the WA Police Force members revealed that a significant portion of respondents had lost faith in their police commissioner and did not support the measures.

Specifically, more than two-thirds of the 384 respondents opposed the vaccination mandate, with 60 percent saying they no longer had confidence in their police commissioner.

Further, while 47 percent said they had wanted to get the vaccine, 7 percent were still undecided, and 46 percent said they never wanted to get vaccinated in the first place.

And of those who were either unsure or did not want to receive the vaccine, 69 percent said bullying and coercion had a very high impact on their decision to get vaccinated—which included the possibility of missing out on training courses and receiving promotions.

As a consequence, a majority of respondents ended up saying workplace morale was low, that they were dissatisfied with their job, their union, and the commissioner of police.

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Concerns of damage to public confidence in vaccines had also previously been aired by Harvard epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff earlier on in the pandemic.

“Right now, with these vaccine mandates, and vaccine passports, this coercive thing is turning a lot of people away from vaccines and not trusting them for very understandable reasons,” Kulldorff told EpochTV’s American Thought Leaders. “‘Why do you have to force somebody to take the vaccine if it’s so beneficial to you?’ That’s one rationale.”

“Those who are pushing these vaccine mandates and vaccine passports—vaccine fanatics, I would call them—to me, they have done much more damage during this one year than the anti-vaxxers have done in two decades,” Kulldorff said.

“I would even say that these vaccine fanatics, they are the biggest anti-vaxxers that we have right now. They’re doing so much more damage to vaccine confidence than anybody else.”

As of March 10, around one in twenty Australians aged 16 and over are not fully vaccinated—equivalent to more than a million people.