{"id":33934,"date":"2026-07-07T08:20:23","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T12:20:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/americans-may-be-smarter-about-vaccines-than-you-think\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T08:20:23","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T12:20:23","slug":"americans-may-be-smarter-about-vaccines-than-you-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/americans-may-be-smarter-about-vaccines-than-you-think\/","title":{"rendered":"Americans May Be Smarter About Vaccines Than You Think"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Many of us in health care are deeply concerned about misinformation (and declining trust), so it seems important to underscore that while the American people may not always be as science-based as we might like them to be, they may also not be as anti-science as you may think they are\u2014only a sliver of the public are hard-core refusniks who believe the lies, myths, misinformation or misbeliefs about vaccines. Occasionally, a lie breaks through when it\u2019s amplified by someone influential and by the media. For example, 41% of the American people believed there were death panels in the ACA, but that\u2019s the exception, not the norm.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In our most recent Tracking Poll on Health Information and Trust, we tested out who believed and didn\u2019t believe each of four vaccine-related myths: \u201cGetting the measles vaccine is more dangerous than becoming infected with measles;\u201d \u201cmRNA vaccines can change your DNA;\u201d \u201cmeasles, mumps, and rubella vaccines, also known as the MMR vaccines, have been proven to cause autism in children;\u201d and, \u201cmore people have died from the COVID-19 vaccines than have died from the COVID-19 virus.\u201d Here\u2019s what stood out to me from these findings:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li class=\"wp-block-list-item\">The share of the public who believe these four myths is very small. Between 3% and 8% of the adult population believe these different vaccine myths are \u201cdefinitely true.\u201d \u00a0By any standard, that\u2019s a small, even tiny share of the overall adult population (for context, about a quarter of adults say they are MAGA). These are likely most of the folks you see in the spikes in social media engagement we sometimes observe when influencers or leaders like Secretary Kennedy amplify vaccine or other myths.<\/li>\n<li class=\"wp-block-list-item\">Looked at another way, the hard-core group is even smaller: Just 1.3% believe all four false claims about vaccines are \u201cdefinitely true.\u201d<\/li>\n<li class=\"wp-block-list-item\">By contrast, between 31%\u00a0and 44% of the public think these claims are basically nonsense, meaning the share who don\u2019t believe these things at all outnumber those who definitely do by almost 5-to-1 or more. That\u2019s hardly the impression you get when you read reports about social media posts and views with characterizations like \u201cengagement spiked\u201d or \u201cviews tripled.\u201d It\u2019s important to track social media engagement to know how misinformation is spreading and who is spreading it, but it doesn\u2019t give us a real picture of reach or impact. How many people believe it? How strongly? Who are they? Where did they get their information? Who do they trust and not trust when it comes to health information? That\u2019s why we do our information and trust surveys.<\/li>\n<li class=\"wp-block-list-item\">As I have written before and we have widely reported, most people are floundering around in a muddled middle uncertain what to believe. Take, for example, the slam dunk falsehood that \u201cmore people have died from the COVID-19 vaccines than from COVID-19 itself.\u201d As you can see in the chart below, 53% of the American people are not certain about the answer to that question, with 34% saying that\u2019s \u201cprobably false\u201d and 19% \u201cprobably true,\u201d Estimates are that the vaccine <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/jamanetwork.com\/journals\/jama-health-forum\/fullarticle\/2836434#google_vignette\">saved 2.5 million lives<\/a>, and many more years of life.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ol start=\"1\" class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li class=\"wp-block-list-item\"\/>\n<\/ol>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, when you see reports of social media engagement spiking about a health myth, don\u2019t overreact. It\u2019s more likely than not that it\u2019s a relatively small group of Americans who already believe it talking to themselves, and they are vastly outnumbered by those who believe the science. What we need to be on guard for are the breakout myths like death panels.\u00a0 And what deserves much more focus is the very large group of Americans in the middle who, just as in politics, are confused by the discussions on the edges and uncertain about what is true and what to do. And the biggest danger posed by amplifiers\u2014leaders, influencers, and sometimes the news media who amplify misinformation\u2014is probably less that they spread the myths and more that they further spread the confusion and uncertainty about them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">View all of Drew\u2019s Beyond the Data Columns<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many of us in health care are deeply concerned about misinformation (and declining trust), so it seems important to underscore that while the American people may not always be as science-based as we might like them to be, they may also not be as anti-science as you may think they are\u2014only a sliver of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33935,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.kff.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2026\/07\/260706_BTD_FI.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10668],"tags":[1689,23964,9444],"class_list":["post-33934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-covid-news","tag-americans","tag-smarter","tag-vaccines"],"rttpg_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/www.kff.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2026\/07\/260706_BTD_FI.png",0,0,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/www.kff.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2026\/07\/260706_BTD_FI.png",0,0,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/www.kff.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2026\/07\/260706_BTD_FI.png",0,0,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.kff.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2026\/07\/260706_BTD_FI.png",150,150,false],"medium":["https:\/\/www.kff.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2026\/07\/260706_BTD_FI.png",300,300,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.kff.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2026\/07\/260706_BTD_FI.png",1024,1024,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.kff.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2026\/07\/260706_BTD_FI.png",1536,1536,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.kff.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2026\/07\/260706_BTD_FI.png",2048,2048,false],"post-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.kff.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2026\/07\/260706_BTD_FI.png",370,265,false],"kava-thumb-s":["https:\/\/www.kff.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2026\/07\/260706_BTD_FI.png",150,85,false],"kava-thumb-s-2":["https:\/\/www.kff.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2026\/07\/260706_BTD_FI.png",230,230,false],"kava-thumb-m":["https:\/\/www.kff.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2026\/07\/260706_BTD_FI.png",400,400,false],"kava-thumb-m-vertical":["https:\/\/www.kff.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2026\/07\/260706_BTD_FI.png",370,500,false],"kava-thumb-m-2":["https:\/\/www.kff.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2026\/07\/260706_BTD_FI.png",570,450,false],"kava-thumb-l":["https:\/\/www.kff.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2026\/07\/260706_BTD_FI.png",1170,650,false],"kava-thumb-xl":["https:\/\/www.kff.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2026\/07\/260706_BTD_FI.png",1920,1080,false],"kava-thumb-masonry":["https:\/\/www.kff.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2026\/07\/260706_BTD_FI.png",600,999,false],"kava-thumb-justify":["https:\/\/www.kff.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2026\/07\/260706_BTD_FI.png",640,640,false],"kava-thumb-justify-2":["https:\/\/www.kff.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2026\/07\/260706_BTD_FI.png",1280,640,false]},"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"#RiseCelestialStudios","author_link":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/author\/ralph-c\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"<a href=\"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/category\/covid-news\/\" rel=\"category tag\">COVID NEWS<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"Many of us in health care are deeply concerned about misinformation (and declining trust), so it seems important to underscore that while the American people may not always be as science-based as we might like them to be, they may also not be as anti-science as you may think they are\u2014only a sliver of 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