Concerns about safety, efficacy, and necessity of routine vaccinations, including rabies, have a little over half of dog owners questioning whether vaccines are all they’re made out to be. Dubbed Canine Vaccine Hesitancy (CVH), the skepticism is troubling to vaccine proponents.

If it continues it could cause vaccination rates to go low enough to have “deleterious health consequences for both human and animal populations,” study authors said.

Curiously, health officials are blaming the COVID pandemic for the CVH. “What this demonstrates is that Covid fundamentally changed how Americans look at vaccines,” co-author Matt Motta, a political scientist at Boston University’s School of Public Health who studies hesitancy, said.

SOURCE:

The Hill August 29, 2023