COVID-19 vaccines are available and being administered in North Dakota, but one major hurdle holding the state back at the moment is vaccine hesitancy. Almost a third of the state is fully inoculated, according to public health tallies, but rates are slowing.

Some people do not want to get the shot, even if it’s available to them.

The biggest challenge is getting the general public to trust the vaccine. There are many reasons why people are hesitant. One is the fear of injecting a vaccine into yourself that was released rather quickly. Another reason for the hesitancy is that younger, healthier people might believe that they don’t need the shot.

There are also political views being pulled into the hesitation with certain sides thinking the only reason it is out and able to be taken is because of our current president. Another part that is playing in the holdback of the vaccine is social media and people only conforming to social norms and others’ opinions instead of thinking for themselves.

Isaac Kakari, a professional of social work surveyed why there was so much skepticism behind the vaccine and the responses were the general mistrust in it due to how the government handled the outbreak from the beginning and the lack of study into the effects of the immunization. Others wonder if it is even a vaccine at all and not a pharmaceutical company taken advantage of a pandemic to make money.

North Dakota remains one of the top states in the country with its vaccine roll-out but the skepticism and hesitancy may keep Covid-19 from being a part of our past. Without more vaccinated people, the disease will linger and potentially mutate into other variants. This may complicate our state reaching herd immunity, the threshold in which a population is largely resistant to the spread of an infectious disease.