HEALTH WARNING
We are no longer updating our Covid-19 hub regularly. That includes this page. Follow the link below for the latest.
HEALTH WARNING
We are no longer updating our Covid-19 hub regularly. That includes this page. Click here for the latest.
Is time the reason men aren't being vaccinated?
18/06/21 .
Blog
Men are less likely to be vaccinated than women.
Beneath the headline figures showing millions being vaccinated, a gender divide is emerging. In the latest edition of the weekly national Influenza and COVID-19 surveillance report published, ironically, during Men’s Health Week, we learn that:
- 56.1% of the population have had dose 1 (53.1% of men and 59% of women)
- 40.9% have had dose 2 (37.2% of men and 44.7% of women)
In other words, women are 20% more likely to be double-vaccinated than men.
Should we all be throwing our hands up in despair? What is the matter with men? At any given age, they’re twice as likely to die of Covid-19 as women and yet they’re still too daft to get vaccinated.
Working age
Except it’s not quite that simple. How many men know of their increased risk? We may have been banging on about it but the government and NHS have hardly mentioned it. However, I wonder if it’s the ages at which men are not being vaccinated that tell the real story.
The official charts below show men and women over the age of 64 are vaccinated at pretty much the same rate. The numbers for men vaccinated start reducing with age. Are younger men just not bothered? Well, the evidence is that women are more likely to be vaccine-sceptic than men so that’s unlikely to be the reason.
Or is it the fact that many people under 65 are working and that men are far more likely to be working full-time. Among people of working age, women are almost 25% more likely to be double-vaccinated than men.
There’s also anecdotal evidence of people being asked to travel long distances for their second jab.
I’m double-vaccinated. Both my shots were given on a Friday morning. Fine, for a freelance like me. Not so easy in many other jobs. At what times is your local vaccine hub open?
Jim Pollard,
Editor
|
The Men’s Health Forum need your support It’s tough for men to ask for help but if you don’t ask when you need it, things generally only get worse. So we’re asking. In the UK, one man in five dies before the age of 65. If we had health policies and services that better reflected the needs of the whole population, it might not be like that. But it is. Policies and services and indeed men have been like this for a long time and they don’t change overnight just because we want them to. It’s true that the UK’s men don’t have it bad compared to some other groups. We’re not asking you to ‘feel sorry’ for men or put them first. We’re talking here about something more complicated, something that falls outside the traditional charity fund-raising model of ‘doing something for those less fortunate than ourselves’. That model raises money but it seldom changes much. We’re talking about changing the way we look at the world. There is nothing inevitable about premature male death. Services accessible to all, a population better informed. These would benefit everyone - rich and poor, young and old, male and female - and that’s what we’re campaigning for. We’re not asking you to look at images of pity, we’re just asking you to look around at the society you live in, at the men you know and at the families with sons, fathers and grandads missing. Here’s our fund-raising page - please chip in if you can.
|
