Poles apart: why the Polish community doesn’t want the vaccine

There is a joke going around Poland at the moment which encapsulates the national character perfectly. A German is told he has to have the Covid vaccine. He is uncertain. ‘It’s an order,’ the doctor says, and so he agrees. A British man is told the same. He wavers. ‘Do it for Queen and country,’ the doctor says. He agrees. A French man is told ‘It’s the fashionable thing to do’, and he agrees, too. Finally, a Pole has his turn. The doctor says: ‘You’re Polish, you definitely won’t take the vaccine.’ The Pole replies: ‘Don’t tell me what I think. Give me that vaccine!’

Anyone who knows Poles (I’m half Polish, so I do) will find it unsurprising that they are sceptical about the vaccine. A poll by Kantar in December found that 47 per cent of Poles in Poland were more afraid of side effects from the jab than of the virus itself. Poland is second only to Russia on the list of countries that are most suspicious of the vaccine, according to a survey for Nature.

The Polish government has been worrying about this for years. Its research shows the number of people with non-medical reasons for refusing vaccines has grown tenfold since 2010, and the proportion of children being vaccinated against measles is in danger of falling below the 95 per cent threshold required for herd immunity. This is despite the fact that childhood vaccines are compulsory in Poland, a policy that drives people to the street in protest.

Vaccine hesitancy is equally prevalent among Polish people living in Britain, and given that their population here is thought to be around 900,000, it could be a serious threat to the government’s vaccine programme if a significant number of them avoid having the jab.