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    People pass by the sign of a COVID-19 immunization clinic in downtown Toronto, Canada, on Sunday, July 18, 2021. (Kamran Jebreili/AP/CP)

    Typical ‘vaccine hesitant’ person is a 42-year-old Ontario woman who votes Liberal: Abacus polling

    Bruce Anderson: Compared to the vaccinated, the vaccine hesitant don’t have a lot of trust in government. They also try to avoid prescriptions, dislike putting anything unnatural in their bodies and say they are reluctant to take any vaccines. Most worry that COVID-19 vaccines haven’t really been tested for a long time.

    Pharmacist Suzanne Garrett draws a syringe with Pfizer-BioNTech covid-19 vaccine at a pharmacy in Amherstview, Ontario on Friday June 25, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS IMAGES/Lars Hagberg

    How to encourage vaccine-hesitant people to get their COVID shots

    Four tips to boost confidence in COVID vaccines among friends, family members, co-workers and neighbours

    DesRosiers (centre) and their children, Aiden (left), 13, and Easton, 11, in Kitchener, Ont. (Photograph by Brett Gundlock)

    Changing the minds of the vaccine hesitant requires actually listening to them

    To reach herd immunity, we need up to 90 per cent of the population to get shots in arms. That means helping a critical minority feel confident about getting the vaccine.

    An illustration from Harper’s Weekly, November 28, 1885: “An incident of the smallpox epidemic in Montreal,” by Robert Harris (Courtesy of The New York Public Library)

    When the plague won: a history of vaccine hesitancy

    In Montreal in 1885, disease and vaccine resistance mixed with devastating results, not unfamiliar to today