More dog owners are concerned about vaccinating their puppies in the wake of Covid, a survey shows.
Boston University researchers who surveyed 2,200 people found that half of them expressed concerns about whether mandating vaccinations for diseases such as rabies was necessary.
Nearly 40 percent said they feared vaccines could give their dogs autism, despite there being no scientific evidence that this was a risk.
A third said they were not medically necessary, while a fifth suggested the risks of the vaccines “outweighed the benefits.”
Vaccine skepticism is on the rise due to Covid mandates, with fewer and fewer parents signing up to get their children vaccinated against dangerous diseases like measles. Experts say this could allow diseases that were once nearly eradicated to return.
Nearly 40 percent of dog owners suggested that the vaccines could give their pets autism, despite there being no scientific evidence to support this claim
Vaccine skepticism rises after Covid mandates amid concerns it could spill over to pets (stock image)
Dr. Matt Motta, a political scientist at the university who led the study, said they were “quite surprised” by the results.
He told BloombergWhat this shows is that Covid has fundamentally changed the way Americans view vaccines.
“We live in a world where states are considering rolling back vaccine requirements. What to say, pets aren’t the next frontier?”
About 50 million American households — or two in five — own a dog, estimates show.
Currently, most states legally require all dogs to be vaccinated against rabies within their first year of life.
This protects the animals from the disease, but also their owners, for whom rabies is almost always fatal if contracted.
They are also strongly encouraged to give their pets other vaccines against diseases, including distemper – which kills 80 percent of infected puppies – and parovirus – which can kill up to four in 10 dogs.
However, during the Covid pandemic, there have been warning signs that owners are less willing to vaccinate their dogs – often because they have “borrowed” concerns related to human vaccines, such as autism.
Researchers have now attempted to gauge this by surveying a nationally representative sample of their attitudes to dog vaccinations.
In the group of 2,200 participants, there were only 1,000 dog owners. They were questioned in March and early April this year.
The results also showed that 11 percent of participants said they were aware that their dogs were not fully up to date on their vaccines.
Another five percent said they were not sure.
Dr. Motta and others said in the study: ‘The benefits of large-scale canine vaccination policies are evident in the US, where access to rabies vaccines is widespread.
In the United States, only one to three cases of dog-induced rabies are reported each year.
‘On the other hand, vaccination levels against rabies are lower in developing countries. For example, in Ethiopia, which suffers from a lack of access to rabies vaccines, less than 70 percent of dogs are vaccinated each year and an estimated 2,700 Ethiopians die from rabies each year.”