Attitudes Toward Covid-19 Vaccines among Asian Medicine Practitioners in the US
Attitudes Toward Covid-19 Vaccines among Asian Medicine Practitioners in the US
We had hypothesized that differences between practitioners’ attitudes toward vaccines would be connected to epistemological factors related to Asian medicine methodology and body concepts. But, no…
By Pierce Salguero & Priya Soma Mathiy
(With research assistance from Alyssa Das, Sareena Gurung, and Joshua M. Kuntz)
More than many other places in the world, Covid-19 vaccines and other mitigation efforts were notably controversial in the United States, deepening political divisions across American society. During the 2020–2023 period, practitioners of Asian medicine in the US became fractured by these controversies. Rancorous arguments festered on social media platforms and divided Asian medicine classrooms and clinics around the country. At the time of this writing, the authors are unaware of any study that has attempted to systematically gauge attitudes toward Covid-19 prevention, treatments, or vaccines among this community. This paper reports on a survey of US-based practitioners of Asian medicine conducted in late 2022 to early 2023 at the height of the controversy over vaccines in the US. The study questions were designed to explore divisions over these issues and the underlying causes of those divisions. We had hypothesized that differences between practitioners’ attitudes — and, in particular, their opinions about vaccines — would be connected with epistemological factors related to Asian medicine methodology and body concepts. However, after analyzing our data for a number of epistemological, demographic, and social correlations, we concluded that the main influences underlying the divisions in the Asian medicine field in the US ultimately have to do with political affiliation.
Literature Review
As far as we are aware, at the time of this writing in April 2023, there is no previous scholarship specifically measuring attitudes toward Covid-19 vaccines among US practitioners of Asian medicine. Nevertheless, the present study intersects with several related topics that have been previously investigated by scholars, some highlights of which can be mentioned in brief.
The first is Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy in the US more generally. Studies on this topic have found that demographic factors play a role in shaping attitudes toward vaccines. In a national survey conducted in the first half of 2021, for example, Kricorian et al. (2021) noted that those who doubted the Covid-19 vaccine was safe were on average “less educated, lower income, and more rural than people who believed the vaccine is safe.” Later that year, a survey by Hamel et al. (2021) looked at race, education level, age, health insurance status, and political affiliation. One of their major takeaways was that political “partisanship and vaccination status continue to loom large as factors in how the public views both the U.S. vaccination effort and the government’s response to the pandemic in general.” Shortly afterwards, a survey by Frisco et al. (2022) examined racial and ethnic factors underlying vaccine hesitancy. They found that “U.S.-born Black adults are more vaccine hesitant than U.S.-born White adults,” that “U.S.-born Hispanic adults are less vaccine hesitant than U.S.-born White adults,” and that “there were not significant differences between foreign-born Hispanic and U.S.-born White adults in vaccine hesitancy.”
A second area of relevant scholarship is vaccine hesitancy among practitioners prior to the pandemic. While not specifically focusing on traditional Asian medicine, Wardle et al. (2016) provides a critical review of 39 studies conducted between 2000–2015 measuring vaccine hesitancy among practitioners and users of “complementary medicine.” These authors found that the use of childhood vaccines was less prevalent among this population; however, respondents’ attitudes “may be confounded by other factors,” including “higher income, higher education or distrust of the medical system.”
A third related area is the attitude toward traditional Asian medicine for both prevention and treatment of Covid-19 among specialists and the general public. A number of qualitative studies on this topic have been conducted outside of the US, most notably in China. Pu et al. (2021), for example, surveyed about 400 medical professionals in Sichuan and found that over half agreed that Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) “can be used for the prevention and treatment of Covid-19.” Nguyen et al. (2021) surveyed members of the general public in Vietnam and found that “the use of herbal medicine during the Covid-19 pandemic was a common practice among Vietnamese people.” D’Arqom et al. (2022) found that, among Indonesian mothers with school-age children, 65.6% consumed a mix of “medications, vitamins/minerals, and herbs/natural products” to ward off the virus. In Western countries, Bourqui et al. (2022) surveyed 320 practitioners of TCM in Switzerland about the traditional medicine treatments they administered to Covid patients. Additionally, Kong et al. (2021) surveyed over 750 Chinese immigrants in Canada about their attitudes, finding that “TCM was widely believed by Chinese immigrants in Canada to be an effective means of preventing Covid-19 and many also stated they would use it if they were experiencing symptoms of Covid-19.”
A final area of previous research that may be interesting to readers of the current paper is detailed historical and ethnographic studies of traditional medicine practice in the US. These studies have largely focused on Chinese medicine, including works by Wu (2013), Pritzker (2014), and Phan (2017). While produced in the pre-Covid era, this scholarship can give us a sense of the cultural and social dynamics among communities of Asian medicine practitioners in the US, which can help to contextualize the findings in our own survey. Lastly, while comprehensive demographic data is not available for all types of traditional Asian medicine in the US, some professional organizations maintain statistics that may be useful to compare to the data from our survey. These include studies from the National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (Ward-Cook 2017) and Yoga Alliance (2016).
All of the mentioned publications notwithstanding, the overall point is that previous research has not directly attempted to measure attitudes toward Covid-19 vaccines among American practitioners of Asian medicine as we are attempting to do in this study.
Our Survey and Respondents
Asian medicine practitioners were invited to participate in our survey through announcements we made in three large international English-language Facebook groups dedicated to Asian medicine. These groups had a notably apolitical stance on Covid-19, and our invitation to participate in the survey did not reveal that we would be asking about potentially contentious issues.
The survey (see Appendix below) included multiple choice, multiple selection, and open-ended questions. It was made available to participants via Qualtrics from December 2022 to January 2023. We received a total of 145 responses, the largest cohort of which (n=81) were those based in the United States. We had initially intended to conduct a comparative international survey; however, as we did not receive enough responses from any other country to make meaningful comparisons, only responses from the US have been considered in this report.
Our survey results are reported in full in the appendix. To summarize some of the key points here, the respondents were diverse in terms of race, religion, location within the US, and their chosen field of Asian medicine practice. The majority was female (representing 63% of all responses), white (77%), native speakers of English (99%), and well-educated (69% had a master’s or doctoral degree of some kind), and most commonly identified themselves as practitioners of some kind of “Chinese medicine or TCM” (72%). Level of experience in the practice of Asian medicine was generally high, with 51% having a graduate degree in Asian medicine and 58% having spent more than 10 years working in the field. A majority of the respondents (52%) were full-time practitioners, 28% were teachers, and 73% identified Asian medicine as their primary source of income. Given these patterns, we feel that the survey likely is not representative of the practitioner community in the US. In particular, our survey is lacking any respondents under 25 and has very few non-native English speakers. Thus, it fails to capture the opinions of the youngest generation of practitioners, the large number of immigrants working in the massage industry or as community healers in Asian American neighborhoods, and other important populations of practitioners in the US. These omissions notwithstanding, we nevertheless believe that the survey results can be useful to better understand a segment of the Asian medicine community’s attitudes and opinions.
In addition to demographic questions and questions about their practice of Asian medicine, we had respondents rate a list of words in terms of their relevance for prevention and treatment of Covid-19. In an effort to include the widest possible range of interventions that are meaningful to our practitioner population, these interventions included conventional public health practices, Asian medical approaches, lifestyle choices, as well as what might be characterized as more spiritual or religious practices. The most highly rated (8 out of 10) interventions were sleep, personal hygiene, and herbal medicines. The lowest (5 out of 10) were prayer and luck/fate/karma. Interventions such as masking, social distancing, and vaccines fell in-between.
We also asked respondents to rate a list of words that could describe Covid-19 vaccines in positive or negative ways, ranging from “important” and “beneficial” to “toxic” and “dangerous.” Salient data from this portion of the survey that caught our attention included the fact that only 7% of respondents said that Covid vaccines are incompatible with Asian medicine. However, 26% of respondents said that vaccination is ineffective, and 33% of respondents said that the vaccines are dangerous. These beliefs about the vaccine correlated with behavior: 24% reported being completely unvaccinated, in contrast with the 63% of respondents who had received 3 or more doses at the time of the survey.
Our survey included open-ended questions to elicit more detailed opinions about prevention and treatment. Respondents in the unvaccinated cohort responded to these questions with dismissive comments about the severity of Covid-19, calling it “a type of common cold” with a “low death rate” that “mostly affects the elderly.” They denigrated vaccines, saying that they are “highly problematic,” that there is “no difference in transmission rates or severity of symptoms,” and that getting a shot results in “a range of health concerns and death.” On the other side of the fence, one respondent wrote that “acupuncturists being anti-vax and Covid conspiracy theorists is an embarrassment to the profession, and I am ashamed to be associated with them.” Numerous other respondents wrote in support of vaccines as being effective in preventing serious illness and as important tools for community or public health.
On this basis, we concluded that our anecdotal observations were true: there were indeed divisions within the community in terms of attitudes toward Covid prevention and treatment, including strong divergences in opinions about vaccination. Having established this fact, we then turned to try to discover the likely source of these divisions.
Are Epistemic Strategies to Blame for Polarization?
David G. Robertson has written that “the dominant forms of epistemic capital in the contemporary world are scientific, tradition, experience, channeled, and synthetic knowledge” (2021: 29; Robertson & Amarasingam 2022). These “epistemic strategies” struck us as being potentially quite relevant for understanding differences between practitioners of Asian medicine. We hypothesized that the epistemological commitments and assumptions of practitioners of various kinds of Asian medicine would exert a major influence upon their ideas about Covid-19. In order to test this hypothesis, we asked our respondents to score each of these strategies from 1 (“completely irrelevant”) to 10 (“absolutely fundamental”) based on their “importance in your practice of Asian medicine when diagnosing/assessing patients.” The survey described these epistemic strategies as follows, in an attempt to explain Robertson’s categories in terms that would be accessible to our respondents:
Scientific (methods based on clinical trials, using evidence-based research)
Traditional (methods based on established norms that are common to a particular lineage of practice)
Individual experience (methods using “felt sense,” intuition, or personal experience as primary criteria)
External powers (methods such as divination; channeling or engaging with deities, spirits, ancestors, or any other external entities)
Synthetic (putting together clues and evidence in a unique or novel way that doesn’t privilege any of the abovementioned methodologies)
The five different approaches were rated by our respondents in the following order: “traditional” (average score 8 out of 10), “individual experience” (7), “scientific” and “synthetic” (tied at 6 each), and “external powers” (4). This general pattern of preferences held surprisingly steady across the majority of respondents with only slight variances.
We noticed that enthusiasm for each of these epistemic strategies correlated with certain demographic features. Practitioners who rated their enthusiasm for “scientific methodologies” at 7 or above were twice as likely on average to vote for the Libertarian party and three times as likely to identify as politically conservative. Those who rated methodologies related to “individual experience” highly had considerably less experience as practitioners. Those who favored methodologies related to “external powers” were far less likely than the average respondent to have completed a graduate degree and were much more likely to currently be a student. These respondents were much more likely to be Asian, to vote Democrat, and to report have recently tilted in a more liberal or progressive direction. Finally, those who thought favorably of “synthesis” had much more training in Asian medicine than the norm but much less experience working in the field, and much more likely to have earned a graduate degree in science.
What about the hypothesis that practitioners’ strategic preferences would correlate with their attitudes toward prevention and treatment of Covid-19 as well as their vaccination behavior? We had expected, for example, that respondents who subscribed to scientific methods would be much more likely to endorse vaccines and conventional public health measures than those who subscribed to traditional strategies. In sorting through the data, we did indeed find that those who favored “scientific” methodologies were somewhat more likely to be vaccinated. In addition, those expressing enthusiasm for “external powers” expressed much more enthusiasm for energy practices, meditation, prayer, and luck/fate/karma than the others. However, while such findings are interesting and perhaps warrant further research, we felt that these correlations were not strong enough for us to conclude that epistemic strategies were strongly predictive of attitudes toward Covid-19 vaccination.
Are Body Concepts to Blame?
When designing the study, we had also hypothesized that the different conceptions of the body that are taught in different Asian medical systems may be another important distinction between Asian medicine practitioners. We developed the following list of body concepts that are prevalent in different Asian medicine traditions as well as in the religions that inform various types of Asian healing, and asked respondents to rate each one on a scale from 1 (completely irrelevant) to 10 (absolutely fundamental) based on “their importance in your clinical practice of Asian medicine”:
The body is a material structure.
The body is explainable through the fields of modern scientific anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry.
The body is a web of energy.
The body is constantly being affected by the energies of the natural world, such as the seasons, the stars, animal, and plant life.
The body is inhabited by divine powers or entities.
The body is itself a manifestation of the divine or cosmic reality.
The body is empty, insubstantial, immaterial, or mirage-like.
The body is an illusion that appears only in one's thoughts.
The body and mind are completely intertwined with one another, or are not even separate entities.
The body is multilayered or like “nested dolls,” with all of the above qualities being paradoxically true at the same time.
The overall respondent pool strongly approved of seven of these options (score ≥7), giving a mid-range score for “divine powers/entities” and low scores for “the body is empty” and “an illusion.” Again, we noted correlations between body concepts and certain demographic features. Asians were more enthusiastic than other racial groups about the notion that “the body is empty.” The 26-35 age group was more likely to endorse the statement that the body is “inhabited by divine powers or entities,” as were respondents who identified as Christian. Atheists predictably were the least likely to say that the body is a “manifestation of divine or cosmic realities”; however, the more education a respondent had, the more likely they were to rate that concept highly.
Such differences notwithstanding, there turned out to be no statistically coherent pattern between body concept preference and attitudes toward Covid-19 prevention, treatment, or vaccines. While we had theorized that a practitioner’s understanding of the body would play a major role in influencing their approaches to Covid, we concluded that this hypothesis was false.
What else might be a factor?
Having disproven our hypotheses that epistemological factors were to blame for practitioners’ polarization over Covid vaccines, we then began to look for patterns in the data related to field of specialization, position in the industry, demography, and other social factors. Education did not play any role in vaccination behavior: respondents with a doctorate degree were as likely to be unvaccinated as they were to have received 4 or more doses, and it made no difference if their graduate degree was in a science field. Nor did the location where practitioners had trained make any difference. Years of experience, whether or not Asian medicine represented the main source of income, and status in the field (teacher, student, full-time, part-time, etc.) were all statistically insignificant.
We did note some demographic correlations of minor magnitude. Although the numbers were tiny (n=6), all of the Black and Hispanic/Latinx respondents in our data pool had received 3 or more doses at the time of the survey. Christians were likely to have had more vaccines than the other religions. On average, women had received slightly more vaccines than men. Nevertheless, as the magnitude of these differences was small, we again found such patterns to be insufficient to explain the strong polarization of Asian medicine practitioners’ attitudes and behaviors.
While drilling down to examine the unvaccinated cohort more closely, we were interested to find that some of the open comments from this group framed resistance to vaccines and other public health measures in terms of a defense of science. For example, one respondent lamented the “eroding of public trust in science” caused by the US government’s response to the pandemic. Rather than appeal to historical Asian medicine epistemologies or doctrines, these respondents equated Asian medicine with contemporary science, calling their own treatment plans “scientifically based schematics,” “process science,” and “evidence-based medicine.” This attitude seems to suggest that at least some of this cohort believed that Asian medicine approaches to Covid prevention are superior to biomedical approaches not because they are less scientific, but because they are more so. While this was the opinion of a small minority of practitioners, it may be a phenomenon that warrants more research.
All of the above is interesting but does not clearly explain the strong divisions in the Asian medicine field. However, during this phase of our data analysis we did find one correlation that jumped out to us as a strongly predictive factor of Asian medicine practitioners’ attitudes toward Covid prevention and treatment, including their opinions about vaccines. That correlation was political party affiliation.
Politicization
When we zoomed in to look at participants’ political affiliations, we discovered two very different kinds of practitioner, which we might call “left-leaning” vs “right-leaning.” The left-leaning group, by far the larger of the two, was made up of Democrat and Green Party voters (n=49, i.e., 61% of the whole). These respondents were older, more female, and whiter than the overall pool. They had slightly more experience in the field but were more likely to be working part-time rather than full-time as an Asian Medicine practitioner.
The smaller right-leaning group of Republican and Libertarian voters (n=11, i.e. 14% of the whole), on the other hand, were much younger and much less wealthy. They were also more likely to be female than the overall respondent pool. In the aggregate, they were less educated, with less chance of having completed a doctorate or master’s degree, and they had much less exposure to science (40% chance of never having taken a university course on any scientific subject). Right-leaning practitioners were likely to have less experience in the field than the overall respondent, and less likely to be a teacher. While the vast majority of left-leaning respondents reported not having shifted their voting patterns in recent years, the right-leaning ones were more likely to have shifted more conservative in recent years, and to identify the U.S. government’s Covid-19 policies as the reason for that shift. In terms of preventing and treating Covid-19, they had far less enthusiasm for masking, social distancing, vaccination, and ventilation machines than the overall average.
Upon analysis, practitioners’ left- or right-leaning political affiliation turned out to be the single most significant correlation with attitudes toward vaccination. In the word association question, those on the left showed more support for positive descriptions of vaccines (i.e., natural, safe, beneficial, important) than the overall respondents and less support for negative words (i.e., ineffective, artificial, unsafe). Those on the right were the mirror opposites, exhibiting more support for negative descriptions of vaccines and less support for positive words. These attitudes also translated into actions. Left-leaning practitioners were 84% likely to have gotten 3 or more doses of the Covid vaccine with only an 11% chance of being unvaccinated, while those identifying as right-leaning were only 11% likely to have gotten three doses with a 67% chance of being unvaccinated.
Conclusion
While the number of right-leaning practitioners is dwarfed by the left-leaning ones, the differences in attitudes between these two groups could not be starker. In the words of one of our respondents, such polarization made the issue of vaccination “confusing and difficult to discuss” among the community. The vast majority of our respondent pool signaled that they felt this way. When one of our word association questions asked them to rate a list of words that could be used to describe Covid vaccines, by far the top choice across all demographic and social groups was “politicized.” On this one point, it seems, everyone can agree.
Perhaps these findings should not have surprised us. We have known about the politicization of American attitudes toward Covid vaccines since soon after they first became available (e.g., Hamel et al. 2021). However, our research team had expected that the specific type of Asian medicine one practiced, differences in these traditions’ epistemological strategies and body concepts, or other professional or demographic factors would account for some of the differences in attitudes and behavior toward Covid-19 among practitioners. After exhaustively searching for these other factors, however, we were forced to conclude that the single most influential explanation of practitioners’ attitudes and behaviors was voting patterns. Sometimes, it just comes down to politics.
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Appendix: Asian Medicine & Covid-19 Survey
Part 1. General Demographic Information
Select the types of Asian healing practices that you engage in [check all that apply] (n=81)
· Ayurveda, 7%
· Chinese Medicine/TCM, 72%
· East Asian Medicine, 39%
· Mindfulness or Meditation of an Asian lineage, 26%
· Qigong, 34%
· Reiki, 18%
· Shiatsu, 7%
· Sowa Rigpa, 1%
· Taiji/Tai Chi, 21%
· Thai Massage/Medicine, 32%
· Yoga/Yoga Therapy, 21%
· Other Asian or Asian inspired body work, 13%
· Other Asian or Asian inspired energy work, 7%
· Other Asian or Asian inspired martial arts for therapeutic effect, 7%
· Other Asian or Asian inspired spiritual healing practices, 9%
· Other practices not listed above, 9%
Sex/Gender (n=76)
· Male, 33%
· Female 63%
· Non-binary/Other 4%
Age (n=76)
· 26-35, 13%
· 36-49, 42%
· 50-69, 42%
· 70+, 3%
Race/Ethnicity [check all that apply] (n=78)
· Asian/Pacific Islander, 8%
· Black, 4%
· Hispanic/Latino, 4%
· Native American/Indigenous, 1%
· White, 77%
· Other, 11%
Zip code range (n=65)
· Northeast, 31%
· West coast, 31%,
· Midwest, 12%
· Rockies and Southwest, 3%
· Southeast, 23%
Primary language (n=76)
· English, 99%
· Other, 1%
Individual income (n=75)
· Less than $25,000 per year, 8%
· $25,000 – $50,000 per year, 27%
· $50,000 - $75,000 per year, 31%
· More than $75,000 per year, 35%
Religion [check all that apply] (n=79)
· Buddhist, 25%
· Christian, 18%
· Hindu, 0%
· Jewish, 10%
· Muslim, 0%
· Spiritual/Non-religious, 40%
· None/Atheist, 8%
· Other, 22%
Highest level of education completed (n=75)
· Highschool, 8%
· 2-year college, 7%
· 4-year university, 15%
· Master’s Degree, 33%
· Doctorate Degree or equivalent, 36%
· None of the Above, 1%
Political party you tend to vote for most often (n=72)
· Democrat, 63%
· Republican, 7%
· Green, 3%
· Libertarian, 8%
· Independent, 13%
· Other, 7%
Political self-assessment
· Very conservative, 4%
· Conservative, 3%
· Moderate, 31%
· Liberal/Progressive, 31%
· Very liberal or very progressive, 17%
· Other, 15%
Have you changed the political party you vote for or your political orientation since 2020?
· Yes, I moved in the direction of more conservative, 14%
· Yes, I moved in the direction of more liberal/progressive, 4%
· No, I stayed about the same, 82%
Was this change due to the government’s Covid-19 policies?
· Yes, 21%
· No, 79%
Part 2. Asian Medicine Practice
What is your level of training in your primary Asian medicine practice [check all that apply]? (n=85)
· Doctorate, 24%
· Master’s degree, 27%
· Professional Training, 29%
· Apprenticeship, Informal, or Family-based Training, 11%
· Self-Study, 9%
Where did you study your primary healing practice? (n=80)
· Asia, 19%
· Canada, 1%
· UK, 1%
· US, 73%
· Other, 6%
How many years have you been practicing your primary healing practice? (n=67)
· Under 5, 24%
· 5 – 10, 18%
· 10 – 20, 22%
· Over 20, 36%
What level of training do you have in biology, chemistry, biomedicine, or any other modern scientific disciplines? (n=66)
· Never took a university class, 15%
· Took some classes in university, 55%
· Majored in a science field in a university, 17%
· Completed a graduate degree in a science field, 13%
Is Asian Medicine your main source of income?
· No, 27%
· Yes, 73%
What best describes your role in Asian Medicine [check all that apply] (n=80)
· Hobbyist, 7%
· Student, 12%
· Part-time practitioner, 34%
· Full-time practitioner, 52%
· Teacher, 28%
· Retired, 3%
Please give each of the following methodologies a score based on their importance in your practice of Asian medicine when diagnosing/assessing patients? Rate each item rated on a scale of 1 (completely irrelevant) to 10 (absolutely fundamental). (n=66)
· Scientific (methods based on clinical trials, using evidence-based research), average rating 5
· Traditional (methods based on established norms that are common to a particular lineage of practice), 8
· Individual experience (methods using “felt sense,” intuition, or personal experience as primary criteria), 7
· External powers (methods such as divination; channeling or engaging with deities, spirits, ancestors, or any other external entities), 4
· Synthetic (putting together clues and evidence in a unique or novel way that doesn’t privilege any of the abovementioned methodologies), 6
Please give any additional details or clarifications you wish about your response to the previous question.
[Open responses]
Please give each of the following views of the human body a score based on their importance in your clinical practice of Asian medicine. Rate each item rated on a scale of 1 (completely irrelevant) to 10 (absolutely fundamental). (n=65)
· The body is a material structure, average rating 8
· The body is explainable through the fields of modern scientific anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry, 7
· The body is a web of energy, 8
· The body is constantly being affected by the energies of the natural world, such as the seasons, the stars, animal, and plant life, 8
· The body is inhabited by divine powers or entities, 5
· The body is itself a manifestation of the divine or cosmic reality, 7
· The body is empty, insubstantial, immaterial, or mirage-like, 3
· The body is an illusion that appears only in one's thoughts, 2
· The body and mind are completely intertwined with one another, or are not even separate entities, 8
· The body is multilayered or like “nested dolls,” with all of the above qualities being paradoxically true at the same time, 7
· Other, 6
Please give any additional details you wish to about your response to the previous question. (Open response)
Part 3. Asian Medicine and Covid-19
Please score the following when it comes to the prevention of Covid-19. Rate each item on a scale of 1 (completely irrelevant) to 10 (absolutely fundamental). (n=63)
· Masking, average rating 7
· Social Distancing, 6
· Vaccines, 6
· Diet, 7
· Exercise, 7
· Sleep, 8
· Personal hygiene, 8
· Herbal medicines, 8
· Energy practices, 6
· Meditation, 6
· Prayer, 5
· Luck, fate, and/or karma, 5
Please score the following in the order of importance when it comes to the treatment of Covid-19. Rate each item on a scale of 1 (completely irrelevant) to 10 (absolutely fundamental). (n=61)
· Pharmaceutical drugs, average rating 6
· Ventilation machines, 7
· Diet, 7.
· Exercise, 7
· Sleep, 8
· Personal hygiene, 8
· Herbal medicines, 8
· Energy practices, 6
· Meditation, 6
· Prayer, 5
· Luck, fate, and/or karma, 4
Which of the following words do you associate with Covid-19 vaccines? [check all that apply] (n=61)
· Natural, 7%
· Artificial, 36%
· Organic, 0%
· Chemical, 28%
· Safe, 31%
· Dangerous, 33%
· Effective, 56%
· Ineffective, 26%
· Unsafe, 33%
· Beneficial, 51%
· Toxic, 23%
· Important, 51%
· Waste of resources, 16%
· Politicized, 72%
· Incompatible with Asian medicine, 7%
· Compatible with/complementary to Asian Medicine, 54%
How many Covid-19 vaccinations and/or boosters have you received personally? (n=62)
· 0, 24%
· 1, 5%
· 2, 8%
· 3, 26%
· 4, 34%
· More, 3%
What other vaccines do you remember receiving? [check all that apply] (n=56)
· Annual flu shot, 48%
· Chicken pox/shingles, 27%
· Diphtheria (DTaP), 55%
· Hepatitis, 66%
· HPV, 5%
· Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR), 84%
· Polio, 68%
· Pneumonia, 13%
· Tetanus, 93%
· Tuberculosis (TB), 46%
· Other, 9%
We are interested in how practitioners of Asian medicine think about the prevention and treatment of Covid-19. Please share your thoughts with us and provide as much information as you would like to on this topic. The more information you share, the more you will help our study. (Open response)