Modeling Vaccination as a Diffusion Process: The Effect of the Johnson & Johnson Pause on Vaccine Hesitancy

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: On Tuesday, April 13th, 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) paused the administration of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine to investigate six cases of blood clots. Though the pause only lasted ten days, survey data suggests that it may have precipitated the major subsequent decline in vaccination rates. I use data on weekly vaccinations to verify this link empirically. Drawing from the literature on the diffusion of new technologies, I develop a structural model of the vaccine rollout in the United States to estimate counterfactual vaccination rates and quantify the effect of the pause. I find that the pause led to a significant decrease in weekly vaccinations on the order of 1.2 million first doses per week, resulting in 11 million fewer Americans receiving the vaccine by mid-June. The reduction is consistent across all manufacturers, suggesting a spillover of vaccine perceptions onto the mRNA vaccines. This reduction in vaccinations could have resulted in as many as 47,000 additional cases and 500 additional deaths due to COVID-19 from infections occurring during the nine-week period following the pause. This is orders of magnitude larger than the likely number of averted blood clot deaths.

Author	Kohler, John
Thesis advisor	Gentzkow, Matthew
Degree granting institution	Stanford University, Department of Economics

Subject	COVID-19
Subject	Technology diffusion
Subject	Vaccine hesitancy
Subject	Johnson & Johnson
Subject	Food and Drug Administration
Genre	Text
Genre	Thesis

DOI	https://doi.org/10.25740/ck290rh5602
Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/ck290rh5602

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License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC).

Preferred citation: Kohler, J. (2022). Modeling Vaccination as a Diffusion Process: The Effect of the Johnson & Johnson Pause on Vaccine Hesitancy. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/ck290rh5602

Stanford University, Department of Economics, Honors Theses

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