Additional Lives Saved During COVID-19? How Vaccination Affects Willingness to Go to the Doctor

At the beginning of the recent pandemic, many individuals who had not yet been vaccinated against COVID-19 skipped or postponed doctor visits for fear of exposure to the disease. This disruption in health care may have had significant negative impacts on their health. To test the hypothesis that becoming vaccinated reduced this hesitancy, we employ Census Household Pulse Survey data for January 2021-July 2021, while controlling for selection, time trends, supply factors, and demographics. We find that medical care avoidance increased with non-vaccinated status. We take this as evidence of additional second-order adverse medical outcomes of the pandemic in addition to the virus itself.