Needle phobia could be the cause of 10% of COVID vaccine hesitancy in the UK – new research

By Daniel Freeman, Professor of Clinical Psychology, University of Oxford

“Your body’s full of veins, isn’t it? Well, you’ve got to fill them up with something, haven’t you?” That’s the mystery of blood, as explained by British comedian Tony Hancock in one of the UK’s best-known comedy episodes, The Blood Donor. But he can’t bear to look at the stuff, still less at the needle that siphons off his precious pint of “AB negative, rhesus positive”, swooning away as the tip touches his arm.

Hancock’s character is afflicted by what’s known as “blood-injection-injury”…

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