ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we look at how Danes have reacted to COVID-19 vaccines and ask through which processes trust and mistrust in COVID-19 emerge. We argue that to understand why some people trust and others mistrust vaccines against COVID-19, we need to look at past, present, and imagined futures. The pandemic present was characterised by a sudden burst of data used to justify restrictions and argue the need for vaccines. To make sense of a confusing present, people drew on past experience with other vaccines, with personal biographical and bodily perceptions, as well as with the authorities in general. The past thus shaped which information about vaccines people accessed, “read”, and trusted. Finally, how people imagine a future for themselves and others, and which values they prioritise in such futures, inform their relations of trust and mistrust. In this way, this chapter shows how data do not generate trust in and by themselves and show how a biographical perspective with a clear temporal acknowledgement of past, present, and future can help build a better understanding of the complex dynamics of trust in diverse population subgroups.
