Alabama’s capital city of Amilton has been rocked by a series of violent incidents during the past few days. In this region of Alabama, nurses kept a handwritten journal of their futile efforts to get more individuals immunized against COVID-19.
During the first six weeks of the year, only 14 people showed up at the Marion County Health Department for their first vaccination.
Hospitals in and surrounding a county of around 30,000 people were overflowing as the death toll continued to rise. Nobody received the first shot very often, despite the fact that Los Amigos, a Mexican restaurant across the street, was packed at midday with unmasked eaters.
Even in places like this very conservative manufacturing town, where many people were never interested in getting vaccinated to begin with, demand for vaccines has all but disappeared.
The number of Americans receiving their first immunization is at its lowest point since the initial few days of the United States’ vaccination campaign in December 2020, with an average of roughly 90,000 people per day receiving their first shot. Furthermore, there is no reason to hold out hope for a significant improvement in the near future.
More than three-quarters of Americans have had at least one round of vaccinations. Only 65% of Americans have received all of their recommended vaccinations.
Vaccination schemes that offered cash, sports tickets, beer, and other rewards have essentially faded from the scene. There may be no further legal challenges to government and employer vaccine mandates.
People who are anti-vaccination don’t see much cause to modify their beliefs now that the number of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths has decreased across the United States.
“It’s time for a change.” “They’ve had enough,” said Judy Smith, the head of a 12-county public health agency in northwestern Alabama.
Demand for the initial round of vaccinations has fallen to historically low levels, particularly in more conservative parts of the country.
On most days in Idaho, fewer than 500 people receive their first injection.
The Cheyenne-Laramie County Health Department’s waiting room was empty on Tuesday morning after only 280 people in the state received their first immunizations in the previous week. As the department’s chief reflected lovingly on the past few months, he remembered how busy the lobby used to be on Friday afternoons after school when kids were having their shots. However, they haven’t been coming up either.
Executive Director Kathy Emmons stated, “People heard more stories about, well, the omicron’s not that horrible.” Emmons added. A lot of folks I think simply rolled the dice and decided, ‘If it isn’t that horrible, I’m just going to kind of wait it out and see what happens.'”
At least half of Marion County’s residents haven’t been vaccinated more than a year after vaccines were first made available. CDC data shows that Winston County in the state’s easternmost corner has the lowest percentage of residents who are completely immunized, at 26%. Marion County has a vaccination rate of about 42 percent.
Some people of Marion County work in mobile homes and prefab manufacturing companies, where a digital sign outside First National Bank flashes Bible verses along with the current temperature. The majority of occupations in the area are blue-collar, and Fox News is the most popular channel. An ingrained conservatism born of working-class values permeates the culture.
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In the 2020 presidential election, the area voted overwhelmingly for President Trump. Despite this, several booed Trump when he recommended vaccines at a rally that drew thousands of people in Cullman, Alabama, last year.
Nearly 18,000 people have been killed by COVID-19 in Alabama, making it the state with the fourth-highest death rate per capita in the country. According to data from Johns Hopkins University, Marion County’s rate of 1.78 percent exceeds the state average, with more than 140 deaths.
Health experts predicted a difficult time persuading African-Americans in Alabama, the site of the infamous Tuskegee syphilis research and a location where Washington is deeply distrusted, to get government-sponsored immunizations. Some of the state’s highest vaccination rates may now be found in largely Black regions, where they began public information efforts weeks earlier.
In Marion County, which is 94% white, they didn’t foresee the level of pushback from rural whites that has kept vaccination rates low. Rural transportation problems, misunderstandings about vaccine prices — they’re free — and a lack of health care access were all issues, but officials claimed the party divide in America killed the vaccine effort for some before it really got started.
“Rural white men who identify as conservative are just not interested in this. That caught us off guard,” said Dr. Scott Harris, head of the Alabama Department of Public Health. “By the first or second month of the vaccine campaign, it became clear that those folks just weren’t going to come in.”
Richard Kitchens is among that group. The owner of a clothing and sports shoe shop on the square in Hamilton, Kitchens said he isn’t interested in the vaccine after getting COVID-19 in 2020 before vaccines were available and having relatives who contracted the illness, developed only minor symptoms and recovered.
Short of a proven guarantee against illness — which no vaccine provides — he doesn’t see the point.
“I guess if I knew I could go out and get a shot and wouldn’t get it or spread it, I would go get it, and they say it helps,” Kitchens said. “But I think that will be determined sometime down the road maybe.”
Doris Peterson is fully vaccinated, but she said she didn’t get a booster on the advice of her two adult daughters, neither of whom is vaccinated. Peterson said she is used to being one of the few people around still wearing a mask in public.
“Most of the time I am it,” she said.
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Final Lines
Kelly Moore, a former Tennessee health official who now heads a CDC-funded vaccination advocacy organization named Immunize.org, recalled seeing data from a recent survey that hit her like a punch to the gut.
The results were presented at a CDC meeting of vaccine experts earlier this month. The January survey of about 1,000 adults asked unvaccinated participants what, if anything, would change their minds and persuade them to get a shot. Half said “nothing.”
“It was quite demoralizing to see those results, frankly,” Moore said.
With the pandemic still a mortal threat, public health workers haven’t given up on getting more people vaccinated, even if it feels like an uphill slog.
Jordan Ledbetter, a nurse who works at the Marion County Health Department, was thrilled when two people came in for first-time shots on the same day recently.
“That was exciting,” she said. “There are days when I haven’t given any vaccines.”