April 15, 202110:14 AM ET BLAKE FARMER
There
are more than enough shots to go around in communities such as Hartsville,
Tenn., the seat of Trousdale County, a quiet town tucked in the wooded hills
northeast of Nashville.
It's a
county that is nearly 90% white and where Donald Trump won nearly 75% of the
votes in 2020. There was no special planning to reach underserved communities
here, other than the inmates at the state prison, which experienced one of the
nation's largest correctional facility outbreaks of
COVID-19.
But now
Tennessee, like much of the nation, is finding that rural, white residents need
a little more coaxing to roll up their sleeves for the shot. This week, the
state published results from
a statewide survey, and a focus group of unvaccinated residents. More than 45%
of white, rural conservatives said they were unwilling even
to consider taking the vaccine.
"There's
nothing inherently unique about living in a rural area that makes people balk
at getting vaccinated. It's just that rural areas have a larger share of people
in the most vaccine-resistant groups: Republicans and white evangelical
Christians," says Drew Altman,
president and CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The
foundation's latest survey data find
that more rural residents have been fully vaccinated than urban dwellers. But
this is likely because there haven't been the same long waits in rural areas to
get the vaccine. And now the initial demand has tapered to a drip. Currently,
the number of rural residents (21%) saying they'll never get the vaccine is
twice the number (10%) in urban areas.
On a
recent weekend in Hartsville, the local health department had trouble filling
up even half the spots for a COVID-19 vaccination event at the high school.
Down the street at the Piggly Wiggly grocery store, Cris Weske, 43, stopped in
to buy a can of dipping tobacco. He says he isn't even tempted to get the
COVID-19 vaccine, no matter how widely available it is.
"Somebody
like me that's healthy, with a survival rate of 99%, I don't need it," he
says. "I don't want to put that toxin — I'm kind of anti-vax,
period."
Weske,
who is wearing a "We the People" T-shirt, says the U.S. Constitution
protects his choice to opt out of the massive nationwide vaccination effort.
Public
health officials in Tennessee expected to face some reluctance when the
COVID-19 vaccine finally arrived. But they were surprised to
realize that the most stubborn group might be white, largely conservative
residents in rural Tennessee.
National polling by NPR, PBS
NewsHour and Marist finds that rural, white Republicans —
particularly supporters of Trump's — are among the least likely to get a
vaccine. The issue is evident in state-by-state
vaccination rates, with Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee
trailing the rest of the country. The White House has begun launching new
initiatives targeting so-called red states, such as setting up partnerships
with NASCAR, professional sports and even country music.
"We
voted for Trump, but Trump's got nothing to do with us not taking the
vaccine," says Hartsville's Cindi Kelton, 67, as she loads dog food and
milk into her minivan outside the Piggly Wiggly. "We were planning on
taking it — until our doctor passed away."
More
scared of the vaccine than the virus
Her
physician, Raymond Fuller of
Gallatin, Tenn., died of COVID-19 in late January. It's unclear whether he had
been vaccinated. Either way, Kelton worried the vaccine could have played a
role despite how safe it has been shown to be in rigorous clinical trials.
Kelton
has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and emphysema — lung diseases that
put her at high risk of complications with COVID-19 — but maintains she's still
more scared of the vaccine than the virus.
In many
rural communities, scant attention has been paid to batting down rumors or
answering vaccine questions. Public health officials in Tennessee and other
Southern states have been far more focused on building trust with Black and
immigrant groups concentrated in urban areas. And even their outreach in rural
communities has targeted those traditionally underserved groups.
But
some leaders of rural communities are the ones actively sowing doubts. They
include state legislators pushing anti-vaccine legislation and
even a few pastors piping up on Sunday mornings. Greg Locke is an outspoken white
preacher in Mount Juliet, Tenn., who peppers his sermons with mocking
questions.
"People
say, 'Well, what are you going to do when they make the vaccine mandatory?'
" he asks an audience gathered without masks in late March. "I'm
going to tell them to take a hike, like I've been telling them to take a hike.
That's what I'm going to do."
Southern
states, where vaccination rates are the lowest in the country, have frequently
turned to ministers, seeing them as key allies who
are trusted at the local level. But it's mostly Black churches, from Mississippi to Georgia, that
have agreed to hold informational town halls or organize and host vaccine
events.
In
recent days, some key white evangelical leaders have stepped forward to
advocate more loudly for vaccinations. Among them is J.D. Greear, president of the Southern
Baptist Convention. But Greear pastors a church in Durham, N.C.
— hardly a conservative
stronghold. And the responses to Greear on social media were
impassioned and even irate — exposing how divided many conservative churchgoers
are.
The
white Baptist pastors in Hartsville, when contacted for this story, declined to
weigh in, saying they were leaving the decision entirely up to members of their
congregations.
"Wait
and see"
Pastor Omaràn Lee, a
hospital chaplain in Nashville, has been working with Black churches in
Tennessee to promote vaccination. He says the concerns in Black congregations
in his city aren't that different from what he hears from rural, white
communities.
"
'We don't trust the government, and we don't trust Joe Biden' is what they say,
right?" he says.
But Lee
notes that, six months ago, Black communities were saying the same thing when
Trump was in office. "Anytime you have a marginalized person, you have
people who [feel] left out, they're going to be skeptical."
Skepticism
about the vaccine, Lee says, can be overcome if there's an intentional effort
to reach people where they are.
But in
small towns such as Hartsville, there hasn't been much attention on the issue.
People are less likely to hear the message from church leaders, and other
communication can be more limited. There's not much in the way of local media
providing information about how to sign up and where to go.
"I
don't even have a computer. I'm old school," says Brenda Kelley, a
74-year-old widow who says she didn't even know she was eligible to get the
vaccine yet, much less that tons of shots are available. The vaccination event
at a nearby high school was advertised mostly on Facebook.
"Kinda
scared to get it in a way, and in a way I want it," Kelley added.
"And my children, neither of them want it. So I don't know."
Plus,
Kelley has her own questions she'd like answered first — such as whether her
diabetes, while elevating her risk of developing serious COVID-19, might also
cause problems with the vaccine. Health officials say the vaccine is safe for
people like her, but she wants to hear it from her doctor.
"It's
not a never thing," she concludes. Just a
"wait and see."
This
story comes from NPR's health reporting partnership with Nashville Public Radio and Kaiser Health News.
No comments:
Post a Comment