New article on the surge in covid cases in Arkansas, along with interviews with frustrated health officials who say they've tried everything to get more people to take the vaccine, and interviews with people who refused to get the vaccine and ended up in the hospital terrified and struggling to breathe. It would appear that right-wing media and Trump have done their jobs in convincing their base that vaccinations are dangerous and/or aren't necessary. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
"When the boat factory in this leafy Ozark Mountains city offered free coronavirus vaccinations this spring, Susan Johnson, 62, a receptionist there, declined the offer, figuring she was protected as long as she never left her house without a mask. Linda Marion, 68, a widow with chronic pulmonary disease, worried that a vaccination might actually trigger COVID-19 and kill her. Barbara Billigmeier, 74, an avid golfer who retired here from California, believed she did not need it because “I never get sick.” This month, all three were patients on 2 West, an overflow ward that is now largely devoted to treating COVID-19 at Baxter Regional Medical Center, the largest hospital in north-central Arkansas. Billigmeier said the scariest part was that “you can’t breathe.” For 10 days, Johnson had relied on supplemental oxygen being fed to her lungs through nasal tubes.
Marion said that at one point, she felt so sick and frightened that she wanted to give up. “It was just terrible,” she said. “I felt like I couldn’t take it.”
Yet despite their ordeals, none of them changed their minds about getting vaccinated. “It’s just too new,” Billigmeier said. “It is like an experiment.”
While much of the nation tiptoes toward normalcy, the coronavirus is again swamping hospitals in places like Mountain Home, a city of fewer than 13,000 people not far from the Missouri border. In Baxter County, where the hospital is, fewer than one-third of residents are fully vaccinated — below both the state and the national averages. Even fewer people are protected in surrounding counties that the hospital serves. “It’s absolutely flooded,” said Dr. Rebecca Martin, a pulmonologist, as she made the rounds of 2 West one morning last week. In the first half of June, the hospital averaged only one or two COVID-19 patients a day. On Thursday, 22 of the unit’s 32 beds were filled with coronavirus patients. Five more were in intensive care. In a single week, the number of COVID-19 patients had jumped by one-third.
“Boy, we’ve tried just about everything we can think of,” a retired National Guard colonel, Robert Ator, who runs the state’s vaccination effort, said in an interview. For about 1 in 3 residents, he said, “I don’t think there’s a thing in the world we could do to get them to get vaccinated.” The Biden administration has pledged to help stem outbreaks by supplying COVID-19 tests and treatments, promoting vaccines with advertising campaigns and sending community health workers door to door to try to persuade the hesitant.
But not all those tactics are welcome. Romero said Arkansas would happily accept more monoclonal antibody therapies, a COVID-19 treatment often used in outpatient settings.
But Ator, the vaccine coordinator, said door-knocking “would probably do more harm than good,” given residents’ suspicions of federal intentions. Even health care workers have balked. Statewide, only about 40% are vaccinated, Romero said.
In April, the [GOP-controlled] state Legislature added yet another roadblock, making it essentially illegal for any state or local entity, including public hospitals, to require coronavirus vaccination as a condition of education or employment until two years after the Food and Drug Administration fully licenses a shot. That almost certainly means no such requirements can be issued until late in 2023."
Link:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/undervaccinated-swaths-arkansas-covid-19-140520154.html