Coronavirus in rural America (Part CXXIX): More on vaccine hesitancy, religion, and adjacent themes

The dateline for this New York Times story is Greenville, Tennessee, population 15,062, in the eastern part of the state, and Jan Hoffman reports under the dateline, "Faith, Freedom and Fear:  Rural America's Vaccine Skeptics."  Here's an excerpt:  

[A] week here in Greene County reveals a more nuanced, layered hesitancy than surveys suggest. People say that politics isn’t the leading driver of their vaccine attitudes. The most common reason for their apprehension is fear — that the vaccine was developed in haste, that long-term side effects are unknown. Their decisions are also entangled in a web of views about bodily autonomy, science and authority, plus a powerful regional, somewhat romanticized self-image: We don’t like outsiders messing in our business.

Hoffman provides the demographic profile up front--overwhelmingly white, conservative and Christian.  This description of the place is also quite interesting: 

People scrape by on subsistence farming, jobs in small factories, welfare checks and cash flow from retirees who are moving onto the cheap, vista-blissful land. Drug busts for heroin and methamphetamine sustain a humming cottage industry of lawyers and bail bonds services.

And then there's this reference to rural lack of anonymity: 

What’s also lacking is a groundswell that might encourage the hesitant to make the leap: Many people who have gotten vaccinated are remaining tight-lipped.

And this, which highlights the peer pressure angle on what is happening, presumably in urban communities as well as rural ones:

“A lot of times I have to temper my opinions in order to fit in,” Ms. Hayes said, tears welling in her eyes. “I’m walking a line between people refusing to socialize with me or not.”

Ms. Hayes grew up here, left, and returned to care for her mother. Late in 2019, while teaching English online to students in China, she noticed that some were disappearing from her computer monitor. They were succumbing to a mysterious virus.

Later, when her family went into lockdown, neighbors dismissed her fears.

And note this regarding the centrality of work: 

“Appalachians were raised to believe they must work and can’t get sick, no matter what,” said Ms. Hayes, who has a graduate degree in Appalachian studies. She wept in frustration as familiar names appeared on her prayer chain, deathly ill from the virus.

P.S.  Don't miss the complimentary podcast to this story on The Daily, dated May 10, 2021.  Great audio of a local Greenville doctor coaching his patients to get the vaccine.