Coronavirus in rural America (Part CLII): Why hillbillies don't get vaccinated

I want to highlight the condescension and rural lack of anonymity angles in this CNN segment with Elle Reeve out of Carter County, Missouri this week.  The subhead speaks of "Covid-19 ... moving through towns of unvaccinated Americans."  Here's an excerpt in which an area physician opines why some of his patients are vaccine skeptics.          

Dr Christopher Cochran, Ozarks Healthcare

I don’t want to ever give anybody an excuse for doing something like not getting vaccinated, but the reasons do hearken to someone who has, you know, been told that they're a dumb hillbilly all their lives by the rest of the country, and that is not, that's not an excuse, but it's part of the reason. I don't know that we're oppressed or disenfranchised, and I don't know if we deserve to even feel that way here, but we are a fly over state.

In a social situation where peer pressure is so hard, we've had a lot of trouble to try to get people vaccinated to break out of that peer group is very hard for people.   

That reminds me of how coastal elites have so often condescended to rural Americans, as I documented here.  

The CNN interview continues with a discussion that suggests some residents are being vaccinated in secret because they are feeling so much local peer pressure not to be vaccinated:  

Elle Reeve

Has anyone wanted to get vaccinated in secret?

Dr Christopher Cochran, Ozarks Healthcare

Well, yeah, absolutely.

Elle Reeve

Tell me what they say.

Dr Christopher Cochran, Ozarks Healthcare

When they’re in my office and they say “I don't want to get vaccinated and this is why,” and it's usually, at the very best, a specious reason or fallacious reason.

We have set up things where we can sneak one in your arm wherever you need to do it, because that's our goal.

Elle Reeve

It's hard, but it's not impossible. The Health Center said more people in Van Buren got the vaccine after two local kids in their 20s were hospitalized with COVID earlier this summer.

Last year we. Talked to Brian, he was pretty cavalier about COVID.

Brian [Footage from 2020]

I guess if I get it and it kills me then it's slow walking and sad singing for the family.

Elle Reeve

What would you put on your tombstone?

Brian

“Didn't wear a mask.”

Elle Reeve

It took some convincing, but he agreed to talk to us again and tell us what's happened since.

Brian [Footage from 2021]

No one feels like they can trust our government. It’s not my fault no one’s wearing their mask. It’s not my fault no one’s taking the vaccine. It’s the government’s fault.

Elle Reeve

Did you get the vaccine?

Brian

[Silence]

Elle Reeve

Please Brian...

Brian

[Holding back a laugh]

Elle Reeve

Did you get the vaccine?

Brian

It doesn't matter whether I got vaccinated or not, whether I did or didn’t. Corona doesn't care whether you're – who you are. Whether you think you’re a big tough guy or whatever. It doesn't matter whether you’re...anything. It doesn’t matter. If you get it, it can kill you. I don’t want my wife to have to wonder when they put you in a medical induced coma and stick a tube down your throat, “Is he going to come back?”

That's why I got a vaccine.

Earlier in the story, one man interviewed said he won't get vaccinated because the vaccine was withheld from "my president," as if this withholding was an effort to kill Trump.  The assertion is, of course, also untrue, as Trump got the vaccine. 

Carter County, population 5,202, is in southeast Missouri, near the state's bootheel.    

And that brings to the vaccine rate in my home county, Newton County, Arkansas, at the other end of the Ozarks, where the vaccination rate has crept up, over the past two months, from 23% to 27%. 

Earlier posts about what is happening with coronavirus in the Ozarks are here (also talking about rural lack of anonymity), here, and here.