US Republicans show fierce resistance to Covid-19 shots
MARTINSBURG: Patients stream steadily into the Covid-19 vaccine centre that Todd Engle can almost touch from his West Virginia backyard. But like scores of other Republican voters, force would likely be required to get a dose into his arm.
Many of the party’s millions of supporters are among the nation’s most vaccine-sceptical people, which experts see as a dangerous barrier to finally taming the virus that has killed more than 540,000 in the United States.
“If they try to make me get it, they’re just going to (have to) put me in jail,” the 58-year-old Engle said from the porch of his home here, referring to health authorities.
“I just don’t trust them.”
West Virginia is heavily Republican — over 68 per cent of its voters chose Donald Trump in November’s election — and it has long been one of the nation’s poorest places.
Yet not all West Virginia Republicans are vaccine skeptics.
The state of under two million people has been lauded for quickly getting Covid-19 vaccines to its people while bigger, wealthier and Democrat-led states have sometimes struggled to do the same.
Part of that effort is the vaccine site behind Engle’s home, which operates in a recreation centre gymnasium with the kind of efficiency that bustling, pre-pandemic airports could only dream of.
Nurse Angela Gray, 51, said the site has administered as many as 1,500 shots in a day.
“I try not to look at politics; that doesn’t matter,” Gray said as nurses in masks, face shields and gloves delivered shots behind her.
“But I’ve seen a lot of my fellow Republicans who are getting vaccinated.”
She added that Republican elected officials in the area have spoken up for the safety and efficacy of the shots and got inoculated themselves, a key part of efforts to convince the skeptical.
But in towns across the United States, skeptics are numerous.
According to a poll last week, 41 per cent of Republicans nationally said they would not get the vaccine, compared to just 11 per cent of Democrats.