There's Vaccine Drama In Arkansas, Where Rates Are Low And Everyone Has An Opinion

[brooklynite]

NPR

This weekend, 80,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines will expire in Arkansas. There simply weren't enough people in the state willing to get their jab — even though cases and deaths from the delta variant are rising there at an alarming rate.

"Prior to the vaccine, I was heartsick because people died and we couldn't help them. Now, they don't get the vaccine and we can't help them," says Tammy Kellebrew, a pharmacist who travels to rural hospitals across the state. "And so after every death, I go back to the pharmacy and I cry, and then I go back to work."

"I'm angry, upset, disappointed," says Dr. Jose Romero, health secretary for Arkansas. "As a nation, we've worked so hard to get this vaccine out. And not to have them accepted by the public is difficult to understand and difficult to accept."

Arkansas, a largely white, rural state powered by farming, factories and rugged individualism, has one of the country's lowest COVID-19 vaccination rates. Just 36% of the state's 3 million people are fully vaccinated.

[multigraincracker]

1. Dang, Undertakers are spreading

that vaccine rumor again.

[Texaswitchy]

2. What a shame.

People in other countries are begging for shots.

[rickyhall]

3. So stupid. I got mine as soon as it was available. Most of my Latino friends got theirs.

But white friends are like, "Why? Do you know anybody who died?" I was never worried about dying. I just the best way a pandemic (or anything else) is to kill it. "Vaccines kill the bug," is they told me when I got that 8-shot? smallpox/polio/diphtheria/etc. thing in grade school.

[Hestia]

4. There isn't anything "rugged" in this state other than the highways & interstates & the hung-over

from not shaving a day or two. Oh yeah, meth-heads. Those are some really rugged people.

[roamer65]

5. Stop sending the vaccine to AR.

Send it elsewhere where it will be used.