For more than a year, Steve Allender, the Republican mayor of Rapid City, South Dakota, has publicly spoken out in favor of safety measures against COVID-19, urging people to wear a face mask, avoid large gatherings and, following their example, to get vaccinated.
Voters responded by interrupting him at City Council meetings and guarding his home in a campaign to intimidate him and portray the vaccination as an assault on his personal freedom.
By early summer, Allender had stopped trying. The highly infectious Delta variant was on the rise, but with so many people refusing to inoculate, he concluded there was nothing he or other local officials could do to stop it. “Our role is simply to sit down and let it happen,” he acknowledged in an interview. “I feel a bit cowardly.”
His experience with the toxic politics of vaccination is not unique.
The Los Angeles Times set out to understand how those policies are developed at the local level. We looked at the percentage of fully vaccinated people in each US county with at least 20,000 residents, and for all states except Hawaii – for which no county-level data was available – we identified the county with the lowest rate.
Pennington County, where Rapid City is located, had the lowest rate in South Dakota at 34%, compared to 47% for the state and 50% nationally.
Then we consulted with the mayors of the counties why their territories had been delayed, and if they were vaccinated; in the four places without mayors, municipal administrators were consulted.
Of the 26 officials who responded, 17 were vaccinated, three were not and six refused to say so. Most expressed deep frustration at the way politics had infected the campaign to vaccinate enough Americans to eradicate the virus.
Most of the places with the lowest rates were overwhelmingly Republican, often among the reddest counties in their respective states when it came to supporting Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. In several, Trump, who was vaccinated in Last January, he won by more than 50 percentage points.
“It is difficult to convince [a la gente] here, “said David Trujillo, Democratic mayor of Lovington, New Mexico, the seat of rural Lea County, where the former president won by 60 percent.
Trujillo was one of the first locals to be immunized in the middle of winter, when a place was secured because the vials were about to be discarded due to lack of interested parties. The rate for the county is now 20%, about a third of the rate for the entire state.
Aware that promoting vaccination could hurt his re-election campaign in April of the following year, the mayor said he rarely brings up the issue anymore. “Votes can be lost for pushing too much the vaccine,” he acknowledged.
Perhaps it is due to the political dangers of talking about vaccination that so many Republican mayors did not respond to The Times’ query or, in six cases, did, but anticipated that they would not answer any particular question.
Ralph Lane Jr., the Republican mayor of Colville, Washington, the largest city in Stevens County, where the vaccination rate is 30%, was brief. “I have to tell you that my opinion on vaccines (or the lack of them) means very little in the big picture,” he said via text message.
However, research suggests otherwise.
A study published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that unvaccinated Republicans were more likely to change their minds after seeing politicians along that line endorsing inoculation. They were less likely to do so when that support came from Democrats.
Several mayors attributed their low rates to misinformation about vaccines.
In Pawhuska, Oklahoma, the mayor, Roger Taylor, heard it all. Its rural county, Osage, which is about an hour northwest of Tulsa, has a vaccination rate of 22%, nearly half the state rate. “Rumors are circulating that they are putting something in [las vacunas] to track people, “said Taylor, a 65-year-old Democrat. “Some people say that they have never had a flu shot in their life and that they are healthy.”
The county of 47,000 people reports more than a dozen new cases a day – a big spike – prompting commissioners to consider limiting access to government buildings and other restrictions.
Taylor, who contracted a mild case of COVID-19 last December, believes the dangers are real. Even so, although his wife, who suffers from asthma, had already received the vaccine, he still does not. “I’m pretty sure I will,” he admitted. “This new strain may be different … I’m being stubborn I guess.”
Some mayors also stuck to inaccurate information. In Sioux County, Iowa, where 34% of residents are vaccinated, Orange City Mayor Deb De Haan noted that many of the unvaccinated had already been through the disease and therefore were safe. “Their natural immunity protects them,” he emphasized.
For scientists, it is not clear for how long or to what degree naturally produced antibodies provide protection against new infections. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) urged those who have recovered from a case to get vaccinated in the same way.
De Haan, a Republican, is among those who fell ill with COVID-19. Even so, he chose to get vaccinated, a decision he did not explain.
Several mayors suggested that a deep distrust of the federal government is behind their numbers, and some proudly supported the skeptics.
“I’ll take a chance,” acknowledged Adam Stockford, mayor of Hillsdale, Michigan, explaining why he was not among the 30% of county residents who are vaccinated.
Stockford, a Republican, said his city of 8,000 near the Indiana and Ohio borders was full of people with “very independent” genes.
Overall, 49% of Michigan residents are vaccinated. Rates rose in the past month, amid soaring new infections. Stockford did not expect the numbers to increase in his largely rural county, where Trump beat Joe Biden by 48 percentage points. Research supports your thinking.
In a recent survey of 1,517 adults nationwide, nearly half of those who were not vaccinated told the Kaiser Family Foundation that they “definitely” won’t change their minds. About a third are still waiting to decide. A smaller number acknowledged that they would be vaccinated as soon as possible or only if forced.
The largest unvaccinated groups include Republicans, rural residents, the uninsured, and those under 30 years of age. Many acknowledged to researchers that they see the danger of the pandemic as “exaggerated in general.”
Reece Keener, the Republican mayor of Elko, Nevada, shares that opinion, arguing that the Delta strain is no more dangerous than others. Scientists claim that it is much more contagious.
The mayor of Nevada noted that he is fed up with “an overabundance of ‘fear porn’ being streamed everywhere” and blamed low vaccination rates (29% in Elko County and 45% statewide) on “Contradictions and confusing messages from the CDC.”
Keener told older people and people with pre-existing conditions to get vaccinated, but will wait for more research to be done before doing it himself.
Among the mayors who supported vaccination, the prevailing sentiment was that they had done everything possible to increase inoculate rates, but they will not succeed. “It’s disappointing,” acknowledged Mayor Allen Brown, an independent who runs Texarkana, Arkansas. The official lives in Miller County, where just 9% of people are vaccinated, well below the state rate of 37%.
Brown, whose wife works in marketing for Wadley Regional Medical Center, knew full well that hospitals were once again on alert as the Delta variant fills them with new patients. Statewide, there were only 25 intensive care unit beds available last week, the lowest number since the start of the pandemic. “When there is no capacity to care for everyone, we have a serious problem,” acknowledged Brown, who lamented that local opposition to safety measures and the use of masks seems to be on the rise.
While politics appears to be the biggest force holding back vaccination, experts believe that socioeconomic factors also play a role, as evidenced by lower rates among Latinos and blacks, who generally have lower income levels and less access. to medical care.
A member of the New Hampshire National Guard brings doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to a waiting car at a clinic set up at a bus station.
(Charles Krupa / Associated Press)
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Tom DeVivo, the Democratic mayor of Windham, Connecticut, noted that he regrets the demonstration in Windham County, where the rate was 51%, still above the national average but below the state total of 64%.
The mayor acknowledged that the number “should be higher,” and partly attributed the situation to Windham being the poorest county in the state.
In Strafford County, New Hampshire, Robert Carrier said he was puzzled as to why the vaccination rate was still 7 percentage points behind the state average of 59%. The Democratic mayor of Dover, who did not hesitate to get his shots, questioned whether residents understood what was at stake.
“People think, ‘Well, I managed and I don’t think I need it,’ because they haven’t been sick and they think the risk is over,” he said. “Obviously not so.”
After months in retreat, the coronavirus now infects 100,000 more Americans each day, most with the Delta variant. The CDC reported that 90 million people in the country, who are eligible to get vaccinated, have not done so. They make up the bulk of those infected, hospitalized and dying as wards fill up again and cities reinstate mask-wearing mandates.
Among the most affected states is Alabama, where the immunization rate is 35%. In Winston County, that figure is just under 15%.
Among those vaccinated is Elmo Robinson, the mayor of Double Springs, who describes himself as a “conservative, centrist Democrat” in a sea of Republicans. Trump won the county by 82 percentage points.
However, Robinson, who regularly wears a face mask to remind people that the pandemic is not over, did not lose hope. The official pointed to recent good news: According to the CDC, the number of people in the county who received at least one dose has tripled since mid-July.
Kaleem and Castleman reported from Los Angeles and Read from Seattle. Molly Hennessy-Fiske, in Houston, and Julia Barajas and Celina Tebor, in LA, staff reporters for The Times, contributed to this article.
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