At the time of the 90-minute interview, Betsy Price was winding down her decade-long tenure as mayor of Fort Worth. Though things were looking up after the COVID-19 vaccine became available to all adults in Texas, for the past year, she had dealt with the hardships of being in a leadership role during a pandemic for which there was no playbook. So, there’s little doubt she saw the question coming and knew how she wanted to answer it.
“Get the damn shot,” she grumbled in response to our asking what she would say to those who are resistant to the COVID-19 vaccine.
And that was it. There were no platitudes about choice or liberty or lectures about mandates. Price kept it a simple, if curt, request.
Six months after the interview — and nine months after the first vaccine was administered in the U.S. — less than half of Fort Worthians are fully vaccinated; a new variant has swept through the nation; and the risk level for Tarrant County is classified as severe, with 94 new COVID-19 cases being reported per day.
Of the 20 most populous counties in the U.S., Tarrant County ranks 18th in vaccination rate, ahead of only Maricopa County (Phoenix) and San Bernardino County in California, whose landmass is 22 times that of Tarrant County.
According to statistics from the Texas Department of State Health Services, Fort Worth’s vaccination rate falls below both the state and national averages, and the city ranks last among the six most populous cities in Texas (Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, El Paso). This, despite being well-resourced and having the lowest poverty rate of the six aforementioned cities.
Right now, if you want the vaccine, you can get it. What once required appointments weeks in advance now only necessitates one be willing to take a prick in the arm — walk-in vaccination sites are abundant throughout the city. Time and accessibility are no longer excuses. The only reason for one to have not gotten the vaccine is because he or she does not want to receive it.
It’s safe to say that many, if not most, Fort Worthians did not heed Price’s plea to get vaccinated.
According to experts, there are six main reasons people are willfully not getting the vaccine. These include a perception that COVID-19 is not a threat or is overblown, concerns over vaccine side effects, a lack of trust in the vaccines, a lack of trust in institutions, acceptance of one of the myriad of vaccine conspiracy theories that regularly make the rounds on social media, or a belief in holistic approaches that do not include vaccinations.
(Editor’s note: While acknowledging a lack of trust in government entities as a major reason for vaccine hesitancy, we can only use data provided by both the Texas Department of State Health Services and the Center for Disease Control and will not use or repeat anecdotal evidence, as these cannot be verified. As an aside, according to Dr. Nicholas Rister of Cook Children’s Medical Center and Dr. Robert Rogers of Fort Worth Allergy and Asthma, all reported COVID-19 cases within their care have been tested and confirmed to have the disease. No numbers have been inflated.)
Regarding anxieties over the COVID-19 vaccine, the CDC has continually released data showcasing the vaccine’s safety and efficacy — even during the wave of a new variant. According to data, the vaccines remain 80% effective against the delta variant and hold a 95% effectiveness against hospitalizations, meaning even if a vaccinated person were to contract COVID-19, the likelihood that he or she would get sick enough to go the hospital is greatly reduced. According to data released by the Texas Department of State Health Services, only 0.2% of statewide COVID-19 hospitalizations are vaccinated.
On Aug. 23, the FDA approved the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, Comirnaty, meaning enough data demonstrated the vaccine was safe and effective on most of the people who received it — a big step toward allaying concerns over the vaccine’s safety.
Yet, despite statistics, approval, and pleading from acronym-labeled agencies, many continue to avoid the shot.
Olaf Growald
Rachel Neill
The Skeptic Rachel Neill is a 43-year-old mother of five who doesn’t consider herself a radical anti-vaxxer — nor does she believe the COVID-19 pandemic is just one big hoax.
Rather, she’s a skeptic of medicine as a whole, especially after doctors gave her the runaround trying to diagnose her current condition.
Neill, as a result of Lyme disease, has mast cell activation syndrome, a condition that makes her more prone to allergic reactions. For a while, she says, her condition remained a mystery as she sought help from doctor after doctor, not finding answers until she got bloodwork done at Abundant Life Wellness Center, a holistic health practice in North Fort Worth. There, she finally got her diagnosis, and ever since has chosen to forgo a traditional practitioner for a naturopath, favoring alternative medicine over more mainstream treatments.
“I’m kind of a skeptic on medicine in general because of how it treated me with my own health conditions,” she says. “That journey prior to COVID — I had many doctors tell me things that were very wrong. Just because someone is an MD or is affiliated in the medical field ... that doesn’t necessarily mean anything to me after my experience.”
Neill is a 25-year resident of Fort Worth — a wife and stay-at-home mom who also spends much of her time caring for livestock on her family’s ranch in Springtown. Her daughter is a barrel racer.
When the COVID-19 pandemic began to unfold in March 2020, Neill found herself in a similar position as many Americans as she took in the bevy of ever-changing data and protocols.
“My initial reaction was wanting information and not feeling like we were getting clear information anywhere,” she says.
This year, with vaccines approved and readily available, Neill says she and her husband are finding their opinions on opposite ends. Her husband is vaccinated; she is not. And after seeing how COVID-19 information developed over time in 2020, Neill says she’d rather wait and observe how the vaccine affects people in the long run.
“Can we really even believe the information we’re given at that point?” she says. “I feel like, right now, as a person living in America, I’d be cautious of any information I’m given. Read it, think about it for myself, ask myself what makes sense — I can’t take everything at face value right now.”
Neill says she tends to stay away from the news and social media, instead getting her information from articles written by private doctors, listening to podcasts, or speaking with other medical professionals. For Neill, acceptance of information depends on the source.
“It’s been said recently that whatever position you want to take on the pandemic, you can find something to support it, and that’s kind of true,” she says. “When I read articles, I think it’s really important to take into account who wrote the article, what their credentials are, and who might be backing that person — that puts a slant on what they might tell you or not tell you.”
So far, no one in her immediate family has had COVID, Neill says. Due to her medical condition, she has no problem wearing masks, saying she often chooses to mask up in certain environments where she’ll be exposed to more dust or other substances or when she finds herself in a large crowd.
She does face questions, however, from other family members who are critical of her decision to skip the shot. One person in her family has told her that she couldn’t come to their home unless she got vaccinated.
But Neill says she doesn’t blame them. “I feel justified in the choice that I’ve made because I’ve educated myself. Because somebody feels different, I understand that position, but it doesn’t change mine,” she says.
What she fears is the possibility of certain rights or resources being denied to the unvaccinated.
“I’m worried that it’s going to become harder for those of us who are not getting the vaccine, whether it’s for a legitimate reason or whether that’s just what we choose as what’s best for our own health,” she says. “I am concerned about where that may go in the coming months or what opportunities we may be denied.”
At the end of the day, Neill says she’s “not here to push my agenda on other people.” Her intentions are just like most everyone else — to make the right decision for the health of both herself and her family.
“My stance is that people should be able to choose, and no one should be shamed for their choice,” she says, “because we all don’t know everyone’s backstory.”
Darah Hubbard
Dr. Robert Rogers
Religion, Politics, and Mandates During a Zoom call, we asked Dr. Robert Rogers, an allergist and active member of the Tarrant County Medical Society and North Texas Medical Society Coalition, point blank if the city was doing enough to promote people getting vaccinated.
“I would be happier to see the elected leaders in Tarrant County be more vocal about encouraging people to get vaccinated and also to encourage people to wear masks and to improve ventilation in school buildings — the things that we know would reduce transmission,” Rogers says. “I would like to see them be more forceful.”
Rogers believes that our opinions on vaccinations, masks, and returning to schools and crowded offices, for the most part, depend on one factor: What team do you support?
Ultimately, it’s groups of people or “teams” that greatly influence one’s vaccination status. Rogers uses evangelical Christianity as an example of a “team” — the metroplex has the largest percentage of evangelical Christians among the nation’s most populated urban areas. According to Rogers, and backed by statistics from the Public Religion Research Institute, evangelical Christians are more resistant to getting the vaccine than all other major religious groups.
“Meanwhile, Hispanic Catholics have among the highest vaccination rates,” Rogers says. “So, religion can play a role in decision-making about whether you’re going to get a vaccine or not. What you’re hearing from your church or your friends at church or from the leaders at church, can have an influence on whether you’re going to be supportive or hesitant.
“Clearly, there’s a difference if you look at politics, too. People who voted for Biden are more likely to get vaccinated than people who voted for Trump. I mean, it’s just a really clear-cut indicator of a team influence.”
Chris Putnam, a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives who challenged incumbent Kay Granger in the Republican primary in 2020 and will do so again in 2022, is a lifelong Tarrant County resident who graduated from TCU in 1992 and has since dabbled in entrepreneurism and politics. He’s become recognizable in recent months as a fervent advocate against mask and vaccine mandates — even going so far as to boast about his kids attending school without wearing masks on his Facebook page.
For the most part, despite being on different sides of the debate, the Congressional hopeful largely agrees with Rogers’ take that the division over vaccines is largely decided by one’s political affiliation.
“I think there is a correlation to politics,” Putnam says. “I mean, Tarrant County is still the largest urban, Republican area in the country. You compared us to the top 20 most populous counties, and I think we’re the largest that’s still Republican-led. And I think Republicans are generally more skeptical than Democrats. I think there’s a correlation there.”
While nuances exist, you can easily divide opinions on the available COVID-19 vaccines into three separate categories: those who are vaccinated, those who will never get vaccinated, and those who, while not admitting whether they’re vaccinated or not, are against vaccine mandates. Putnam clearly falls in the latter category.
“I’m in no way an anti-vaxxer. I’m a vaccine-choice person,” Putnam says. “We want consent. We all make our own personal private health decisions.
“I think a big part of the problem with the COVID discussion is that it has become so politicized. But, look, both sides are guilty. Now, I have my own personal perspective on what has happened; our government has gotten bigger. I absolutely believe that our bureaucracies have become more politicized and more self-serving. And the CDC, from my point of view, absolutely falls in that category.”
Putnam refuses to answer whether he’s received the vaccine, saying it’s a private matter and a personal choice. Yet, he admits during our conversation that vaccines might help — while simultaneously stating people have a right to be skeptical. Putnam’s Facebook page, a social media platform he remains very active on, contains numerous posts promoting anti-mask and anti-vaccine mandates. While mandates are one thing, one could easily argue promotion of people making the informed decision to get the vaccine is another. Yet, no post urging people to get vaccinated, or promoting its efficacy, exists on his feed.
“I’m not in any position to personally advocate for people to get vaccinated,” Putnam says. “I believe in the idea of informed consent, and I believe we have personal freedom. And forcing medicine into your body is, again, a bridge too far.
“I have absolutely no problem with the government or employers recommending vaccinations, zero. I do have a problem with persecuting people that choose not to vaccinate.”
There has long been a strong individualist, “Don’t Tread on Me,” libertarian-type credo in the U.S., and, more specifically, Texas — and, even more specifically, Fort Worth. It’s a get-off-my-property, stay-out-of-my-business, leave-my-finances-alone, and, more relevantly, allow-me-to-make-my-own-health-choices attitude that places the importance of individual freedoms over things like public health and safety.
Rogers, conversely, believes we give up our individual freedoms daily to ensure public safety; but such infringements have become so engrained as obvious and common-sense laws that we don’t question them. Rogers draws a correlation between these simple rules and mandating the vaccine.
“I mean, I have to stop at a red light,” Rogers says. “You all stop at red lights. I actually want to live in a society where everybody stops at red lights because I don’t want to have to take the chance of going through an intersection and have people decide that they don’t need to stop at a red light, and they T-bone me. That’s just not a society in which I want to live.
“I know [stopping at red lights] is not physically the same as getting something in your body, but the whole purpose of that is to keep one person from harming or killing another person. It’s to protect us. If enough people choose not to get vaccinated, the virus will continue to exist, and it keeps mutating, and it will mutate eventually to a strain that evades the vaccination, and we return to square one.”
Olaf Growald
Chris Putnam
Who Are Your Sources? The vaccines and the potential for a nationwide mandate — President Joe Biden has already unleashed a partial mandate that will require millions more Americans to get vaccinated — has become a rallying cry for both holistic solutions and personal freedoms and liberties.
Yet, in the age of constant news streams, blogs, and “journalism” that fits specific narratives and written from the perspective of opinion rather than legitimate sources, the information we receive is vastly different and completely dependent upon the “teams” we belong to, as Rogers spoke to earlier.
“There’s an abundance of information available about the vaccine, and unfortunately, all that information isn’t equally good quality,” Rogers says. “If your inclination is to be pro-vaccine and pro masking, you’ll find Facebook groups and Twitter feeds that will reinforce what you think should be done. And, conversely, if you’re thinking this is all kind of made up and the risk of COVID is small or the vaccines are dangerous, you’re going to easily find information to support that bias.”
Ultimately, like much political discourse in the era of everyone’s-a-journalist, vaccines versus anti-vaccines versus anti-mandate becomes a fruitless conversation. Those who don’t trust the government and its statistics will ignore the only legitimate non-anecdotal evidence we have that shows vaccines are safe and effective. So, throwing data someone’s way will consistently be met with a stern, “I don’t believe that.” Conversely, the other side will ceaselessly be disregarded for shady sources. It becomes an endless circle of “government said, Facebook post said.”
According to medical professionals, vaccines, for their part, have done a lot of good. Medical doctors like Rogers argue smallpox, measles, mumps, polio, tuberculosis (the list goes on) are all a thing of the past thanks to advancements in science and inoculations.
“Vaccinations have been responsible for more lives saved than any other intervention we have in medicine,” Rogers says. “So, I mean, they’re incredibly, extraordinarily beneficial, but you still have people that are worried about them.”
The worry, detractors argue, is well-founded and no one should encroach on someone’s right to not get vaccinated. But could this worry cause an indefinite pandemic? We’ll have to wait and see.
