The average number of Americans getting their first shot is down to about 90,000 a day, the lowest point since December 2020.
A handwritten log kept by nurses tells the story of the losing battle to get more peoplein this corner of Alabama: Just 14 people showed up at the Marion County Health Department for their initial shot during the first six weeks of the year.
The average number of Americans getting their first shot is down to about 90,000 a day, the lowest point since the first few days of the U.S. vaccination campaign, in December 2020. And hopes of any substantial improvement in the immediate future have largely evaporated. “People are just over it. They’re tired of it,” said Judy Smith, administrator for a 12-county public health district in northwestern Alabama.
Marion County, along the Mississippi line, is part of a band of Alabama counties where most people aren’t fully vaccinated more than a year after shots were rolled out. Just to the east, Winston County has the state’s lowest share of fully vaccinated residents, at 26 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 42 percent are fully immunized in Marion County.
Covid-19 has killed almost 18,000 people in Alabama, giving the state the nation’s fourth-highest rate of deaths relative to population. Marion County’s rate exceeds the state average at 1.78 percent, with more than 140 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. “Rural white men who identify as conservative are just not interested in this. That caught us off guard,” said Dr. Scott Harris, head of the Alabama Department of Public Health. “By the first or second month of the vaccine campaign, it became clear that those folks just weren’t going to come in.”