Story at a glance:
- Some Missourians are getting the shots, but they’re doing so in private as to not upset or concern certain friends and family members.
- ”They didn’t want to have to deal with the peer pressure or the outbursts from other people about them … ‘giving in to everything.’” a doctor told CNN
- Missouri is one of the states in with most and fastest delta rates.
In Missouri, a state now reporting some of the highest COVID-19 cases in the country, some people are choosing to get vaccinated in secrecy out of fear for what their friends and family might say.
As Changing America previously reported, the delta COVID-19 variant continues to spread throughout the U.S., with Missouri having about 1,383 new cases at the beginning of the month and a relatively low vaccination rate.
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The state at the time was ranking a weekly average of 926 positive cases, with the state also having roughly 945 hospitalized COVID-19 patients — one of the highest hospitalization rates in the nation.
Now that the vaccines are seen to be an effective way to prevent serious illness and infection, more Missourians are getting the shots, but they’re doing so in private as to not upset or concern certain friends and family members, CNN reported.
“They’ve had some experience that’s sort of changed their mind from the viewpoint of those in their family, those in their friendship circles or their work circles. And they came to their own decision that they wanted to get a vaccine,” said Priscilla Frase, chief medical information officer at Ozarks Healthcare in West Plains, Mo.
“They did their own research on it, and they talked to people and made the decisions themselves,” Frase told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “But even though they were able to make that decision themselves, they didn’t want to have to deal with the peer pressure or the outbursts from other people about them … ‘giving in to everything.'”
“They’ve had several people come in to get vaccinated who have tried to sort of disguise their appearance and even went so far as to say, ‘please, please, please don’t let anybody know that I got this vaccine,'” one pharmacist told Frase at the hospital.
As Changing America previously reported, Missouri, alongside Louisiana, Florida, Arkansas and Mississippi, is one of the leading states in the country with higher and faster rates of the delta variant.
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