These SC residents were COVID-19 vaccine skeptics. Here’s what changed their minds
Editor’s note: Read more about S.C. vaccine hesitancy here.
Brittany Edwards, a 35-year-old Rock Hill resident who works in finance, wanted to see more research on the long-term effects of COVID-19 vaccines before rolling up her sleeve. Why participate in a “live study?” she thought.
Mary Wilson of Myrtle Beach said she avoided the vaccine on her doctor’s advice. She’d had adverse reactions to medications in the past and was concerned about severe side effects.
Bluffton resident James Sell eschewed the vaccine because of who was pushing it. It didn’t sit right with the 72-year-old Republican voter that tech leaders like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg were promoting the shots or involved in vaccine initiatives.
Despite their initial misgivings, Edwards, Wilson and Sell all ended up getting vaccinated against COVID-19. They are among the growing number of vaccine-hesitant South Carolinians who ultimately opted for a shot, though their reasons for doing so vary.
The share of people who are vaccine hesitant, meaning they are unsure about getting a COVID-19 shot, has declined since the early days of the vaccine rollout when many expressed concerns about possible side effects, limited research and the speed with which the vaccines were developed, according to surveys by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit that conducts national polling on COVID-19 issues.
Nearly 40% of respondents to Kaiser’s nationwide poll in December said they planned to wait before rolling up their sleeves. By April, that number had dropped to 15%.
“We’ve seen a significant shift from those groups that were in that ‘wait and see’ category,” said Ashley Kirzinger, Kaiser’s associate director of public opinion and survey research. “They were waiting and watching what others were doing, finding out more information and I think what we’re finding now is those groups have largely made their decision.”
In many cases, they’ve opted for vaccination.
Kaiser found the decrease in people on the fence about getting inoculated corresponded with a comparable spike in the percentage of people who had been vaccinated or were planning to get vaccinated. By contrast, the share of people who are vaccine resistant, meaning they are completely opposed to getting a jab, has remained steady at about 20%.
Overcoming vaccine hesitancy
Vaccine hesitancy is a complex issue and there are a variety of reasons why initially hesitant people may eventually warm to the idea of getting a COVID-19 shot.
Simply listening to and acknowledging someone’s concerns about vaccination can go a long way, experts say.
“You need to meet people where they’re at and address their concerns,” said Lior Rennert, an assistant professor of biostatistics at Clemson University. “I think really the one thing that’s kinda proven to be effective in the long run is that people hear from those they trust.”
Casual conversations with trusted figures like family, friends or religious and community leaders tend to have a greater impact than messaging — which often can feel like lecturing — from talking heads, said Rachel Mayo, associate dean of research at Clemson University’s College of Social, Behavioral and Health Sciences.
“We do have segments of the population who say, ‘I’m not going to believe anything a politician is saying,’” she said. “What is often effective is having peer-to-peer campaigns, peer-to-peer education.”
That’s what convinced Sell, the Bluffton man who was skeptical of the vaccine for political reasons. He ultimately decided to roll up his sleeve for Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine after speaking with his wife, a registered nurse.
“I said, ‘Yeah, what the heck. I’ll go ahead and go do it,’” Sell told a reporter. “I still have concerns about it overall, but I guess I’ll survive.”
Others, like Luana Graves Sellars, just needed a little time to research the vaccines and assess whether they were causing serious reactions in recipients before being sold on getting a shot.
Within a few months, Graves Sellars, a leader in Hilton Head’s Gullah community, was confident in their safety and wanted Pfizer’s vaccine, which is more than 90% effective against COVID-19, according to company data.
“I went anywhere and everywhere for information,” she said. “If I saw it on the news, if I saw it in an article, if I saw it from the CDC, I followed it.”
Edwards, the Rock Hill resident, also wanted to see more data on the vaccines before getting inoculated, but was leery of news coverage and messaging from public health officials.
She ultimately was convinced to roll up her sleeve after someone close to her died of COVID-19.
“I hear more about COVID-related deaths than about the vaccine deaths, so I’d rather err on the side of caution,” said Edwards, who is Black.
While public health officials, including the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control, focused early efforts to combat vaccine hesitancy among African Americans because of the legitimate, deep-seated distrust of medical science present in Black communities, surveys have found that Republicans and white evangelical Christians are actually the groups most likely to report resistance to getting vaccinated.
“They think that the media greatly exaggerated the impact of coronavirus, they were less likely to report wearing masks and social distance throughout the pandemic, and they’re less likely to worry about getting sick from the coronavirus,” Kirzinger said. “If you don’t view the virus as a threat to yourself or your family, you aren’t as inclined to get vaccinated.”
Communities of color, while more likely than some groups to take a “wait and see” approach, are not necessarily closed off to COVID-19 vaccination.
“(African Americans) were being labeled as resistant when really, for lots of legitimate reasons, they had concerns about the safety of the vaccine,” Kirzinger said. “And so then there were efforts to have conversations and answer questions, and I think those have been effective. We can see that in our polling.”
Graves Sellars said she understands why some Black South Carolinians remain unsure about getting inoculated, given the sordid history of medical experimentation on African Americans in this country, but stressed that Black residents need to weigh the disproportionate impact COVID-19 has had on their communities when making their decision.
Roughly 26.7% of South Carolina’s estimated population is Black, but Black residents have accounted for 35.2% of the state’s COVID-19 hospitalizations, DHEC data show.
“I literally know 12 people who died last year from COVID,” Graves Sellars said. “It’s the kind of thing that the community really needs to be aware of.”
Having that personal experience with the disease has motivated some of the initially hesitant to get vaccinated.
Earl Pathel of Lexington changed his mind after coming down with COVID-19 for a second time earlier this year.
Initially fearful of possible side effects, the 50-year-old school custodian said he felt called by God to get a shot in the arm after a second bout with the virus put him down for about a week in March.
Pathel said he’s still not sure what to believe about the vaccine, but feels good about his decision to get inoculated. He experienced only a brief, low-grade fever after his second shot.
When a friend recently approached him with concerns about getting vaccinated, Pathel said he gently encouraged the man to get stuck.
“I just told him I was going to get the shot after getting COVID for my own peace of mind,” Pathel said. “I told him, you have to do what you think is best for you, and he did. He got vaccinated.”
Kathy Stomber, a COVID-19 “long-hauler” whose infection damaged her lungs, also drew from personal experience battling the virus to overcome initial vaccine hesitancy.
“I had gotten very sick with COVID,” said Stomber, a 63-year-old retiree who recently moved from Hilton Head to Sarasota, Fla. “I don’t ever want to feel that again.”
In addition to wanting to reduce her own risk of reinfection, Stomber said her husband’s fragile health and her desire to travel abroad to countries that may require proof of vaccination in the future also factored into her decision.
“We can’t get back to normal as long as COVID hangs around,” she said. “And COVID’s going to hang around as long as people don’t get the shots.”
DHEC tailors message to the vaccine hesitant
South Carolina health officials have crisscrossed the state in recent months doing outreach to encourage greater vaccine uptake in groups assumed to be hesitant about getting the shot.
DHEC employs outreach specialists in all four regions of the state who focus on building relationships with faith-based, civic and community groups and leaders to ensure residents receive messaging about vaccines from local, trusted sources, spokesman Derrek Asberry said.
The agency also has started tailoring its messaging to young people, who are some of the most vaccine hesitant, and encouraging young adult leaders to speak with their peers about the importance of getting vaccinated.
“Word of mouth is critically important,” assistant state epidemiologist Jane Kelly said during a recent media briefing. “Your friends, your family trust you. They want to hear your message, your experience about vaccine.”
While outreach and messaging about vaccines play a vital role, it’s also important to recognize that COVID-19 vaccination is a personal decision and one that different people may reach at different times.
DHEC public health director Brannon Traxler said perhaps more than anything she hears that people simply need time to feel comfortable with their decision before getting vaccinated.
Whether it’s time to research the development and efficacy of the vaccines or time to observe how the vaccinated people around them respond to their shots, once people are satisfied the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks, they’ll take the plunge, she said.
That was certainly the case for Fred Steinke of Myrtle Beach who now says he was being foolish when he initially declined the COVID-19 vaccine.
“I guess I was just a bit leery of the shot, wasn’t sure if it was safe,” said Steinke, 67.
After talking with friends and family about getting vaccinated and learning that most in his circle were opting for inoculations, Steinke decided to do the same.
“We’re gonna have a lot of tourists here in Myrtle Beach this summer, some vaccinated, some not,” he said. “I just thought this is probably better safe than sorry.”
This story was originally published June 2, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
