Teton Province, Wyoming, is at the forefront of America’s vaccination campaign Covid-19 – but it does not celebrate.
The province vaccinated proportionally far more people than in most of America – 39% – compared to less than a quarter nationally. Local authorities are concerned that they may have reached a saturation point. The sprawling, rural and conservative Wyoming is one of the most vaccinated-hesitant places in the country, and fewer people sign up for vaccination clinics. Similar patterns occur across the US.
Local authorities are now concerned about the rare possible side effects of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine – so rare that a person is twice as likely to be struck by lightning – can confirm the concerns of some who are already reluctant to be vaccinated .
“There was so much interest that we went through all the priority populations, opened ourselves up to the general public, and then it just flattened out,” said Jodie Pond, director of the health department in Teton. There is still interest, she said, “but certainly less”.
A similar deforestation pattern emerges in Malheur, Oregon.
“We were really hoping we would have herd immunity by the middle or end of the summer, and that’s just unlikely right now,” said Sarah Poe, director of Malheur’s health department. “It’s going to continue at least next year – which no one wanted to hear.”
In either case, experts said, these provinces have a potential vision for the future of America’s vaccination campaign – one that will move rapidly from shortage to surplus at a time when the Johnson & Johnson vaccine may be particularly useful to the most to achieve marginalized, conservative. and vaccine-reluctant.
Similar scenes take place in Mississippi, where the state struggled last week to fill 73,000 vaccination slots. In Davison County, South Dakota, pharmacy director Eric Larson asked authorities if it was “too late to ask not to send more vaccines” because not enough people signed up for vaccination slots, according to the local newspaper The Mitchell Republican. .
This week, Malheur has a mobile vaccine unit that hopes to distribute 2,000 vaccine doses. “We’ll be a huge success if we use 1,000 of them,” Poe said.
For many people in public health, these experiences are part of a disturbing sense that what America just went through – the scramble for appointments, the rush to get vaccinated and the logistical problems of scarcity – was the easy part. Now experts like dr. Marcus Plescia, the vaccination figures will not be delayed due to lack of supply but due to lack of demand.
“We will get to a point where we are starting to saturate the group that is fairly motivated, and we will have to come up with new strategies,” said Plescia, medical director of the Association of State and Territories, Health officials.
Many people do not die from vaccination – they are simply insecure.
‘If people are a little hesitant and want to talk to someone [the vaccine], it takes more time than someone who is dead set on it, ”Plescia said.
Among the authorities in rural, conservative and vaccine-hesitant countries, the hope is that the Johnson & Johnson break will be as short as possible, while also enabling thorough investigation and communication of findings.
The White House argued that the break would not materially affect the national distribution rate of vaccines because it represented the minority doses. Nevertheless, the impact can be noticed for the health departments and people hoping to rely on this particular vaccine.
‘We actually let people out of the clinic in the hope that they would get [the Johnson & Johnson vaccine] elsewhere, ”said Poe. She is concerned about the so-called pause, ‘which was valid for people who said,’ No, they are fine now. ”
The U.S. is likely to resume vaccination of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine next week, possibly with restrictions or broader warnings following reports of very rare cases of blood clots, the government’s leading expert in infectious diseases said Sunday.
Dr Anthony Fauci said he would expect a decision when advisers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) meet on Friday to discuss the discontinuation of J & J’s single-dose vaccine.
“I would be very surprised if we did not resume in shape by Friday,” he said.
There are three vaccines that use emergencies in the US. Vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer use messenger RNA technology, while Johnson & Johnson’s use viral vector. This week, scientists recommended that Johnson and Johnson vaccinations be temporarily stopped as they investigated six cases of rare blood clots among more than 7.7 million people who received the shot.
The vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen is the recently approved vaccine. Initially, public health officials were concerned that people would be convincingly required to use this latest vaccine. Although Janssen’s results are not comparable to those of Moderna and Pfizer, they appear to show lower effectiveness. All vaccines are very effective in preventing Covid-19 hospitalization and death.
But to the surprise of many, the name asked for the vaccine Johnson & Johnson. People who are concerned about safety consider it more traditional technology. And unlike the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, it was also single-use and had a less onerous profile for common flu-like side effects.
For people who are concerned about the novelty of mRNA vaccines, who are struggling to get a day off from work to be vaccinated or recover, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine holds significant benefits.
Although the impact of the break remains unclear, it comes in an environment of already diminished demand. In Teton, Pond recently had to cancel a 500-shot clinic when only 80 people enrolled. All 80 were easily accommodated on another clinic day, a disturbing sign rather than reassuring. On other days, as many as 50 people had not yet turned up for shots.
A recent survey published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 29% of Teton Province residents are reluctant to be vaccinated. By comparison, liberals Massachusetts, Vermont and California are among the least vaccination-hesitant places in the country. Only 6-9% of the population are reluctant to be vaccinated.
Recent surveys have shown that Republican men and residents of the country are one of the most vaccine-hesitant in the country. Vaccine hesitation is also associated with protest or Catholicism. All of these groups will also disproportionately support former President Donald Trump, who has been a major source of Covid-19 misinformation for a year, although the direct impact on people’s attitudes is unclear.
It is estimated that 18% of Malheur province is reluctant to be vaccinated. The distribution of the vaccine has been rampant since the beginning of the country, because so many people in the area do not have internet.
“We never had thousands of people in line,” Poe said. “Sometimes there were people who had to show up and wait, but it honestly quickly disappeared as soon as we passed the seniors.”
Just over half of the elderly are vaccinated in Malheur. The people of 50 people often go for hours without patients at the vaccination clinic of the province.
“I do not know that people understand what it is like to live in a community that has 23% poverty, 10% undocumented and 10% of our children live in poverty, and do not have much public transport,” said Poe.
Logistically, Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine was expected to be extremely useful in locations such as Malheur and Teton. The province’s 30,000 inhabitants are spread over 10,000 square kilometers. It is larger than nine U.S. states.
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is considerably easier to transport, and it is only necessary to refrigerate, compared to the special dry ice cases required for the Pfizer vaccine. This meant that the country could easily bring the vaccine to the country’s prison, homeless shelters, drug treatment facilities and agricultural areas, such as the country’s onion processing plants.
Poe was hoping to expand Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine to Walmart pharmacies, which has a large number of low-income customers, soon. And at the national level, the vaccine has been a good candidate for emergencies, where a high percentage of people get low-income and marginalized medical care, and at family medical practices, which are among the most trusted members of society.
These changes would also have grafted into institutions that are reluctant to be more comfortable with and outside government clinics. A study by economists at the University of Wyoming found in the state that mistrust of the Biden administration and the food and drug administration were major reasons why people were waiting to be vaccinated.
The vaccination of Johnson & Johnson also presented a challenge for messengers. Many public health officials believe that finding these weakest safety signals – blood clots in less than one in every million people – is a triumph of monitoring the safety of vaccines. But blood clots are nonetheless frightening, even though they are extremely rare.
The same public safety database that noticed the possible side effect, called the system for vaccination of unwanted incidents (Vaers), has also been approved by some to cause confusion. Online anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists and conservative commentators use anecdotal, unconfirmed reports from Vaers to argue that vaccines are unsafe.
“The problem is that there is so much misinformation, also from so-called medical professionals, that contains content on Facebook and online in particular, and it gets a lot of attention,” Poe said.
“I’m so disappointed in people doing harm and discouraging the use of the vaccine because people lose their lives if people do not get the vaccine.”
In the same communities, the interests could not be higher.
Teton is home to two of America’s most iconic tourist destinations – the Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. With nearly a million visitors expected this summer, the vaccination campaign is a race against the clock to protect people.
“We’ll be letting people down on us like last summer,” Pond said. “We want to get people who live and work here before all the tourists come in and hopefully protect ourselves,” she said. “We can not say, ‘Only people who are vaccinated come to Teton County.’ We’re all going to get it. “
Meanwhile, business in Malheur is increasing. Fifty-eight people in the country died from Covid-19 and at least 3,400 sick.
“We’re still in a pandemic, our business is rising around us, that’s exactly what we needed and it’s working,” Poe said. “Every time we hear of these serious cases and outbreaks and deaths of a vulnerable person – it’s honestly so heartbreaking – because it was a life we could have saved.”