TOPEKA — Larry Mast, an Amish man from Millersburg, says there’s no way he’s ever getting a COVID-19 vaccine.
Mast, who was in Topeka running errands Thursday afternoon, said he just doesn’t trust that the vaccines are safe. What’s more, he isn’t particularly convinced that COVID-19 even warrants a vaccine.
“I really don’t think there’s a whole lot to this COVID,” Mast said of the virus. “It’s a political thing, I think. I mean, why have a vaccine if it’s just another flu? COVID is an overrated form of the flu in my opinion.”
And to hear him tell it, he’s not alone, noting that many in the local Amish community hold similar viewpoints.
“Not everybody, but a large part of it, yeah,” Mast said. “The biggest percentage, that’s the way we feel.”
As of Friday afternoon, the COVID-19 Dashboard maintained by Johns Hopkins University had recorded more than 31 million COVID-19 cases and 560,000 COVID-19-related deaths in the United States since the start of the pandemic in early 2020.
In comparison, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that influenza, or the typical flu virus, results in an average of between 9 million and 45 million illnesses and 12,000 to 61,000 deaths annually in the United States.
But even that massive disparity between the number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 and those resulting from the typical flu virus hasn’t convinced Mast and those with similar viewpoints to seek the vaccine, as many don’t believe COVID-19’s actual death rate is being reported accurately.
“There wasn’t more deaths last year than any other year. They claimed all those deaths were from COVID, but there were also a lot of heart attacks, and other underlying issues, and they just said they were all COVID deaths,” Mast said of his take on the numbers. “So, for that reason, I’m not too worried about it, or I’m not going to make a big deal about it or change how I do things.”
TRYING TO CHANGE OPINIONS
That widespread skepticism and distrust when it comes to COVID-19 is something Elkhart County Health Officer Bethany Wait has been working hard to alleviate during her efforts to get the county’s large Amish population vaccinated against the virus.
“I think there is still a lot of hesitancy among the local Amish population,” Wait said. “I think that getting information to them, and education, is what’s going to be really important. I mean, I don’t think we’re going to give up on that population by any means. When I went and talked with the bishops probably about six weeks ago, just to kind of see where they were, at that point in time we had just started vaccinating and didn’t have that many vaccines available. So, we couldn’t really offer to bring it to them anyway. But I had a good two-hour conversation of just answering questions, and kind of telling my story as to my own experience with the virus, and the importance of what the vaccines are going to do for us.”
Wait doesn’t intend to give up on her outreach to the Amish.
“I mean, I certainly don’t think that I won a ton of people over. But I don’t know if I want to say I wanted to win anybody over, really. It was more just about educating, and I think that continued outreach will happen,” Wait added of the situation. “And you know, I think it’s a generalization to say that Amish don’t get immunizations. I mean, I’d say a fair majority get childhood immunizations. They may do it a little slower than the CDC recommendations, but certainly they vaccinate their children. So, I think that as we continue to do that outreach, and as the vaccine becomes available to primary care doctors, I suspect we’ll get that reach more, or at least hope that we’ll get that reach into that community.”
If not, Wait said she fears the county will continue seeing COVID-19 outbreaks well into the future.
“At some point the mask mandates will go away, and the capacity limitations will go away. But COVID will still be very present,” Wait said. “So, I wish that I could say this was going to be over as soon as June, but it’s just not, and we’re still going to be battling this until we get things better under control. And vaccines are our way to that control. We see it. We see the vaccination rates working.”
GOING TO THEM
In the meantime, Wait said her plan is to try and reach the local Amish population through the increased use of mobile clinics, which she said will allow her to take the vaccines directly to the community.
“I mean, we haven’t done as much outreach as what we would like to. But mainly that’s because it’s going to be easier to travel with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is one dose, than it is the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines, which require two doses. And we just don’t have good access to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine yet,” Wait said. “So, our targeted outreach is probably going to be more like in the end of May range, because I think that in May, June, July, our supplies will increase, and then we can take that more mobile.”
OTHERS ALSO TRYING
Trevor Thain, pharmacist and owner of Topeka Pharmacy in downtown Topeka, is taking a similar approach when it comes to reaching LaGrange County’s large Amish population.
As one of just three designated vaccination sites in that county, Thain said he has worked hard to make accessing the vaccine as painless as possible for all of the county’s residents, including the Amish, who typically avoid the use of technologies such as computers and the internet.
“So, Wednesday we actually did a clinic at a local factory up the road, and we did about 70 shots here at the pharmacy, and about 70 over there. So, we did 140 in one day,” Thain said, noting that he has no problem taking the vaccine mobile if it means getting more shots into the arms of community members. “We’re on average doing about 60 a day most days, but sometimes more. I think today we’ll hit 2,500 vaccines since January that we’ve gotten out into our community, which is great.
“We’re trying to find any employers in the area that are having trouble getting their staff vaccinated or whatever. And if they can give us a couple days heads-up, it’s really easy for us to go set up shop for a day anywhere here in the county and do a clinic,” Thain added of the pharmacy. “So, just finding ways to get the vaccine to people that can’t always find a ride or whatever, that’s kind of been what we’re trying to do. Because it’s hard. It’s hard anyway for people, putting aside all the politics, and all the disagreements people have on it or whatever, just the logistics of getting it to people is hard. So, that’s the part we’re trying to make real easy.”
Like Wait, Thain said one of the biggest barriers to getting more shots into arms is just trying to navigate around all of the misinformation that is circulating regarding the vaccines.
“And honestly, I hear a lot of the same arguments from Amish, English, whatever. It doesn’t matter what your practice is, or your race, or culture. People have a lot of the same concerns regardless,” Thain said. “But in terms of the Amish community specifically, we’ve definitely given Amish patients both doses of their vaccines with no issues, and my hope is that they’ll be able to tell some of their family, and friends, and their congregation, that, ‘Hey, I got that, and I’m OK.’”