'They didn't want to have to deal with the peer pressure': Missouri doctor says people in her state are getting vaccinated in secret to avoid admitting it to their families
A doctor in Missouri has said that people in her state are getting vaccinated against COVID-19 in secret, to avoid the 'peer pressure' and accusations of 'giving in'.
Only 40 percent of Missouri's population is fully vaccinated - making the state 12th worst in the nation for vaccine take-up. Alabama is the worst with 33 percent fully vaccinated; Vermont is the best, with 67 percent.
Missouri has had the fourth worst caseload over the past week, with one in every 360 people diagnosed with COVID-19.
COVID-19 hospitalization jumped by 168 percent from a low point of 628 of May 23, to 1,684 on July 24. The increase was even starker in sparsely-vaccinated southwest Missouri, where the number of hospitalizations leapt by 443 percent and reached pandemic highs.
Dr Priscilla Frase, chief medical information officer at Ozarks Healthcare in West Plains, Missouri, told CNN on Wednesday night that the rising caseload was making people have second thoughts about holding out against vaccinations.
Dr Priscilla Frase, chief medical information officer at Ozarks Healthcare in West Plains, Missouri, said that she has been shocked at the speed of the spread of COVID in her hospital, and by the young age of the patients being admitted
Frase appeared on CNN on Wednesday night and said people were asking to be vaccinated in secret
'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,' she said.
'And they came to their own decision that they wanted to get a vaccine.
'They did their own research on it, and they talked to people and made the decisions themselves.
'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.''
Frase said one pharmacist at her hospital told her '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.''
She said the clinics tried to accommodate the requests as far as possible, concluding that even one more person being vaccinated was worth the extra effort.
Her hospital had 33 patients admitted with COVID-19 as of Wednesday and she's expecting that number to rise.
'The patients that are coming in are generally younger than what we saw before. It's more people requiring a lot more oxygen, a lot quicker,' Frase said.
'The majority of people we've admitted have not been vaccinated,' she added.
A healthcare worker after administering the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine to a resident at the Jordan Valley Community Health Center in Springfield, Missouri, on July 12. Missouri has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, with only 40 per cent vaccinated
Dr Faisal Khan - St. Louis County's Asian public health director - was bumped, pushed and called a 'fat brown c**t' and 'brown b*****d' after Tuesday's council meeting after he spoke in favor of the mask mandate.
The St. Louis County council ultimately voted 5-2 to overturn the mask mandate that went into effect 24 hours before. Republican politicians called masks 'unAmerican.'
Before the vote, he shared the latest scientific research and surging COVID numbers across the state of Missouri and in St. Louis County, which is separate from the city of St. Louis.
He said during the meeting that county hospitals are being overwhelmed with COVID patients, in large part because of the highly contagious and potent Delta variant strain, which accounts for more than 83percent of the United State's cases.
While Dr. Khan spoke to a largely 'MAGA'-movement and anti-mask crowd that he said mocked his accent by mimicking The Simpsons character Apu, he wrote in a letter to Chairwoman Rita Days, which was obtained by DailyMail.com.
Days had to briefly stop Dr. Khan's presentation a couple times to tell the crowd 'to be respectful' while he was speaking.
After the meeting when he tried to leave, he was confronted by a mob of people who pushed him around, physically threatened him and shouted racial slurs at him. He responded by flipping someone off.
His public health career spans 25 years and includes eight countries, including the US, where he's worked in three different states.
During that time, he said he's 'never been subject to the racist, xenophobic and threatening behavior that greeted me in the County Council meeting (Tuesday) night.'
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