The coronavirus is ravaging Missouri, where fewer than one in four residents is fully vaccinated -- and all but three counties backed Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
Sharp partisan divides are showing up in vaccination rates on a state-by-state and county-by-county basis, with an unwillingness to be inoculated seen by many as a show of loyalty to the twice-impeached one-term president, and that hesitancy is helping to seed new outbreaks in conservative regions with the arrival of the highly contagious delta variant.
"There hasn't been enough research done on it, and I'd rather take my chances with the virus than I would to get the vaccine," Jennifer Davis, a 41-year-old Trump supporter from Springfield, told Bloomberg. "I trust my immune system. If I get it, and it's my time to die, then I get it and it's my time to die."
Her 50-year-old uncle, Larry Krauck, spent spent 33 days on a blood-oxygenation machine toward the end of last year, before vaccines were available to the public, and he's trying to convince friends and neighbors to get their shots -- but Davis said even Trump himself couldn't convince her to do it.
"It's silly that people think just because one man says, 'go get it,' that we're going to line up and do it," Davis said. "Because it's not going to happen."
The delta variant was first seen in the state May 10 in Branson, a tourist destination whose visitors lean conservative, and by June 7 had spread to almost every other city and community in Missouri, according to a COVID-19 tracking study overseen by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.
"We've seen the delta variant spread through the state at a remarkable pace," Marc Johnson, one of the scientists leading the wastewater testing study at the University of Missouri School of Medicine, told KMIZ-TV.
Experts warn the delta variant outbreak is poised to "explode" within the next week in Fulton, Columbia and Jefferson City, where the viral load has increased by 40 percent or more in the past week or 25 percent or more in the last two weeks.
"When you see people going maskless, or having these rallies — it's hard as a frontline worker," Sara Hunter, a registered nurse at a health clinic in Springfield. "You empathize with them, and they have the right to free speech, but at the time, it's, 'You know, you don't want this.' It shouldn't be such a political issue, but it is."
Officials say some vaccine skeptics still believe hydroxychloroquine, a malaria treatment hyped by Trump as a remedy, will cure their COVID-19 if they become infected, while others cite the vaccines' emergency authorization by the Food and Drug Administration as a concern -- but some health officials worry that some conservatives are rejecting the shots simply to spite President Joe Biden.
"There's a part of me, in thinking through this — are there folks who are still going back to the election results and saying, 'You know what, the current administration set a goal so we're going to do our part to make sure they don't hit their goal?'" said Craig McCoy, president of Mercy Springfield Communities.
