Women yell at Clark County School District Trustees after a 5-1 vote in favor of a vaccine mandate resolution at a special CCSD meeting at the Clark County Government Center early Thursday morning, Sept. 2, 2021. The resolution authorizes the superintendent to develop and implement a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for school district employees.
Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2021 | 2 a.m.
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Health officials, political leaders, celebrities, social media influencers and others have urged Americans to get vaccinated, yet the national vaccination rate remains stuck at less than 60%.
So today, in hope of encouraging unvaccinated Southern Nevadans to get their shots, the Sun is turning to a group that may have the most powerful words of all on the subject — everyday Americans who were stricken with the disease or lost loved ones after foregoing vaccination.
Below, we offer some of the most common reasons Americans eschew vaccinations, as shown in national polls, and present recent news stories in which individuals who once believed in that reasoning saw the light and are now pleading with others to get vaccinated.
Here are their stories:
Reason for not getting vaccinated: I’m taking a stand for having the choice not to be vaccinated.
Sean Harrell of Clovis, Calif., was among those who cited the freedom of choice in not getting the vaccine. Then he got infected, which led to an agonizing month-long stay in the hospital.
“Everyone says ‘my body, my choice.’ I was the same way,” Harrell told the Sacramento Bee. “But if I could go back in time, I would choose differently because of everything my family and I went through. I personally suggest everyone who can safely get vaccinated do so.”
As reported by the Bee, Harrell’s twin brother, Shane, also urged people to get the vaccine after watching his brother nearly die in the hospital.
“ ‘Probably the worst thing I have ever seen,’ is how Shane put it, wiping away tears as he shared the memory,” the Bee reported.
Reason for not getting vaccinated: I’ve already had COVID-19, so I’m safe.
That’s what Travis Campbell of Bristol, Va., thought before he suffered a second infection that put him in the hospital on a ventilator. According to The Washington Post, Campbell had put off getting inoculated until the end of the summer, believing he had the antibodies to fight off an infection due to his earlier illness. He didn’t: The second infection left him with a partially collapsed lung and a case of pneumonia.
“I messed up big time, you guys — I didn’t get the vaccine,” Campbell said in a Facebook video.
Campbell also called his 14-year-old son to ask him to commit to giving his sister away at her wedding someday if Campbell died in the hospital. He survived the ordeal.
Reason for not getting vaccinated: I’m leery about the side effects of the vaccine, so instead of getting my shots, I’m following safety protocols — wearing a mask, socially distancing when possible, practicing good hand hygiene, etc.
Cindy Dawkins, a restaurant worker from Boynton Beach, Fla., was celebrating her 50th birthday when she told family members she was feeling short of breath and getting tired. Just a week later, she died of COVID-19. She was unvaccinated.
“I think she wasn’t sure about the vaccine, and we followed the rules and kept our masks on,” her 20-year-old son told “Good Morning America.”
After Dawkins’ death, her family made media appearances urging people to understand that the risks of COVID-19 far outweigh the potential of suffering serious side effects from the virus, which are fleetingly few.
“Seeing how it happened and how quickly it happened, it definitely changed our perspective. Getting a vaccine helps more than any damage it could do,” her son said.
Reason for not getting vaccinated: The threat of COVID-19 is overblown. Besides, I’m healthy and confident I can recover if I come down with the illness.
Danny Reeves, a pastor in Corsicana, Texas, says he was never against vaccinations, but he didn’t think he needed to be inoculated because he was generally healthy and in his 40s. But then came an infection that led to a harrowing 48-hour stay in intensive care, where a doctor told him he might die or need a lung transplant.
“I cried in here. I had emotional moments in here. I had regret in here,” he told a local Fox News affiliate. “I recognized that I had been a bit cavalier. That almost cost me.”
After surviving the ordeal, he urged his congregation to all get their shots.
“I was falsely and erroneously overconfident,” he told National Public Radio. “Unfortunately that was the attitude that I had — that if I did get it, I thought it would just be a nothing issue. And in that I was deeply, deeply wrong.”
