Today, Explained - Delta in the Delta

Episode Date: August 13, 2021

Covid-19 is surging so high in several states, you’d think we didn’t have a vaccine. A Mississippi nurse who was initially skeptical explains her path to getting the shot. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Once upon a time, there was a pandemic. And no one knew how it would end.

But then, there was a vaccine. Out of nowhere, like a dream. And then, there was another, and another. There were all of a sudden too many vaccines to count. And all people needed to do was get this shot and the pandemic wouldn't be as bad a thing. But they didn't. And here we are with no end in sight. Shalina Chutlani has been reporting on surges in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana for WWNO in New Orleans. We asked her how bad it is down there.

Really bad, Sean. You know, in the second week of August, Mississippi health officials said there were no longer ICU beds. At various points, we've seen ambulances come up to this emergency room area and have to wait because beds are not available here. It's a similar issue in the sister states. This month, Louisiana saw an increase of nearly 300 patients over just one weekend. Each morning at Baton Rouge General Hospital begins like this.

Yesterday was incredibly busy. We went from 39 to 47 COVID ICU patients. And there are a lot of children who are also being admitted to hospitals as well. Some children have even died of COVID in Mississippi and Louisiana. Right now, the U.S. is averaging more than 109,000 new cases each day. Nearly one in five of those infected is a child. And so it's a pretty dire situation. Hospitals are completely overwhelmed. And a lot of health care workers are really upset.

My name is Felicia Croft. I have worked in the COVID ICU pretty much the whole pandemic. The Delta wave that we're seeing now, people are younger and sicker. And we're intubating and losing people that are my age and younger. People with kids that are my kids' age that are never going to see their kids graduate. They're never going to meet their grandkids. What percentage of people in the Gulf states are vaccinated right now? So right now, the percentage of people that are vaccinated is 45% or less. That's like across several states. That's across Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama.

So Louisiana has the highest rate of those. More than 60% of people in Louisiana are not fully vaccinated. And that's overwhelmingly who's ending up in this hospital with COVID. Alabama is the lowest or perhaps tied with Mississippi for the lowest. Okay, so some people are getting vaccinated. Who's getting the shot? The people who are getting vaccinated right now in these states are people who probably took a wait-and-see approach at the beginning of the vaccine rollout. Maybe they were unsure of the COVID-19 vaccine, and they wanted to wait a little bit to see how it would work in their friends. It's also people who are seeing what's

happening with this Delta variant and seeing that it is really highly transmissible and pretty much affecting people who are unvaccinated. We have seen a bump in vaccination rates in places like Louisiana, where the weekly average of people getting vaccinated has seemed to triple over the past few weeks because people are seeing that the variant is so dangerous. And who's still holding out? What we've seen is that a lot of the hesitancy in this region is coming from rural white conservatives and people of color. For people of color, the vaccine skepticism appears to be coming from a history of medical distress.

And then, of course, there's also a lot of rural white conservatives I've spoken to say they don't trust the government and they don't like to be told what to do. One person I spoke to for an NPR story back in May was Brandon Ada. He lives in a small rural town in North Mississippi. I'll admit it. The South is, you know, I'm American. I can do what I want and you ain't going to take my guns, and it's my body. And until I see significant research, significant, you know, anything, why take the risk? How are state and local governments responding? Well, some liberal cities across the South are and have honestly really been leading the charge

when it comes to preventative measures like mask mandates. So Jackson, Mississippi has had one for a long time, and so has New Orleans. And the Louisiana governor has been strict on COVID too and implemented a mask mandate recently. But more conservative leaders have resisted that. Kids will not be forced by government or by schools to wear a mask in school.

So for the most part, it's really been up to health departments in these states to offer guidance and recommendations. When it comes to the specific things that those health departments are doing, it's been things like engaging with local doctors, asking celebrities to do PSAs. I'm Zaheela Avant-Garde, national spelling bee champion, Guinness Book record holder, and future neuroscientist and WNBA star.

Recently, friends started asking for my advice. Here's mine. Get your V-A-C-C-I-N-E and give COVID the boot. Some places have really gotten all in. You know, over here in Louisiana, where I'm at, a lot of places have been offering a free pound of crawfish, a fish fry dinner to get your vaccine. Oh man, 130 pounds of crawfish in here. These mud bugs have boiled into this beautiful red color. It's like a scarlet. Right? Delicious and safe all the way up to, you know, million dollar lotteries. The way this is going to work is 14 lucky Louisianans with at least one COVID shot

will win cash prizes or scholarships throughout the month of July, culminating with a grand prize of $1 million. That's going on in Louisiana right now. People are getting big fat checks for $100,000 because they got the vaccine. These are states that we will remember from last year were resistant to shutting down. They're still resistant to mask mandates. Did it surprise you at all as a reporter that they were resistant to getting the vaccine? You know, I'll say that the resistance and the low vaccination rate wasn't surprising to me as a reporter and also as someone

who grew up in Jackson, Mississippi. And that's because I realized that these issues really go beyond politics. There's not as much of a robust health healthcare infrastructure here. There's been a lot of hospital closures over the last decade. There's not as much engagement with the medical establishment. There are also more chronic health conditions here. And of course, some of these states haven't expanded Medicaid. Louisiana is the only state out of the Gulf states that have expanded it. And the list goes on and on and on for why a lot of these communities just weren't prepared to have a public health official come to their communities and say, OK, you need to take the shot because they haven't engaged with the medical establishment for so long. And of course, what makes this surge and these hospitalizations and these deaths especially painful is that unlike when we saw this kind of thing happening last year there is a vaccine now right and i think that's what is so um frustrating and exhausting for public health officials who i really do think in the south have done an excellent job of

trying to think of different ways to get the vaccine out. I think what's exhausting is that they thought that that was going to be the light at the end of the tunnel. That was going to be the last thing that was necessary. Okay, we have a vaccine. Now we just need to figure out how to get it to everyone and put it everywhere. That's the last barrier we have. But we've seen now it's not about access.

It's about culture and historical, you know, structural, social determinants of health that cannot be solved overnight. So I think that's just the next challenge. And it's just a lot more difficult to solve that with any one public health policy or strategy. In her reporting, Shalina came across a nurse, a nurse who didn't want to get the vaccine. I'll talk to her after a message from our sponsors. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join

Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained, R-A-M-P dot com slash explained. Cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC, terms and conditions apply. My name is Mary Williams. I'm a registered nurse. I have a couple of businesses. I have a health and wellness coaching business for women. I also have a nonprofit for young women. And I just recently, in the last three months, started a healthy meals on the go business here in Clinton, Mississippi. Sounds like you keep busy, Mary. I am. I am. I am. And you had a very busy last year and a half, I imagine, because you're a health care worker in a pandemic. It's been taxing because, of course, you know, as a nurse, you want to see people get better and recover. And how close has this virus come to you?

Well, actually, my husband had it in December. That was hard because we have three children. I have a 27-year-old daughter, a 21-year-old daughter, and a 14-year-old. You know, don't ask how we got all those. But everybody was in the house except for my 21-year-old because she's away at college. But, of course, she was coming home for the Christmas holiday. So we had to change up how we did Christmas. We actually had Christmas outside in the backyard because, of course, not wanting her to be inside and to be exposed. And it was shortly after your husband got COVID and y'all celebrated the holidays that the vaccine

really started rolling out in earnest. What did you think when you first heard about the vaccine and heard that, you know, it might be available to you as a healthcare worker? I was not on board with getting it. There's just a lot of information, you know, kind of conflicting information. And I feel that way even now. So I think I took the road of just staying still, you know, not getting the vaccine. I was not, you know, I was not for it. And my husband got it immediately. Did you consider yourself anti-vax? I'm doing quotes. I want to say that because, I mean, I, you know, I get the flu

vaccine. I mean, I'm fully vaccinated. I just, with this, it's just so much uncertainty, I feel. Thinking back to that time where your husband has the shot and you don't, what sticks out in your memory? The pressure, the pressure, pure pressure. My husband was pressuring me. My sisters were pressuring me. I'm the youngest also of 10 children. 10? So I am, I am. This is when I think the Biden administration was talking about that, hopefully by July 4th, things will be kind of opening back up and people will be able to get together. So that was like the carrot, I think, that my siblings were dangling over my head, that we would get together as a family for the 4th of July. And everybody that wasn't vaccinated

would not be able to come. We hadn't gotten together in over a year. So that was our plan to get together as a family for the 4th of July. So that was really my really, really driving force. I wanted to see family. So you got the shot. I did. I did. How'd it go? My initial, when I first went to get it, it was through a drive-thru at a baseball park here.

I was in the line to drive up up and actually they had cones set up. And as I got closer to the area where you get the shot, I actually pulled over, pulled out of the line into a parking space and called a friend of mine. And then, you know, and she had gotten it like the week before and she was like, Mary, just do it. You know, I'm going to stay on the phone with you. So I was like, okay, I'm just, I'm just going to do it. So I got back in the line and I got the first shot. So you almost didn't do it. I did. I almost did not do it. Did getting the shot and feeling, you know, free and accepted to hang out with family, change your mind about the shot? Did you become someone who told other people to get it?

No, no, it did not. Huh. I'm still, I believe that it's a personal choice. I know it's a public health issue, but like I said, I'm just not really convinced with the science and the information. So I do believe that it's a personal choice. That's really interesting. So even as a public health worker, knowing this is a public health issue, you still think people should make their own decision on the vaccine?

I do. I do. Because you have to remember too, Sean, I mean, I've been a nurse over 20 some years, so I've seen behind the curtain of science. I've seen behind the curtains of healthcare, like the healthcare disparities, especially in the black and brown community. So, of course, I've seen that up close and personal. And I'm not talking about, you know, 1960s. I'm talking about 2020. What kinds of disparities have you seen, Mary? Just access to care. That's a huge challenge for our community of just having adequate access to good quality care. Because, of course, you know, lack of insurance or lack of quality insurance. And then here, of course, I'm here in Mississippi. So being one of the most impoverished states. So now you add that in. So

I feel like it's like, OK, get vaccinated, but I'm not going to give you access to fresh fruits and vegetables. You know, get vaccinated. But you live in an area that may be the air may be polluted or you live in an area that there is no sidewalks. So you can't get out or the crime is so bad you can't get out and actually get out in your neighborhood and exercise but get a vaccination and this will keep you from getting a coronavirus but you'll die from everything else i mean i i totally feel what you're saying but i don't necessarily buy the argument that just because everything else is messed up and broken that you shouldn't take this one opportunity to fix something else that is new and kind of broken in our society you know i mean like maybe we are accepting a certain level of crime or malnutrition in our society but there was this new coronavirus and we

did break all sorts of records to come up with this new vaccine that was vetted by scientists and approved temporarily by the FDA and made readily available to all Americans, while a lot of the world, Mary, didn't have it. And that's why I say it is a choice. But, like, why do we have to have one or the other? If we're going to be concerned with people's health, let's be concerned all the way around. But, like, why do we have to have one or the other? If we're going to be concerned with people's health, let's be concerned all the way around. You know, it's like going into a community and saying that we're here to fix this part.

And trust us that we'll fix this part. But this part over here will be broken on this side. But then you want people to trust that you have their best interests at heart. Well, I really appreciate your time, Mary. And I wish you and your family, your very, very big family, all of them, safety throughout the rest of this pandemic. And thank you so much, Mary. Thank you. Mary Williams is a registered nurse in Clinton, Mississippi. We found her through Shalina Chutlani, who's a healthcare reporter for the Gulf States

Newsroom. It's a partnership between NPR and member stations in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. She's based at WWNO in New Orleans. You can find and support her work at WWNO.org. Today Explained is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. The team includes Will Reed, Victoria Chamberlain, Halima Shah, Miles Bryan, and our engineer, Afim Shapiro. Our editor is Matthew Collette. Our supervising producer is Amina Alsadi.

Our deputy is Jillian Weinberger and Liz Kelly Nelson is Vox's veep of audio. Facts checked by Laura Bullard. Music from Breakmaster Cylinder and Noam Hassenfeld. Extra help this week from Paul Mounsey, Lauren Katz, and Emily Sen. Send electronic mail to todayexplained at vox.com. Tweet at today underscore explained.

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