Covid-19 Has Hit The Amish Community Hard, Still Vaccines Are A Hard Sell

[appalachiablue]

NPR, April 28, 2021.

The Amish communities of northeast Ohio engage in textbook communal living. Families eat, work and go to church together, and through the pandemic, mask-wearing and social distancing have been spotty. As a result, these communities have experienced some of the state's highest rates of infection and deaths. Nevertheless, health officials are struggling to get residents vaccinated. Holmes County, where half of the population is Amish, has the lowest vaccination rate in Ohio, with just 10% of its roughly 44,000 residents fully vaccinated. Less than 1% of Amish have received any doses of vaccine, according to Michael Derr, the county's health commissioner.

In an effort to increase that number, health officials are holding vaccination clinics in rural areas. They've also reached out to bishops and community leaders to spread the word about the safety of the vaccines. Still, few Amish residents are showing up to the health department's clinics. Marcus Yoder, who lives in Holmes County, was born Amish and is now Mennonite and still has close ties to the Amish community. He says the few Amish who are getting vaccinated are doing so privately through doctors' offices and small rural clinics – and they are keeping it to themselves.

"There were Amish people getting the vaccination the same day I was ... and we all kind of looked at each other and smiled underneath our masks and assumed that we wouldn't say that we saw them," Yoder says. He says many Amish don't want to get vaccinated because they already had COVID-19 and believe the area has reached herd immunity. Another main driving force is "the misinformation about COVID itself — that it's not more serious than the flu," says Yoder, who runs a history center about the Amish and Mennonite. "They're saying, 'Well, it didn't affect me that much. Look at all these old people who survived.' "

Some Amish residents are skeptical of the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines, and anti-vaccination conspiracy theories also spread throughout the community. There is also a lack of awareness about the more contagious variants spreading across the country, Yoder says. "I think we're going to see some more cases in our community, unfortunately, because of this," he says. "There simply is a lot of COVID news fatigue. They simply do not want to hear about it, and that's really unfortunate."...

More, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/04/28/990986056/covid-19-has-hit-the-amish-community-hard-still-vaccines-are-a-hard-sell

[SoCalDavidS]

1. Then Let It Work It's Way Through Their Communities

They mostly keep to themselves, so hopefully they won't spread it to others. They can choose to die if they want to.

[doc03]

2. The Amish community in Holmes county relies

heavily on the tourist trade, so they are in contact with the English all the time.

[SoCalDavidS]

3. Well, I Don't Know What To Say

Lots of Americans couldn't care less about their fellow human beings. We're a shithole country, and that's not going to change.

[wnylib]

4. When I got vaccinated, the site

doing the vaccinations was giving out Amish made cloth masks. I don't know what they are doing in their homes and communities, but when I see them at stores they are wearing masks and doing it correctly, over mouth AND nose. Same last summer at the local farmers' market where an Amish family has a booth.

Their close communal life style would make them very vulnerable to spread once anyone in their community gets covid.

[appalachiablue]

5. Good to know, thanks for the report