Free lottery tickets for those who get vaccinated had few takers. Free
hunting and fishing licenses didn’t change many minds either. And this
being red-state Arkansas, mandatory vaccinations are off the table.
So Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson has hit the road, meeting face-to-face
with residents to try to overcome vaccine hesitancy — in many cases,
hostility — in Arkansas, which has the highest rate of new COVID-19
cases in the U.S. but is near the very bottom in dispensing shots.
He is meeting with residents like Harvey Woods, who was among five dozen
people who gathered at a convention center ballroom in Texarkana on
Thursday night. Most of the audience wasn’t masked, and neither was
Hutchinson, who has been vaccinated.
Woods, 67, introduced himself to Hutchinson as “anti-vax” and said that
he thinks there are too many questions about the effects of the vaccine
and that he doesn’t believe the information from the federal government
about them is reliable. []
Nathan Grant, a 66-year-old retired accountant from Batesville, said he
didn’t know of anything Hutchinson could tell him that would change his
mind. Grant has resisted getting the vaccine despite contracting
COVID-19 last year. He said he didn’t trust any of the advice coming
from Washington.
“They haven’t shot straight with us. The CDC hasn’t shot straight with
us. Fauci hasn’t shot straight with us. They’ve changed their stories
multiple times,” said Grant, next to whom sat a fellow vaccine skeptic
in a baseball cap that read “Trump: No More Bulls—t.”
https://apnews.com/article/arkansas-governor-hutchinson-covid-vaccine-hesitancy-09cadd2e75ddd5a4c0758b2cb1b6cbfd