Hi everyone, happy Friday. Our team has been busy this week, covering the news from Silicon Valley to Jerusalem. On Fridays, we take some time to plan our week ahead. So we'd love to know: What would you like to hear an episode about in the coming days? Let us know here — we always love to hear what is on your mind. |
In today's newsletter, Jan Hoffman, our behavioral health reporter, tells us more about the personal stories behind vaccine hesitancy in a small southern town. Then, we preview a new season of Modern Love. |
Inside a town of waving strangers and vaccine skeptics |
 | | The Rev. Guy Richardson leads Sunday worship at Old Fashion Gospel House in Bulls Gap, Tenn.Erin Schaff/The New York Times |
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I recently went to Greeneville, Tenn., to speak with people who were skeptical about the Covid-19 vaccine. Polls suggest that resistance is most entrenched among folks who identify as white, rural, Republican and evangelical Christian — a four-square summation of Greeneville, a town of 15,000 in southern Appalachia. |
Vaccination ripples protection against a disease outward, from yourself to your family to the people you encounter daily. And in contrast to a large city, where those random encounters can feel anonymous, everyone in Greeneville seems to feel known and connected. |
Strangers wave at you as they drive by. When neighbors and fellow churchgoers are struggling, people show up in droves to help. Schoolchildren and grown-ups tuck painted stones throughout downtown, hoping that others will find them and impishly hide them in new spots, or that the town's visitors will transport them to faraway places and send photos to the Greeneville Rocks Facebook page. |
Rarely have I been to such a chatty, friendly town. Bewildered, I kept asking the many pastors I met: How could people so committed, civically and religiously, to caring for their neighbors refuse to take a vaccine intended as an essential guardian of the community? |
They all replied: If you don't trust the vaccine, why would you think that if you got it, you'd be protecting your loved ones? |
I learned that the decision about whether to take this novel vaccine often had a great deal to do with the back story each person brought to the decision-making table. Because whenever I asked, people shared fears and traumas, many of which initially seemed unrelated to vaccines. |
Refusers described their experiences with an ex-husband who had gone to jail for molesting two relatives, a son who had died of an accidental overdose and a sister who had nearly died from anaphylactic shock after a vaccine. |
Walt Cross, a volunteer fire chief in nearby Cocke County who had shifted from a career supervising conventional health care clinics to running an herbal and health food shop, told me that the unforeseen consequences of his wife's childhood cancer treatment had recently landed her in the hospital for an extended stay. |
Everyone was describing events over which they had felt completely powerless. And so, faced with the uncertainties of the new vaccine, the ability to say no felt like a way to gain a semblance of personal control. Saying no felt like a more straightforward, less risky decision than saying yes. And after what they had been through, mitigating risk just felt right. |
But while I met many people — young and old, educated and illiterate, poor and comfortable — who were not going to get the shot, I also found many who had. Bill Jones, whose middle name must be "Extrovert," invited me to lunch with a boisterous crowd of Greenevillians, many retired, most of them vaccinated. It was their first monthly gathering since the pandemic had started. The side room of the Gondolier, an Italian restaurant, was packed with at least 30 friends, many of whom eagerly shared vaccine stories. |
Over forkfuls of lasagna, one woman told me she had gotten the shot to help protect her husband, who has advanced multiple myeloma. She put her foot down with her two adult sons, who live in Phoenix and who had refused to get the shots because they believe the vaccine is part of a giant, nefarious plot. |
If they don't get the shot, she told them, they won't be allowed to visit their father. |
They won't back down. Neither will she. |
I asked if she could fathom their viewpoints. She sighed and nodded her head. "I'm a child of the 60s, honey," she said. "We were raised not to trust the government." |
At another table, I asked Dave Hinchy, a retired aviation technician who had also gotten the vaccine, whether he'd heard any talk about microchips and tracking devices in the doses. He had, of course, especially from buddies who were veterans and adamant refusers. |
But he had longed for his Gondolier gatherings. "I'm almost 78," he said. "Track me. I don't care. I don't get out that much anyway." |
| Listen to our episode on vaccine hesitancy. | | |
A new season of Modern Love |
 | | Brian Rea |
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On the season premiere, a man in his late 20s wrestles with the news that his 80-year-old grandmother is getting married — for the third time. (There's a twist to his grandmother's choice in partner, but you'll have to listen to the episode.) While he's fearful of coupling up and losing his identity, he wonders why his grandmother is trying at love again, knowing she'll lose it once more. |
The Modern Love podcast, based on the beloved column (now in its 17th year), explores the love lives of real people through personal essays and interviews. This season, in addition to a heartwarming story about love-struck 80-year-olds, you can expect to hear "a deeply painful story about divorce from a famous comedian, a delightful story about trusting fate and a strange one about getting close to an online scammer," Julia Botero, a producer, told us. |
And as always, the season will examine love in all its complicated forms — friendships, meet-cutes, the bond between a parent and child and even the perspective of the youngest writer ever to be published in Modern Love. |
"The podcast this season truly represents the best of the Modern Love column, and I'm so excited to give each essay a new life in audio," Julia said. |
Tune in on Wednesdays for new episodes. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts. |
Monday: We go inside a community in rural Tennessee where vaccine hesitancy has proved hard to shift. |
Wednesday: What Liz Cheney's ouster from Republican leadership tells us about the state of the party. |
For your weekend listening |
| Check out a collection of our favorite narrated articles from the week and a new episode of Still Processing. | | | |
That's it for The Daily newsletter. See you next week. |
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