For these five Michigan residents, getting a COVID vaccine is ‘a hard no’

Three of the five people who shared their stories are white, one is African American and one is Hispanic. Most expressed wariness toward government or politicians. Four said they voted for or admired former President Trump, who has offered mixed messages on the need for vaccination and has amplified conspiracy theories about the coronavirus.

Their views, expressed below, are similar to findings in recent surveys on Michigan attitudes toward vaccination.  

A statewide poll by EPIC-MRA revealed just 46 percent of self-described Republicans said they would get the vaccine, compared with 90 percent of Democrats who said they would get a shot. Fully half of poll respondents who identified themselves as Trump supporters said they did not plan to be vaccinated.

Across the country and in Michigan, Black and Hispanic residents also indicated they are less likely than whites to get vaccinated.

Three vaccines are currently approved for emergency use in the United States and are deemed safe and effective by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Millions are scrambling to secure doses. Michigan now has the second highest case rate in the nation, including a high number of variant cases which are more likely to speed transmission of the virus. 

Of the five people interviewed, none said they were inclined to change their mind.

Bill Johnson 

RESIDENCE: Ontonagon

AGE: 58

POLITICAL IDENTIFICATION: Independent

RACE/ETHNICITY: White

A few weeks ago, Marine Corps veteran Bill Johnson got a call from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Did he want to sign up for a COVID-19 shot at a local clinic?

“There’s no way,” he told Bridge Michigan. “I turned them down.” 

“I am not ready for vaccines that have not been tested and proven. I don’t understand the purpose of being a guinea pig.”  [Fact check: The vaccines approved for emergency use in the United States each underwent clinical trials that tested the vaccines on tens of thousands of recipients, with high rates of effectiveness in preventing serious COVID-19 disease, before they were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug administration.]

Johnson’s doubts are underscored by what he said he hears on a police scanner he keeps in the Upper Peninsula bait and tackle shop he runs near Lake Superior with his wife, Jill.

“I hear people going to the emergency room, especially after the second shot,” he said. “That’s just way too much of a coincidence.”

Johnson does not consider himself a Republican ─ he voted for Democrat Bill Clinton in 1992.  He voted for President Trump, twice, and holds high regard for his work as president.

“Trump did this country a great service. He basically said America has to come first.”

Johnson, 58, said he answered his own call to service when he joined the Marines at 17, out of a small community west of Kalamazoo where he grew up. He was inspired by his grandfather, who served as a medic in World War II and who taught him to shoot when he was 9. Johnson served from 1979 to 1985, retiring to the U.P. in 2008 after a couple decades as a truck driver and dispatcher.

He believes government overreach needs to be guarded against. 

“One of the last things my grandfather said was, ‘Don’t let them take your guns away,’” Johnson said.

He said there’s no chance he’ll let any government do that. He owns several handguns and an AR-15 rifle.

“My job is to protect my household,” he said.

Johnson said his wariness of government, and the emergency approval process for the COVID-19 vaccines, may have been sharpened by his own encounter with state bureaucracy.

In 2017, he sued the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services after he said it barred him from carrying a concealed handgun in his home, as he sought to become a foster parent to his grandson. The case caught the attention of the Fox morning news show, “Fox and Friends,” where Johnson said: “God gave me the right to defend my family. I’m not going to let a state agency tell me I can’t do that anymore,” he said.

The case was rendered moot when the state returned the grandson to his mother’s care.

Johnson said he harbors other suspicions about the COVID-19 vaccines. He’s skeptical of the science behind the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which rely on snippets of genetic code to trigger an immune response to the virus.

“They say it’s not an actual vaccine because there’s no dead virus in it, that it actually does something to change your DNA,” he said. [Fact check: Allegations that the vaccines alter human DNA have been widely disproven.] 

Though Trump recently revealed he received the vaccine before leaving the White House and that it is “safe” and “something that works,” Johnson said the former president’s comments won’t change his mind, either.

“Trump was good for the economy,” Johnson said, “but he’s not a doctor, either.”

*** This article has been archived for your research. The original version from Bridge Michigan can be found here ***