Former President Trump speech at 2021 CPAC, Photo Date: February 28, 2021
Statistics show that Winston County ranks last in terms of people who have been fully vaccinated for COVID-19 in Alabama, which has the country’s lowest inoculation rate.
Posted: Apr 8, 2021 5:00 PM
Posted By: Jay Reeves, Associated Press
HALEYVILLE, Ala. (AP) Tending a thrift store that displays a faded Trump flag in a nearly all-white Alabama county with a long history of going against the grain, Dwight Owensby is among the area s many skeptics of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Owensby, 77, said he doesn t often watch TV news or read the local paper, and he doesn t spend much time talking about the pandemic with others it s just not a big topic in this rural, heavily forested part of the state. But he suspects the coronavirus pandemic was planned, as a discredited conspiracy theory holds, and he said there s no way he s getting any shot.
Vaccination is a hard sell in a solidly Trump Alabama county – TodayHeadline todayheadline.co - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from todayheadline.co Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
He isn’t alone in Winston County, which ranks last in terms of people who have been fully vaccinated in a state that has the country’s lowest vaccination rate, according to federal statistics. To many here, the pandemic isn’t much of a concern. Businesses are open and relatively few people wear masks, even though Alabama’s rule requiring them to be worn in public wasn’t scheduled to end until Friday.
A Union stronghold where some pushed for secession from pro-slavery Alabama during the Civil War, Winston County is a prime example of a problem that health officials say they’ll have to overcome to end the pandemic: Many white conservatives such as Owensby aren’t lining up quickly enough for vaccines.
Coronavirus: Trump-loving Alabama county faces uphill vaccination effort ctvnews.ca - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from ctvnews.ca Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
In Alabama’s ‘Trumpiest’ county, only 7.3% have received COVID vaccine
Updated 11:03 AM;
Today 11:03 AM
A Civil War monument dedicated to both Union and Confederate soldiers stands outside the Winston County Courthouse in Double Springs, Ala., Monday, April 5, 2021. The county, which attempted to secede from slaveholding Alabama during the war, is trailing the state in COVID-19 vaccinations. Many are hesitant to get shots in the nearly all-white county, and officials say vaccine supply also is a problem. (AP Photo/Jay Reeves)AP
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Tending a thrift store that displays a faded Trump flag in a nearly all-white Alabama county with a long history of going against the grain, Dwight Owensby is among the area’s many skeptics of the COVID-19 vaccine.