The Anti-Vaxxers in Missouri Are So Deranged That People Are Getting COVID Shots in Disguise

Back in May, Joe Biden set a goal of having 70% of adults in the U.S. vaccinated by early July, a target that was not met thanks to the millions of Americans who’ve decided that stopping the virus is someone else’s problem. Whether it’s because they’ve been spending too much time watching Fox News, think listening to Biden is an affront to Donald Trump, or still believe COVID-19 is a hoax, these people, largely Republicans, would seemingly rather the coronavirus claim more lives than get inoculated. And apparently they’ve become so stridently batshit in their views that the people in their lives who’ve decided to listen to science have resorted to getting vaccinated in secret for fear of provoking their wrath.

On Wednesday, CNN reported that Missouri physician Priscilla Frase said she’s heard that some people who come in to get their shots beg their injector to keep it a secret, and they go so far as to literally don disguises so as not to be found out by the anti-vaxxers in their lives.

“They’ve had some experience that’s sort of changed their mind from the viewpoint of those in their family, those in their friendship circles or their work circles. And they came to their own decision that they wanted to get a vaccine,” said Dr. Priscilla Frase, a hospitalist and chief medical information officer at Ozarks Healthcare in West Plains, Missouri. “They did their own research on it, and they talked to people and made the decisions themselves,” Frase told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “But even though they were able to make that decision themselves, they didn’t want to have to deal with the peer pressure or the outbursts from other people about them…‘giving in to everything.’”

In a hospital produced video, Frase said one pharmacist at her hospital told her “they’ve had several people come in to get vaccinated who have tried to sort of disguise their appearance and even went so far as to say, ‘please, please, please don’t let anybody know that I got this vaccine.’” Frase told CNN if a patient asks for privacy to get vaccinated, the hospital tries to accommodate the request—whether at the drive-thru window or at their cars.

“Anything we can do to get people in a place that they’re comfortable receiving the vaccine,” Frase said. “It’s not a large number, but every single person that we can reach who wants to get vaccinated and we can provide that for them, that’s a win. And we take every win that we can get.”

As CNN notes, Missouri has the 13th-lowest vaccination rate in the country and some of the highest reports of new cases per capita in the last several weeks. And as is the situation throughout the U.S., most of the people getting sick and needing to be hospitalized are unvaccinated:

Frase said her hospital had 33 patients admitted with COVID-19 as of Wednesday and she’s expecting that number to rise. “The patients that are coming in are generally younger than what we saw before. It’s more people requiring a lot more oxygen, a lot quicker,” Frase said. “The majority of people we’ve admitted have not been vaccinated,” she added. “The biggest thing that I think has been shocking for us is, back in the fall, in the winter, it took us four months to get to our peak admitted patients, which is around 22. It’s taken us 30 days to exceed that and be up to 33 today.” Frase said.

And it’s not just Frase’s hospital that’s dealing with an influx of patients in Missouri.

The CoxHealth health system said it’s expanding morgue capacity due to an increase in COVID-19 related deaths. “We’ve actually brought in a portable piece of technology that allows bodies to be cooled and placed outside the morgue. We have had to expand that because the mortality has gone up so much lately,” CoxHealth President and CEO Steve Edwards said during a news briefing in Springfield-Greene County Tuesday.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, St. Louis County’s acting health director was reportedly attacked and called racist slurs during a meeting of the city council about a mask mandate. Regarding the attacks public health officials have been under, Faisal Khan said, “We’ve received so many threats of all kinds, it is jarring…We are in the midst of the worst public health crisis to hit the world in 100 years. We should not be worried about our own safety in deliberative sessions with legislative officials. That really is a sad reflection of society in the United States.”

Also this week, Missouri’s governor proudly announced that he would never do something so crazy as require people to wear masks, despite the out-of-control COVID transmission rate in his state.

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