Just a few weeks before COVID-19 vaccines became available, Teddi Van Kam got sick from the virus. The director of the Crawford County health department, in far southeast Kansas, was laid out for four weeks. As the pandemic became increasingly dire in her community, she was too sick to work. “I was scared,” Van Kam said. “I couldn’t breathe.” By the time she recovered, the vaccines were available. She got her shot and went back to tackling the pandemic. And she became a vaccine evangelist. But lately, converts have become hard to find. A year and a half into the outbreak, less than half of Crawford County residents are fully inoculated with a potentially life-saving vaccine. “You wish you could convey to them how bad this could be,” Van Kam said, “but you have to be careful how you do those things.” Now, she faces a new challenge: convincing vaccine-hesitant, pandemic-weary people in her community that the danger remains, that things are getting scarier.
Source: KCUR News
