Amid new virus surge, Florida skeptics reconsider vaccines

CALLAHAN, Fla. (AP) — In a rural stretch of northeastern Florida where barely half the people have gotten a coronavirus shot, Roger West had no problem telling others he was “adamantly anti-vaccination.”

The co-owner of the Westside Journal weekly newspaper used his voice as a columnist to widely share his doubts about the vaccine and his mistrust of the health experts in the U.S. who have been urging everyone to get it.

“I do not trust the Federal Government,” West wrote recently. “I do not trust Dr. Fauci, I do not trust the medical profession, nor the pharmaceutical giants.”

But something happened to change his mind: Two of West’s close friends became ill with the virus, and a third died. Rattled and stressed, he prayed for guidance. Then, when his mother and another relative both urged him to get vaccinated, he took it as a sign from God. West drove to the Winn Dixie supermarket and rolled up his sleeve for the first of two injections of the Moderna vaccine.

“All of a sudden, it hit real close to home,” he said.

West is not alone. In this inland area of Nassau County, sandwiched between Jacksonville and the Okefenokee Swamp at the Georgia-Florida line, a devastating resurgence of the coronavirus is making even some die-hard vaccine skeptics reconsider the shots.

For the week ending July 29, the county of 89,000 logged 810 new cases of the coronavirus. At that time it was the highest rate in Florida, one of the epicenters of a nationwide spike in infections driven by the highly contagious delta variant.

Some county residents who thought the pandemic had all but ended have seen multiple family members suddenly infected during the latest wave. One young woman in Callahan, a town of about 1,000 people, saw her fiancé, her mother and her grandmother all die from...