West Virginia and Alaska’s Breathtaking First Months of Vaccination

Updated vaccination data from the CDC, by state, is below. It was timestamped at 12:27 PM yesterday.

Leading the field, as has been the case, are West Virginia and Alaska.

We’re a long way from the culmination of all these efforts. Things can change, and all feet must be kept on the gas. But so far, West Virginia and Alaska lead the pack, and being the first to 10% is an achievement even if a state, eventually, isn’t the first to 70%. So let’s talk about those guys.

West Virginia’s vaccine rollout has been a rousing success story. The state’s partnered with local, often independently owned pharmacies due to the limited reach of CVS and Walgreens within the state, an approach that Christopher Martin, a professor at the West Virginia School for Public Health, credited for their success this week in The Atlantic, and not because of logistics:

Peter Sandman, a leading figure in risk communication, notes that people consistently overestimate their personal risk from rare events such as plane crashes, terrorist attacks, and shark encounters—and I would add here adverse reactions from vaccinations—yet underestimate the risk from more common activities, including riding in a car, smoking, and maintaining a poor diet.

In focus-group research, my colleagues at West Virginia University’s Reed College of Media found this line of thinking prevalent in our state’s population. Some feel that a COVID-19 vaccine may be forced upon them and they won’t have an option to say no. Others fear vaccines in general because they are artificial and unfamiliar. Some are suspicious of the new technology used to develop the vaccines and the speed with which scientists were able to make them.

These concerns show that simply providing data on the vaccines won’t sway people, and dismissing vaccine-hesitant people as simply uninformed or uneducated is misguided. Effective communication about vaccines requires an understanding of why a person is hesitant. The emotional context of risk perception must be addressed first, and that can be achieved only through a relationship of trust.

At one long-term-care facility here in West Virginia, a candidate was reluctant to be vaccinated. The pharmacist, who is also an experienced diabetes educator, recognized the need for a conversation in a private room. The pharmacist listened as the woman described a concern based on a traumatic experience in childhood. They talked it over, but they also discussed the fact that the vaccine would protect her loved ones from possibly contracting COVID-19 from her. She ended up opting for the shot.

There is a lot to say about this assessment from Martin and the anecdote he shared. There is a lot this can teach us about all sorts of things, with media especially on my mind as the abandonment of local outlets for national ones, the breakdown of trust in mainstream sources of news, and the rise of dangerous misinformation weighs heavy. But even limited to its own arena, this assessment is breathtakingly touching and hopeful. Lives are being saved thanks to the good work of the state of West Virginia—and I say “the state of West Virginia” to refer both to the governmental entity and the societal entity.

In Alaska, the story is also one of good governance (and, as is so often the case in Alaska, novel transportation), though there are some circumstances from which Alaska benefits. This Bloomberg piece has a lot of information on the overall rollout, but the circumstantial bits are that because the Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs, and the Indian Health Service are allocated vaccines independently of states, and the populations those groups serve are disproportionally prevalent in Alaska, Alaska simply has more vaccines, something that’s been augmented by Alaska—because of its isolation—receiving its dose allotments from the federal government on a monthly rather than weekly basis, giving it a head start every month. I don’t have the data on how impactful these circumstances are, but they’re certainly helping an effort that, as is so often the case in Alaska, is fueled by dizzying logistical feats (a fun anecdote, in case you don’t read the Bloomberg article, is that an effort to get the vaccine to a combination of remote villages in southwestern Alaska has been named Project Togo in honor of the lead sled dog that did most of what is commonly attributed to Balto).

Anyway, lots to learn, lots to be excited about, lots to praise. So praise West Virginia and Alaska we shall. Here are the vaccination numbers, by percent of total population: