The COVID Conundrum

It had been a rough last few months of 2020 for Kim Daniel, a resident of Preservation Square, an impoverished neighborhood just a mile northwest of downtown St. Louis. She had lost seven family members ranging in age from 22 to 81, three of them to COVID-19.

Daniel, 54, has suffered all her life with a congenital heart disease that has taken her to death's door several times. And as 2021 rolled around, she had been feeling poorly. She had gotten tested for COVID in November, and thankfully the results were negative. But her doctor suggested that her feelings of fatigue and malaise might be related to her anxiety over the pandemic. As Daniel paraphrased him, maybe it's "the atmosphere of things."

As 2021 dawned, the Pfizer vaccine entered into Daniel's atmosphere of things. You might think it would give her some hope.

St. Louis City's public health officials made the vaccine available to eligible residents on a winter day at Union Station, a five-minute drive from Daniel's home. More than 1,800 residents got their first dose there on Jan. 30.

But Daniel, who likely would have qualified for a shot, said she wanted no part of the vaccine.

"This is too early, too soon, too new," Daniel said.

But would she at least talk to her cardiologist about the vaccine?

"No. I won't ask him because I'm not going to take it."

Don't you want his advice?

"I appreciate doctors and what they do, especially those who are willing to take the time to listen to me and will respond accordingly. But for me, in my life, the doctor's opinion is not the final opinion, so I don't."

Daniel may be wrong about the efficacy of the vaccine, but her point of view isn't based on ignorance. She reads widely and because of her lifelong health issues has a half-century of experience with some practitioners who have treated her and people she knows with indifference and sometimes cruelty.

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