Melissa Pardee had no plans to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Neither did anyone in her family.
“We’ve all kind of been very against the vaccine -- my sister and I in particular,” she said.
Pardee, 31, said she was concerned about the novelty of the vaccines and how quickly they were developed. And when federal regulators recommended a pause on the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, that didn’t help her confidence.
“I mean, it’s something new that nobody knows anything about. Could this, you know, six years from now, cause health problems?” she wondered. “I don’t know.”
Vaccine experts say the process of developing the COVID-19 shots was rigorous. Researchers studied the effects of the vaccines on tens of thousands of people before submitting data to get federal authorization.
Researchers say severe side effects are extremely rare. And although the COVID-19 vaccines are new, they say almost a century of experience with other vaccines shows the benefits of the shots far outweigh any harms in both the short- and long term.
But for Melissa Pardee, it wasn’t exactly that evidence that got her on the vaccine train. She was concerned because she’s pretty sure she’s already had COVID-19.
“I was presumed positive in March of last year, and I suffered from long-term health symptoms ever since then,” she said.
Pardee said she’s a COVID-19 long-hauler – a person whose symptoms stick around long after her body has beaten the virus. She was still having trouble breathing, and she worried if she got sick again, she’d be in even worse shape than before.
And then, in Michigan’s recent surge in cases, the virus kept creeping closer to home.
“I knew of, like, ten of my friends that contracted COVID, and someone I knew that was on a ventilator that passed,” said Pardee.
That got her thinking that maybe the vaccine was a good idea. Still, she said, her decision to check it out was a “spur-of-the-moment” choice.
Pardee, who lives in Kalkaska County, said she picked up the phone and gave her local health department a call. A staffer answered.
“She was like, ‘Well, I can get you in in about 30 minutes,’” Pardee said. “I sat there for a minute because I knew -- I knew if I didn’t take the appointment and I made it for a later date out, 90% I would have probably not either showed up or cancelled it.”
But the compressed time frame made Pardee’s decision easy. She went to the clinic and got her first shot.
Dr. Jennifer Morse, the medical director at Pardee’s local health department, said Pardee is exactly the kind of person her staff are trying to reach for vaccines now: people who are on the fence, but will respond positively to convenience.
Morse said health departments can no longer just set up huge clinics and expect people to show up.
“The day of the mass vaccination clinic is dying,” she said.
Now, Morse said, her staff is focused on setting up mobile clinics in places people already are.
“They’re really trying to get out into the community,” she said. “They did the trout festival at Kalkaska and … the mushroom festival [in Mesick].”
Morse said health department staff are also working with employers and schools to get vaccines to people as they just go about their daily lives.
Abram Wagner, who researches vaccine hesitancy at the University of Michigan, said convenience is just one of the keys for reaching people who are on the fence about the shots. Another is personal connection.
Wagner said statistics are good evidence for researchers, but most people need to see folks like themselves getting the shots.
“That’s going to be much more beneficial than us saying, ‘Oh, you know, another hundred million Americans got vaccinated, and they’re OK,’” Wagner said.
For Melissa Pardee, it’s not easy being the rare person in her community who’s vaccinated.
“I have a lot of family and friends that aren’t for it, and so I kind of get a lot of backlash for it,” she said.
She gets similar responses at work, where she’s the manager of a restaurant in Northwest Michigan.
“Some of my anti-vaccine customers know that I’ve gotten it, and of course I get grief for it,” Pardee said.
“They just make fun of me: ‘Oh, you’re one of those guinea pigs,’” she said. “They call me a liberal. Um, no, I’m actually very much Republican.”
In the end, though, it’s never felt threatening or divisive, Pardee said. “They still respect my choice as much as I respect theirs.”
In spite of the ribbing from her customers, she said, her own vaccination encouraged her sister to get a shot, too.
“People can change their minds,” Pardee said. “It’s not set in stone.”
And those long-term symptoms of COVID-19? Pardee said they almost completely disappeared after her first dose.
“For the very first time in over a year, my shortness of breath went away. Like, I actually felt like I wasn’t breathing through a straw anymore,” she said.
Pardee said she did have some pretty bad side effects right after her vaccine doses. But now that she's fully vaccinated, she said the process wasn't nearly as bad as some people made it out to be.
