In Georgia, anti-vaccination supporters have gone from making 'snide' remarks to shutting down

In Georgia, anti-vaccination supporters have gone from making ‘snide’ remarks to shutting down inoculation drives


ROME, Ga. — Dr. John Cowan cut a lonely figure at a recent Republican rally in northwest Georgia.

Not only because a few months earlier he had lost a GOP primary to Marjorie Taylor Greene, the congresswoman serving as the event’s headliner, but because he was offering conservative activists coronavirus vaccines. And there were no takers in the crowd of hundreds.

As Cowan roamed the open-air pavilion trying to drum up interest, Greene and other Republicans on stage railed against mask mandates and vaccine requirements. The Floyd Medical Center staffers working the mobile clinic outside the rally, he said, were targeted with “snide” remarks from attendees. Not a single shot was administered.

The hostility toward the vaccination effort was no isolated incident. Dr. Kathleen Toomey, the state’s top health official, said for the first time this week that Georgians aligned with the anti-vaccination movement disrupted several recent inoculation drives — and forced one to shut down entirely.

Read more: https://www.pennlive.com/nation-world/2021/09/in-georgia-anti-vaccination-supporters-have-gone-from-making-snide-remarks-to-shutting-down-inoculation-drives.html