Why this Alabama sheriff changed his tune about getting vaccinated against COVID-19

A county sheriff in Alabama thought he was strong enough to fight COVID-19 without a vaccine.

But then he caught the virus and suffered for three weeks. It took him six months to get his sense of taste and smell back. And to this day, Macon County Sheriff Andre Brunson uses an asthma inhaler and nebulizer for when he can't breathe.

His town is infamous for being the site of the Tuskegee, Ala., syphilis experiments, in which poor Black residents were monitored to see how the disease progressed — and purposely not given treatment, even when antibiotics were widely available.

Now, Brunson is trying to reassure people that this time, they should trust public health officials and get their shots.

"I do a TV and radio show ... so every Thursday night I'm giving the numbers and letting [people] know that it's best to get vaccinated," Brunson said. "COVID is not a joke, you know. It's real."

In January 2021, Alabama made COVID-19 vaccines available to about 676,000 essential workers and people over the age of 75. But, according to the Guardian, about 55 per cent of those eligible didn't get a shot, including Brunson.

This week, Alabama Public Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported 47 per cent of eligible people in Macon County, which now includes everyone over the age of 12, have been fully vaccinated. Brunson took his family doctor's advice and got his shot in August.

Brunson, who is also a strength and conditioning coach at Tuskegee University, spoke with As It Happens host Carol Off about what changed his mind. Here is part of that conversation.

When you tell people that COVID is no joke, [that] it's the real thing, you say that from experience, don't you?

Oh yes, I do.

I thought, you know, at first that I wouldn't get COVID. I'm a big, strong, healthy guy.

But I ended up getting COVID in January and boy ... it was like a bus that had just knocked me off my feet.

How sick did you get?

It first started like I had the flu, and then the second day it got better. But the third day was just totally different. 

[It] hit, and my whole body was sore. And the main thing was just not being able to breathe, not being able to catch my breath.

What do you tell people when you're talking to them on your radio and television?

I always tell people that if that happened to me, it could happen to anybody.... They saw it happen to me and it concerned a lot of people. 

After that, a lot of people went to get their COVID shot.

Whenever we've spoken with Black Americans about getting vaccinated, they always say that what gives them pause is what happened in Tuskegee. And they're not in Tuskegee. You are. So you know the legacy of those experiments. Can you tell us a bit about why people who remember what happened in Tuskegee are so hesitant to get vaccinated?

A lot of those people and their families are still here and still alive and they know the effect that the Tuskegee experiment had on people here in Lincoln County. 

What they [the U.S. Public Health Service] did was they had a control group when they gave them syphilis ... [and] another [group] that they gave the antidote to. So the people who didn't get the antidote suffered throughout those years.

It made it very hard for some families here in Tuskegee, and they are not going to forget that.... So people really, really didn't trust the government.

It has been very hard on the people here in Tuskegee with the COVID. We had a lot of deaths. We had a lot of people with COVID here. 

People really didn't trust what was going on, but people started to see that vaccination did people a lot of good.

We are trying to promote, you know, people getting the vaccination here because it's really going to help in the long run.

The numbers are not great for Alabama, are they? I mean, you've got just over 55 per cent of those eligible to get vaccinated [who] have actually got [at least one dose, according to the Washington Post tracker, which uses CDC data]. And so it's a very low rate, but a very high death rate. You got one of the highest death rates from COVID in the United States. Last month, [it] was 100 deaths a day. More deaths from COVID than births in your state.... Do you know people who have become sick like you? Have lost loved ones?

I've had people ... in the law enforcement field that I'm in, that we've lost. We called it a COVID hit.

I mean, it's just all around us. Everybody has had somebody that died — a friend, a loved one, a family member. 

I thought I was going to die with all this. And I definitely said if I was able to make it out ... [I would] let people know that COVID is real, COVID can kill you and COVID will kill you if you don't take the proper precautions.

Has it made a difference? Are you getting more people ... out to get vaccinated since you got that message out?

Yeah, people are going to get vaccinated. 

Not only me, but everybody, all the leaders here in Macon County are doing the same thing. Here at Tuskegee University, one of the big things is we have not even had any fans come into football games. We don't even have fans coming in to [watch] a football game. And that's very rare. 

We are committed to doing things to make sure our students and the people here in Macon County are safe.

And have you been able to get out and play football again or to run and do all the things you were doing before?

Actually, I'm just grateful to Tuskegee University. 

I have good days [and] I have some bad days. I lost 25 pounds and I'm still having breathing problems. 

It's been tough. It's all been very difficult. Hopefully that'll go away. Hopefully that won't last long.

Written by Mehek Mazhar. Interview produced by Chris Harbord. Q&A edited for length and clarity.