‘You’re booing yourselves!’ Jill Biden jeered by Tennessee crowd after telling them to get vaccinated

‘Well, you know this state has a little bit of a way to go. Only three in 10 Tennesseans are vaccinated,’ First Lady told crowd in Nashville

Dr Jill Biden was booed in Tennessee after she told a rally the state needed to improve its rate of vaccination against Covid-19.

“Well, you know this state has a little bit of a way to go. Only three in 10 Tennesseans are vaccinated,” the first lady said, while on a tour to promote vaccine uptake in areas with low rates of inoculation against Covid-19.

Responding, she told the Nashville crowd, “Well, you’re booing yourselves!”

Guests on the Tennessee leg of the tour have included country star Brad Paisley and local political figures, such as the Mayor of Nashville John Cooper and his brother Democratic Representative Jim Cooper.

Tennessee is currently experiencing a vaccination uptake dip of 75 per cent from April, as weekly only 50,000 people are getting their first dose.

Tennessee governor Bill Lee has done little to increase vaccination numbers. He has gone on record stating vaccination is a personal choice, and not a public health measure, opting not join in the trend of vaccine lotteries.

“We have seen as our primary objective to make the vaccine available to everyone in every corner of this state, and that’s the part that we believe is the state’s obligation,” he said according to The Tennessean.

Lotteries sprang up in some states with low rates of vaccination, and provided residents with opportunities to win large prizes. The price of entry was merely getting at least one or more doses of a Covid-19 vaccination.

The fad was started by Ohio’s governor Mike DeWine, who offered a month of weekly draws of $1 million, and the tactic spread to other states such as West Virginia, Washington and Maryland, which offered similar but not identical schemes.

The problems in Tennessee mirror the problems across the region, as according the CDC, southern states have much lower rates of vaccine uptake. For example, the CDC stated that only 32 per cent of Mississippi residents and 29 per cent of Alabama residents are fully vaccinated.

Reasons contributing to low vaccine uptake range from misinformation about the vaccine, religious beliefs and practical barricades to getting to vaccination sites, including a lack of public transportation and people not being able to fit getting the vaccine into their busy working day.

Medical professionals have concluded that tackling vaccine hesitancy will need hard work, creativity and out of the box thinking. They agree it is essential because it will prevent the spread of Covid-19.

“Everyone’s goal, I hope, is that all of us are safe as possible,” Dr. Zanthia Wiley of Atlanta’s Emory University Hospital told Stateline. “So, if it takes extra work, more one-on-one conversations, boots-on-the-ground work to get the word out about COVID vaccinations, then that’s what we have to do – one person at a time.”

Dr Biden’s husband, President Joe Biden, has set himself the task to get 70 per cent of the American population vaccinated on 4 July. He has admitted this will not be possible, despite making it a key pledge of his early days in the White House.