Vaccine hesitancy cost six of Belle Glade, Fla., mayor Steve Wilson’s in-laws their lives to COVID-19 in the past three weeks, including a grandmother who was a longtime fixture of their community.
“I was in their ears almost every day,” his wife, Lisa Wilson said Tuesday, according to the Palm Beach Post. She was reeling from the tragedy that has forever changed her family. “I’m beating myself up. Should I have pushed harder?”
Even before her grandmother, Lille Mae Dukes Moreland, and other relatives came down with the virus, Lisa – a longtime aide to Palm Beach County Commissioner Melissa McKinlay – had been going out in Belle Glade door-to-door for months advocating for the vaccine. She also persuaded local pastors to preach about getting shots. Her husband was one of the first in the community to roll up his sleeve.
Even as the couple worked to protect their community from the pandemic, some of those closest to them were afraid to get COVID-19 vaccines. This fear may have cost them their lives.
First, Lisa’s 48-year-old uncle, Tyrone Moreland, died. Then, just a day after the family gathered for his funeral, 89-year-old Lillie Mae Dukes Moreland was hospitalized. She died 24 hours later.
“In my grandmother’s case, I think some of her children advised her not to do it,” Lisa said. “They said she was too old, that it wasn’t safe, that she never left the house, anyway.”
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Next, Lisa's 48-year-old cousin Shatara Dukes and 53-year-old cousin Lisa Wiggins passed, as well as her 44-year-old cousin Trentarian Moreland, who spent years as an assistant football coach at various Palm Beach County high schools.
Dukes Moreland had nine grandchildren and raised Lisa. Before the matriarch caught COVID-19, her 93-year-old brother did get the vaccine. He was hospitalized soon after and recovered. Although Lisa suspects her great-uncle already had COVID-19 by the time her was vaccinated, she believes her grandmother took it as a bad omen.
“I think that secured it,” Lisa said. “That was a big, big part that was weighing on her.”
Lisa thinks Shatara Dukes caught the virus at a food pantry where both worked. While she isn’t sure about the others, family members who had recently visited her grandmother were tested and had negative results.
Her grandmother, however, was known for inviting neighbors onto her porch and into her house to chat, said Lisa.
“We just don’t know,” she added.
Her other family members were most likely influenced by “false reports on social media or from people who convinced them that the vaccine was developed too quickly and it wasn’t safe,” said the Palm Beach Post.
“I think a lot of them were afraid to take it,” Lisa said. As the highly contagious Delta variant of the vaccine spread, she grew more concerned about their hesitancy.
The last time she talked to her uncle during a Facetime chat from his hospital bed, he told her he wished he’d got his shot.
“Tell all of our family to get vaccinated. It’s horrible. It hurts,” he said, according to Lisa.
She couldn’t even bare to Facetime with her grandmother while she was in the hospital.
“I didn’t want to see her with tubes running everywhere and watch her struggling to breathe,” Wilson said. “Other grandkids did it and they regretted it.”
Commissioner McKinley has mentioned the story of Lisa Wilson’s family to urge others in the Belle Glade area to get vaccinated. She said while people are unwilling to get vaccinated, they are willing to get man-made monoclonal antibody therapy. This treatment which is approved for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration.
“People are opposed to getting the vaccine but are OK with getting monoclonal therapy,” McKinlay said. “It flusters me to think that somebody is opposed to getting the vaccine but is okay getting the treatment that has the same approval status as the vaccine.”
While vaccines are free, monoclonal antibody treatments can be costly.
As as she mourns her family, Lisa hopes more people will decide to get vaccinated.
“She was a really strong person,” she said of her grandmother, who would have turned 90 in March. “She’d never been sick a day in her life. She was always able to push on.”
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