The country music star Dolly Parton has yet another new gig: Singing the praises of coronavirus shots and getting vaccinated on camera.
Last year, Ms. Parton donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, which worked with the drugmaker Moderna to develop one of the first coronavirus vaccines to be authorized in the United States. The federal government eventually invested $1 billion in the creation and testing of the vaccine, but the leader of the research effort, Dr. Mark Denison, said that the singer’s donation funded its critical early stages.
On Tuesday, Ms. Parton, 75, received a Moderna shot at Vanderbilt Health in Tennessee. “Dolly gets a dose of her own medicine,” she wrote on Twitter.
“Well, hey, it’s me,” she said to her fans in an accompanying video, a minute before a doctor arrives to inoculate her. “I’m finally gonna get my vaccine.”
“I’m so excited,” she added in the video, which racked up more than a million views within about four hours. “I’ve been waiting a while. I’m old enough to get it, and I’m smart enough to get it.”
She also broke into song (naturally), replacing the word “Jolene” in one of her best-known choruses with “vaccine.”
“Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine,” she sang, embellishing the last one with her trademark Tennessee lilt. “I’m begging of you please don’t hesitate.”
“Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine,” she added, “because once you’re dead, then that’s a bit too late.”
(Excerpt) Read more in: The New York Times