John Alarid, the pastor of Freedom City Church in Springfield, Missouri, and his wife, Hannah-Rose, said they were wary of the coronavirus vaccine because it had not undergone “long-term studies.” But the couple got the first shot of the Pfizer vaccine last week, driven in large part by the recent spike in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations in their city.

In a video on Facebook, both admitted to a squeamishness with needles — the tattooed Alarid noting the irony as a former heroin user — but said “the risk is worth it considering Covid is taking out a lot of lives.”

“It’s either the unknown possibilities or the present reality,” Alarid said over the phone Wednesday. “People are dying. Most of the people in the hospital are unvaccinated, and so we decided that we needed to be an example in our community.”