No one would argue if Dolly Parton got the COVID-19 vaccine. The country music hitmaker donated one million dollars to the COVID-19 Research Fund last year, which ultimately helped pave the way for the vaccine. Still, Parton says she isn’t in any hurry to get vaccinated against the virus.
“I’m not going to get mine until some more people get theirs,” Parton maintains (via WKRN). “I don’t want it to look like I’m jumping the line just because I donated money. I’m very funny about that. I’m going to get mine though, but I’m going to wait. I’m at the age where I could have gotten mine legally last week. I turned 75. I was going to do it on my birthday, and I thought, ‘Nah, don’t do that.’ You’ll look like you’re just doing a show.
“None of my work is really like that,” she continues. “I wasn’t doing it for a show. I’m going to get mine. I want it. I’m going to get it. When I get it, I’ll probably do it on camera so people will know and I’ll tell them the truth, if I have symptoms and all that. Hopefully it’ll encourage people. I’m not going to jump the line just because I could.”
Parton’s generous gift, appropriately, received much fanfare — publicity the Tennessee native would have been just as happy without.
“I follow my heart,” Parton says. “I’m a person of faith and I pray all the time that God will lead me into the right direction and let me know what to do. When the pandemic first hit, that was my first thought, ‘I need to do something to try to help find a vaccination.’ I just did some research with the people at Vanderbilt (University) — they’re wonderful people, they’ve been so good through the years to my people in times of illness and all that.
“I just asked if I could donate a million dollars to the research for a vaccine,” she adds. “I get a lot more credit than I deserve I think, but I was just happy to be a part of any and all of that.”
Parton also recently made news after she admitted that she turned down the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom, not once but twice.
“I got offered the Freedom Award from the Trump administration and I couldn’t accept it because my husband [Carl Dean] was ill,” Parton said on the Today Show. “Then they asked me again about it and I wouldn’t travel because of the COVID, so now I feel like if I take it I’ll be doing politics. So, I’m not sure. I don’t work for those awards. It would be nice, but I’m not sure that I even deserve it. But that’s a nice compliment for people to think that I might deserve it.”
