Yes, the Amish got COVID, and they were hit hard. Despite living in rural, relatively isolated communities, Amish and Mennonite populations experienced excess death rates that tracked closely with national trends throughout 2020 and continued rising into 2021. The idea that the Amish somehow escaped the pandemic or quietly achieved herd immunity without consequences doesn’t hold up against the data.
How Severely COVID Spread in Amish Communities
Researchers tracked deaths in Amish and Mennonite communities by coding every obituary published in The Budget, a widely read Amish/Mennonite newspaper, from 2015 through 2021. By comparing monthly death counts in 2020 against the five-year average, they found unmistakable spikes that mirrored each major COVID wave in the broader U.S. population.
Deaths rose 27% above normal in March 2020, then jumped to 52% above normal in April as the first wave peaked. After a brief dip in August (just 5% above normal), deaths surged again in the fall. October saw an 89% increase. November 2020 was the worst month, with deaths spiking 125% above the five-year baseline. That means more than twice as many Amish and Mennonite people died that month compared to what was typical.
The pattern didn’t stop in 2020. After vaccines became widely available in early 2021, Amish and Mennonite communities continued to see elevated death rates: 33% above normal in March 2021, 45% in April, 49% in July, and another sharp spike of 80% in November 2021. The widespread availability of vaccines had no discernible effect on death patterns in these communities, largely because so few members got vaccinated.
Why the Virus Spread So Quickly
Amish life is built around close, frequent gatherings. Church services are held in homes every other Sunday, with the entire local congregation packed into a single room. Weddings, funerals, and shared meals are central to community life. During a CDC-documented outbreak in an Ohio Amish community in May 2020, residents reported attending six social gatherings in just two weeks: a prechurch service, three Sunday church services, a wedding, and a funeral. Each one was an opportunity for the virus to jump between households.
Community members openly acknowledged the tension between public health guidance and their way of life. Mask wearing had never been part of Amish culture, and the concept of social distancing clashed with deeply held values around fellowship. As one community member told health officials, “Fellowship is as important to us as worship.” Others asked that the term be changed to “physical distancing,” because “social distancing has the connotations of social isolation,” which ran counter to everything their communities were built on.
Vaccine Uptake Was Extremely Low
Counties with significant Amish populations had roughly 1.6% lower COVID vaccination rates than comparable counties even after controlling for other demographic factors. That modest-sounding number reflects what researchers found at the county level, where non-Amish residents dilute the effect. Within Amish communities themselves, vaccine uptake was far lower.
Several overlapping factors drove this hesitancy. Amish culture is inwardly oriented, with a strong preference for health practices that have been validated within the community rather than imposed by outside institutions. There’s a deep-seated distrust of large governmental and industrial systems, and that suspicion extends to scientific medicine. The Amish tend to favor treatments confirmed as belonging to “our people’s” tradition over complex, institutionalized medical interventions.
The surrounding non-Amish populations in heavily Amish areas also tend to be politically conservative with lower rates of formal education, both characteristics independently associated with vaccine hesitancy. This created a reinforcing effect through social ties, where low vaccination norms in the broader community validated Amish reluctance.
The Herd Immunity Claim
A popular narrative emerged during the pandemic suggesting the Amish achieved natural herd immunity by simply living their lives, foregoing lockdowns and vaccines, and coming out fine on the other side. The death data tells a different story. Excess deaths in Amish and Mennonite communities remained elevated well into 2021, with an 80% spike in November of that year. If natural immunity had been achieved through widespread infection in 2020, those continued death spikes would not have occurred.
The continued interpersonal contact in these communities, combined with the near-total absence of masking, social distancing, and vaccination, likely kept COVID circulating at high levels long after many other populations had begun to see declining death rates. The Amish did not avoid the consequences of the pandemic. They absorbed them without the buffering effect of the mitigation strategies most Americans had access to.
Reaching Communities Without Internet or TV
One of the unique challenges of the pandemic for public health officials was communicating with Amish populations who don’t use television, internet, or smartphones. Most Amish families had no exposure to the public health messaging that saturated mainstream media in 2020.
Some outreach efforts adapted. The National Library of Medicine funded a program called “Addressing COVID-19 Concerns in Amish Country,” which developed culturally sensitive fact sheets and staffed a COVID hotline with a trained community member who could speak Pennsylvania Dutch. In Ohio, health departments partnered with local bishops to organize testing clinics at Amish schools. These efforts were small in scale but represented the kind of trusted, community-rooted communication that had any chance of reaching this population.
The core difficulty remained: Amish communities rely on word of mouth, community newspapers, and the guidance of church leaders. When misinformation traveled through those same channels, there was no competing source of correction. Health officials found that working through respected community figures, rather than around them, was the only effective approach.