What It’s Like When Ozempic Takes Over an Entire Town

When Marie Ellis first heard about Ozempic a couple of years ago, she didn’t think it sounded right for her. She was in her mid-40s, weighed 265 pounds and had a family history of liver disease, but she thought weight-loss shots were just for movie stars or people misbehaving on reality shows. “I was like, ‘Is this for real?’” she says, sitting in the office of her tax preparation firm in Bowling Green, Kentucky. “Or is this for people in Hollywood?”

But after trying every faddish diet plan in the book, Ellis figured she had nothing to lose when, about ...