A COVID Vaccine from Dark Past Clouds for African Americans

In this file photo, Doris Norman is inoculated with the Modern Covid-19 vaccine by nurse practitioner Suzanne Wallace at Central Falls High School in Central Falls, Rhode Island, on February 13, 2021. Gary Jackson does not want the Covid vaccine to Even though the virus kills blacks at a much higher rate, a deep problem that experts say the United States must face in order to control its disastrous outbreak. By some measures, African Americans have died from the coronavirus in the highest proportion of any group in the United States, but they are by far the most skeptical that Covid vaccines are safe and effective in trials. Photo by Joseph Prezioso / AFP

WASHINGTON – Gary Jackson does not want the Covid vaccine even though the virus kills blacks at a much higher rate, an overwhelming problem that experts say the United States must face in order to control its disastrous outbreak.

By some measures, African Americans have died from coronavirus at the highest rate of any group in the country. However, they are also the most skeptical of the new vaccines, which have been shown to be safe and effective in trials.

It is a dangerous situation rooted in racism and a lack of trust, but one that is key to curbing the emergence of worrying new tensions and saving lives from the world’s largest outbreak.

“I’m just not sure (getting vaccinated) is the best thing for me,” said Jackson, 39, as he repaired a car window in the capital, Washington.

“I feel like we are always the last or we are the guinea pigs, the ones who get tested,” he added.

The fact that people trust the medical establishment and its treatments greatly influences their decision to get vaccinated, but racism in the United States contaminates both areas.

Fear of vaccines

One notable example is the Tuskegee study, in which US government scientists monitored black men with syphilis for 40 years beginning in 1932, but gave them no treatment to observe how the infection ran its course.

Tuskegee, however, was not an isolated incident.

“Dangerous, unintentional, and non-therapeutic experimentation on African Americans has been widely practiced and documented since at least the 18th century,” according to Harriet A. Washington’s 2006 book “Medical Apartheid.”

The Nation of Islam, which the Southern Poverty Law Center considers a hate group, has used this bleak past to urge African Americans to boycott the Covid-19 shooting.

“Don’t let them vaccinate you with their history of treason through vaccinations,” says a Nation of Islam website that includes a Tuskegee studio photo of a black man with a syringe stuck in his arm.

Figures released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in February indicated that 46.5 percent of blacks do not intend to receive the Covid vaccine, compared with 32.4 percent of Hispanics and 30.3 percent of whites.

However, it is significant that all three groups have shown a steady increase in willingness to be vaccinated during the course of the pandemic.

“It’s just fear. The fear of vaccines, of being guinea pigs, things like that. That’s what blacks are concerned about, ”said John Jones III, a community organizer in Los Angeles.

“And then they tell me to take this ‘drug’ that came out of nowhere? It’s a battle, right there, “added the 40-year-old, and said he had not decided whether to get vaccinated.

There is another well-documented problem: Experts say that when black people seek medical attention, their symptoms are less likely to be created or to receive appropriate treatment.

For example, black women are less likely to have a specialist see their mammograms for breast cancer than a general radiologist, according to a 2012 study from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Allow the virus to mutate

Since the United States detected its first cases of coronavirus just over a year ago, the disease has taken a particularly heavy toll among African Americans.

The Covid Tracking Project says 161 per 100,000 black people have died, the highest proportion of any group in a nation with 485,000 reported deaths, more than double that of the next most affected country, Brazil.

The first month of the vaccine’s launch in the United States also showed sharp racial divisions, with more than 60 percent of vaccinations targeting whites, followed by Hispanics with 11.5 percent and blacks with 5.4 percent, according to the CDC.

As questions mount about how the injections are distributed, public and private groups have pushed for efforts to promote the vaccine to African Americans and make sure they get their share of the doses.

Failure to do so carries significant risks, experts warn.

“If you are not vaccinating the people who live in the places where there is the greatest burden of disease, then you are just allowing the disease to continue to spread and also continue to mutate,” said Darrell Gaskin, professor of health policy at Johns Hopkins University.

New types of the virus have been shown to make current vaccines less potent and cause reinfections in people who previously had the classic Covid strain.

Greg Ashby has heard the arguments against the vaccine, but politely disagrees. He showed up to get his vaccine this week in Houston.

“But for me, I know this is what we really have to do to help turn things around, and I’m here to do it,” he told AFP.

The Inquirer Foundation supports our healthcare leaders and still accepts cash donations to be deposited into the Banco de Oro (BDO) checking account # 007960018860 or donate through PayMaya using this Link .

Read next

Don’t miss out on the latest news and information.