The real reason blacks don’t trust the COVID-19 vaccine

As a black man and nurse practitioner working at the US Department of Veterans Affairs Hospital in Long Beach, Walter Perez hears a lot of great value from his black patients.

Like the upcoming COVID-19 vaccine is an unsafe way, as Big Pharma is cutting corners to make more money. Or how would medical institutions use blacks as guinea pigs to test these vaccines? Or how does the vaccine prove to be actually more harmful than getting COVID-19?

The list continues.

“The only way I can explain it is to have delusional disorder,” Perez said. “Many people are really delusional about it.”

In fact, according to the Pew Institute, only 32% of black adults across the United States say they will definitely or probably take the COVID-19 vaccine.another COVID collaborative research And the NAACP found that most blacks do not believe the vaccine is safe or effective and have no plans to obtain it.

To make matters worse, in California, less than 30% of blacks are probably or definitely vaccinated. This is the lowest percentage of any racial group. Survey by the California Institute of Public Policy, Latin Americans weren’t too late.

That we are here — blacks, alongside Latinos, are still disproportionately dead in COVID-19, and it is for blacks that Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca are trying to deploy life-saving vaccines. Not surprisingly.

Many of us grew up listening to stories about how black men suffer during the Tuskegee syphilis study as children, and as adults we fought over the gap to get proper care ourselves. I have lived the story of.

I never had in my life Black doctor. I am 43 years oldAs of last year, about 2.6% of doctors nationwide 7.3% of medical students this year were black. The number hasn’t changed since I was born, as education and household inequality continue. This is a problem given many studies that show that blacks tend to give better results when treated by trusted black doctors and nurses.

All of that is why millions of skeptical blacks are persuaded to be vaccinated. Important steps to achieve herd immunity of About 70% And putting a pandemic under control — it’s not as easy as many elected public health authorities want.

In the same way Killing of George Floyd Minneapolis has revealed that the country has never really dealt with the history of organized racism in police. The COVID-19 pandemic reveals an unresolved history of distrust and systematic racism in the national health system.

Perez and his fellow black nurses and doctors understand this better than most people. And they naturally want to calculate.

“Are there any distrusts in the black community’s vaccines and health care system? Yes, but that distrust is very well received,” said Dr. Tiffany Johnson, an emergency doctor in the pediatric ward at UC Davis Medical Center in Sakuramento. Told. “So I think we need to take a step back as doctors, researchers and healthcare systems.” Why don’t blacks trust us? “” What do we do to gain trust? ” Did you do that? “

:::

So far, most plans for the COVID-19 vaccine have focused on relatively simple access issues. This is understandable. These are desperate times.

The disease has already killed about 266,000 Americans. Coronavirus cases are increasing at a terrifying pace, About 1 in 145 As of last week, it was infected and transmitted in Los Angeles County. Thanksgiving plans have been overturned, and new closure orders and curfew have once again confused small business owners.

Therefore, hoping to end this pandemic sooner or later, California is preparing to move mass vaccination forward, starting with healthcare professionals and other first responders. In LA, public health authorities are working on ways to store and distribute doses that are available within a few weeks.

On Monday, Governor Gavin Newsom assured Californians that “a fair lens is part of our focus.” In other words, making the color community accessible to the vaccine is and should be a top priority. However, the problem is not as accessible as trust, which can be counterproductive.

Flojaune Cofer, Epidemiologist, Senior Director of State-wide Policy Non-profit public health advocate, Expressing it as “three hot takes”, the total is a scenario that cannot be won.

The county’s first choice is for everyone, ignoring the fact that black, Latino, and indigenous populations get a higher percentage of COVID-19 and die at a younger age than other populations. At the same time, deploying the vaccine. .. That would lead to criticism that “there is no fairness because we are only motivated to give it to everyone at the same time.”

The second option is to target blacks and deploy to the areas with the most cases. “But then,” Coffer said, “People would say: I’m not going to experiment with us like Tuskegee.”

The third option is to deploy it especially to whites living in neighborhoods that have not been hit hard by COVID-19. But then the black man would say, “So are you going to save yourself and leave the rest of us to protect for ourselves?”

And all three hot takes are “absolutely valid and correct,” Cofer added.

:::

So what is the solution?I have a lot of recommendations Black doctor Those who agree to scrutinize the federal regulator’s decision on the COVID-19 vaccine will help alleviate people’s fears. But in the meantime, so is honesty and humility.

“We have to come out and say:’Look, vaccines have helped human history, and we want to go where you find it easy to take vaccines. “I will,” said Coffer. “We recognize that some people are ready tomorrow, others aren’t ready for years, and that’s okay.”

Eric J. Williams, former president of National Black Nurse Asun. The interim vice dean of Santa Monica College said he hopes that black nurses and doctors will play a huge role in persuading other blacks to be vaccinated.

One of the reasons is that healthcare professionals are vaccinated first, so they set an example and lead. They will be real guinea pigs.

Another reason is that nurses are particularly accustomed to teaching. For example, Perez says he looks at the facts when patients face conspiracy theories and uses examples of the importance of vaccines, such as how many indigenous people would have been saved if smallpox vaccines were available. ..

“We teach every day when interacting with patients, their families, and the community,” Williams said.

But looking to the future, the real solution must be to rebuild public confidence in the national health system. More than 13 million Americans are infected with the deadly virus, and millions of other people (of all races) say it’s better to seize the opportunity than to get vaccinated. .. It does not matter. Black doctors and nurses can fix it alone and should not be asked.

“If we want patients to be vaccinated, we need to play a role in building trust in the community,” Johnson said. “I think every healthcare provider needs an action phrase to think about it.”