Why don’t BIPOC in Dallas trust the Covid vax?

After a long history of medical abuse and misuse, it is no wonder BIPOC in Dallas are wary of the Covid vaccine.

However, with Blacks and Latino communities suffering from the Covid more than other populations, what are their options?

The Dallas medical experts want to change minds and get the support and safety to all residents.

Here is more info on the current situation and some historical context:

Fort Worth resident Kwame Osei Jr. isn’t in a rush to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

Historically, Black people have been used as guinea pigs for medical procedures, a big scar that his people have to this day, said Osei, a 37-year-old Black man. 

“There’s a track record of distrust in this country that comes from the medical standpoint of things,” he said.

Only 42% of Black Americans said they would get the vaccine, according to a Pew Research Center Survey. This is despite Black Americans being 1.4 times as likely as non-Hispanic whites to contract the disease and 2.8 times as likely to die of it.

In Texas, an Episcopal Health Foundation’s statewide survey completed in December found that 31% of Black residents would be very likely to want the vaccine.

The distrust isn’t only of the COVID-19 vaccine. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation study, 47% of Black Americans say they have a general distrust in vaccines.

But with emergency authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and backing from health experts across the country, the vaccine has been deemed to be safe and effective. 

Pfizer says its COVID-19 vaccine was 95% effective in clinical trials with 44,863 participants, with over 4,400 being Black Americans. 

Tarrant County Commissioner Roy Brooks, a Black man, said he will be the first in line once the vaccine becomes available to the public, and he believes other Black people will do the same. He dismissed the notion that most Black people wouldn’t want to take the vaccine. 

“Black people don’t want to die of COVID-19 anymore than any other people do,” Brooks said.

While the vaccine was made available nearly a year after the coronavirus outbreak, it went through the same rigorous trials that vaccines usually go through. The reason it came out so fast is because Pfizer and Moderna only focused on the development of a COVID-19 vaccine, explained Vinny Taneja, the county’s public health director. 

Taneja and the county will soon start a campaign on vaccine information. The goal is to make sure everyone has the most up-to-date information regarding the vaccine and its effectiveness. 

Health experts have said some mild to moderate side effects are common, such as fatigue, swelling, pain, redness at the injection site, and sometimes a fever that resolves within about 24 hours. There have been a few cases of severe allergic reactions.

From now until the vaccine is largely available, community leaders and elected officials will aim to provide the most accurate information about the vaccine to vulnerable communities.

Jamboor Vishwanatha, a professor at the UNT Health Science Center, said he is leading a group of experts and community leaders to reach out to minority communities. 

Leah King, president and CEO of United Way of Tarrant County, said her organization has started to reach out to community leaders to get a sense of what neighborhoods it needs to target and what other organizations it can bring in to help.

After this phase, King said the community can expect limited in-person events, webinars, virtual town halls and social media campaigns that will have information on the vaccine. 

The goal is for people to have conversations about the vaccine with medical professionals and those within their community, King said. 

But she doesn’t want this outreach to end once COVID-19 is over. If the medical industry truly wants to gain the trust of Black Americans, outreach and conversations about health care need to continue beyond this pandemic, King said.

Osei said to start mending the broken relationship, the medical field needs to acknowledge mistakes made in the past and work toward a better future. 

A COMPLICATED HISTORY

Mia Kirby, a professor of social work and African-American Studies at UT Arlington, said Black people have faced systemic racism in the health care system.

She recalls the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, which allowed hundreds of African-American men with syphilis to go untreated so that scientists could study the effects of the disease. This experiment left a long-lasting distrust between Black Americans and the health care system, she said. 

This 40 year-experiment followed 600 rural black men in Alabama with syphilis over the course of their lives. Doctors refused to tell patients their diagnosis, refused to treat them for the debilitating disease and actively denied some of them treatment.

James Marion Sims, dubbed the “Father of Modern Gynecology,” performed experiments on enslaved Black women without anesthesia. These are just two examples of the experimentation on Black people.

Kirby said the fear isn’t also only historical. Even today, research shows that Black mothers in the U.S. are three to four times more likely to die of pregnancy-related complications, she said. 

This shows that there is a lack of concern for Black people’s health. In inner cities, hospitals tend to not be top of the line and Black people are easily dismissed, she said.

“If you have a history of constantly feeling ignored or mistreated then it should be no surprise that we’re not comfortable,” Kirby said. 

And not having many Black doctors and nurses that understand the community also creates a disconnect, she said.

Kirby believes Black Americans trust themselves to not get COVID-19 rather than trusting the vaccine. What the vaccine has done so far is highlight the distrust of the Black community in the health care system, she said. 

Tarrant County Commissioner Devan Allen said when factoring the historical mistreatment and how Black Americans have been affected by the pandemic, it’s no wonder why there is a hesitance to take the vaccine. 

Allen, a Black woman, says she will respect the decision of any Black American who does not want to take the vaccine because of the past treatment of Black people. She encourages those to do their research on the vaccine before taking it, just as with anything else. 

While the vaccine is expected to roll out to the general public sometime in the spring, Osei will use that time to do his own research.

“I’m going to wait and see how this affects everybody else before I volunteer myself to do it,” he said.

(Read more here: https://www.star-telegram.com/news/coronavirus/article247950730.html#storylink=cpy)