SAN JOSE, Calif. – On an exceptionally hot February day, two men who worked with a local community group went door to door in a neighborhood with ethnic diversity to persuade people to apply for Covid-19 vaccines.
It was just after 11 am when they found the first person reluctant to shoot. Two doors down and 30 minutes later, it happened again. For almost an hour, they stood on a front lawn with George Rodriguez, 67, talking about the neighborhood, the pandemic and the vaccines available.
“I see it all online, about how it is going to change my DNA. It does something to your DNA, right? Asked Mr. Rodriguez, who is Hispanic. “There is a lot out there, a lot of conflicting information. And then I heard that even if you get the vaccine, you can still get sick. Why would I do it, then? “
Black and Hispanic communities, which have been hardest hit by the pandemic and whose vaccination rates are below those of whites, are facing vaccine conspiracy theories, rumors and misleading reports on social media like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter and privately online messages, health officials and disinformation researchers said.
Disinformation varies, such as claims that vaccines can alter DNA – which is not true – and that vaccines do not work, or that people of color are being used as guinea pigs. Much of this incorrect information comes from friends, family and celebrities, bubbling up in communities that have been hit particularly hard by the pandemic and that face other obstacles to getting vaccinated.
Foreign media and anti-vaccine activists have also been aggressively trying to cast doubt on the safety and efficacy of vaccines made in the United States and Europe.
Misinformation has complicated efforts by some states to reach black and Hispanic residents, especially when health officials have provided special registration codes for vaccine consultations. Instead of a benefit, in some cases codes have become the basis for new false narratives.
“What may seem, on the surface, like doctors prioritizing communities of color is being read by some people online like ‘Oh, these doctors want us to be guinea pigs’,” said Kolina Koltai, a researcher at the University of Washington who studies conspiracy theories. online. “I saw people on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Clubhouse – you name it – saying the codes are a way to force the vaccine into communities of color as an experiment.”
Research conducted by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation in mid-February showed an impressive disparity between racial groups that received the vaccine in 34 states that reported the data.
The state’s numbers vary widely. In Texas, where people who identify themselves as Hispanic represent 42% of the population, only 20% of vaccines went to that group. In Mississippi, where blacks make up 38% of the population, they received 22% of the vaccines. According to an analysis by The New York Times, the vaccination rate for black Americans is half that of whites, and the difference for Hispanics is even greater.
Although the researchers say that the lack of easy access to vaccination sites may be the main factor for this deficiency, misinformation is playing an important role.
The belief that doctors are interested in experimenting in certain communities has deep roots in some groups, said Koltai. Anti-vaccine activists relied on historical examples, including Nazi doctors who carried out experiments in concentration camps and the Baltimore hospital where, 70 years ago, cancer cells were collected from Henrietta Lacks, a black mother of five, without her consent.
“What happens with disinformation is that it works best when it is built around a real core. In this case, many communities of color do not trust the medical establishment because they do not have the best record with it, ”said Shireen Mitchell, founder of Stop Online Violence Against Women, a group that supports women of color who are harassed online.
An experiment started in 1932 with nearly 400 black men in Tuskegee, Alabama, is one of the most researched examples of medical maltreatment of the black community. Over four decades, scientists have observed men, who knew they were infected with syphilis, but offered no treatments so they could study the progression of the disease. When the experiment surfaced in the 1970s, it was condemned by the medical community as one of the main violations of ethical standards.
Researchers studying disinformation followed up on mentions of Tuskegee on social media last year. Although Tuskegee received an average of several hundred mentions per week on Facebook and Twitter, there were several noticeable spikes that coincided with the introduction of the Covid-19 vaccines, according to Zignal Labs, a media insights company.
In the final week of November, when pharmaceutical companies Moderna and Pfizer announced promising results in their final studies on the safety of their Covid-19 vaccines, mentions of Tuskegee rose to 7,000 a week.
There was another lull until mid-December, when the Food and Drug Administration announced it had given emergency approval for the vaccines. Mention of Tuskegee rose to nearly 5,000 that week, according to Zignal, with some of the more viral tweets calling the coronavirus vaccines “the New Tuskegee study.”
Doctors say they are also battling vaccine hesitation in other demographic groups. Last month, a survey by the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 23 percent of Republicans said they “definitely” would not be vaccinated, while 21 percent said they “probably” would not receive a coronavirus vaccine.
Native American groups have struggled with fear of vaccines in their communities, and doctors reported that some of their Chinese-American patients have brought Chinese-language media articles questioning vaccines made in the United States.
Many blacks and Hispanics were already struggling to make appointments and get to the vaccination sites that are usually located in whiter and wealthier neighborhoods. And officials in some cities say that people in these neighborhoods have also flooded vaccination marking systems and taken supplies for the poorest black and Hispanic residents.
Disinformation about who is allowed to receive the vaccine, when it is available and how it has been tested for safety added further difficulty, said Mitchell.
At a mass vaccination site at the Oakland Coliseum on a recent Friday afternoon, before 68-year-old Anthony Jones agreed to receive his injection last month, there was just one last thing he wanted to search on Facebook. He pulled out the phone and started to knock, waving to his grandson, who had taken him to the appointment.
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“I read something about a woman who died of this thing and I want to know if she was black,” said Jones, who after several minutes of scrolling was unable to find the Facebook post he was looking for. “You see a lot on the internet that makes you think, as a black man, you shouldn’t get this vaccine.”
Mr. Jones ended up giving up. When he was entering the photo, he recalled that the article he saw was on WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, and a website he did not recognize.
“My grandson tells me not to believe everything I read on the Internet,” he said. “I like to believe in my grandson.”
The next day, Daniel Lander, 38, was combing a neighborhood in San Jose with Armando Mateos, 28. For the past five months, Mr. Lander has gone door to door on a program run by Working Partnerships USA, a community based organization in Silicon Valley. The group is working with local county officials to help dispel misinformation about the pandemic and vaccines.
“We heard people say that they saw this or that celebrity sharing something on Twitter or Instagram that made them think that the vaccine was a bad idea. People value the opinions of the people they admire, and these celebrities have a lot of influence, ”said Lander.
While talking to Rodriguez, a muscular and enthusiastic talkative man, Lander and Mateos said they sympathized with their concerns. They said they had many of the same questions and explained their decision to get the vaccines themselves. Mr. Rodriguez asked where they got their injections and how they felt.
Mr. Mateos reflexively touched his left arm, where he had received the vaccine in recent weeks. It hurt, he said, and he wasn’t going to sweeten it. But he was convinced that it was safe and that it would prevent him and his loved ones from getting sick.
“They read it all online, from different news sources, which is confusing. But then they know me, as someone who has had the chance, and I can give them some real answers, ”said Mateos. He added that many people cited articles in the Spanish versions of Russian media networks supported by the state, Sputnik and Russia Today. “They are down with American vaccines. People read these stories and don’t want to be filmed. “
When the two men were leaving, Mr. Rodriguez shouted that he was going to have the injection that week. They made sure he had the phone number and the websites he needed to register and kept going down the street.
“I think I will pick him up at the end of this week,” said Rodriguez. “I don’t make any promises, but I think they convinced me.”