Like many black and rural Americans, Denese Rankin, a 55-year-old retired accountant and receptionist in Castleberry, Alabama, did not want the Covid-19 vaccine.
Ms. Rankin was concerned about side effects – she had seen stories on social media about people who developed Bell’s palsy, for example, after they were vaccinated. She thought that vaccines came too quickly to be safe. And she feared that vaccines could be another example in the government’s long history of medical experimentation with blacks.
Then, on a recent weekend, his niece, an infectious disease specialist at Emory University in Atlanta, came to town. Dr. Zanthia Wiley said that one of her goals when making the trip was to talk to friends and family in Alabama, letting them hear the truth about vaccines from someone they knew, someone who is black.
Across the country, black and Hispanic doctors like Dr. Wiley are reaching out to Americans in minority communities who suspect Covid-19 vaccines and are often suspicious of employees who see them on television telling them to get vaccinated. Many despise public service announcements, say doctors, and the federal government.
Although acceptance of the vaccine is growing, blacks and Hispanic Americans – among the groups hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic – remain among the most reluctant to roll up their sleeves. Even health professionals in some hospitals refused the injections.
But the guarantees of black and Hispanic doctors can make a huge difference, experts say. “I don’t want us to benefit in the slightest,” said Wiley. “We must be the first in line to get it.”
Many doctors like her now find themselves not only encouraging friends and relatives to get the vaccine, but also posting messages on social media and conducting group video calls, asking people to share their concerns and offering reliable information.
“I think it makes a lot of difference,” said Dr. Valeria Daniela Lucio Cantos, specialist in infectious diseases at Emory. She has conducted city halls and online webinars on the subject of vaccination, including one with black and Hispanic staff from the university’s cleaning staff.
She believes they are listening, not only because she is Hispanic and speaks Spanish, she said, but also because she is an immigrant – her family is still in Ecuador. “Culturally, they have someone they can relate to,” said Cantos.
Many who hesitate to vaccinate are pillars of health in their own families. Mrs. Rankin, for example, helps care for Dr. Wiley’s grandmother, who is blind, and her grandfather, who cannot walk. Mrs. Rankin watches Dr. Wiley’s mother, whose health is fragile. And she is a single mother of three girls, including a 14-year-old who still lives with her home.
“If my aunt were infected, my family would be in a difficult situation,” said Wiley.
Dr. Wiley met with Mrs. Rankin, her daughter and mother in the living room of a brick farmhouse on a quiet street – socially remote and wearing masks. Dr. Wiley answered the questions and explained the science behind the vaccine.
No, she said, the vaccine is not made from live coronaviruses that can infect people. No, just because someone was vaccinated and got sick, it doesn’t mean that the vaccine made them sick.
And yes, the vaccine has been tested on tens of thousands of people and the data has been carefully examined by scientists with nothing to gain and everything to lose by applying it prematurely.
Vaccines for covid19>
Answers to your vaccine questions
With the distribution of a coronavirus vaccine starting in the United States, here are the answers to some questions you may be asking yourself:
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- If I live in the USA, when can I get the vaccine? Although the exact order of vaccine recipients may vary by state, most will likely put doctors and residents of long-term care facilities first. If you want to understand how this decision is being made, this article will help you.
- When can I return to normal life after being vaccinated? Life will only return to normal when society as a whole obtains sufficient protection against the coronavirus. Once countries authorize a vaccine, they will only be able to vaccinate a few percent of their citizens, at most, within the first two months. The unvaccinated majority will still remain vulnerable to infection. An increasing number of coronavirus vaccines are showing robust protection against disease. But it is also possible for people to spread the virus without even knowing they are infected, because they have only mild symptoms or none at all. Scientists still do not know whether vaccines also block coronavirus transmission. So for now, even vaccinated people will need to wear masks, avoid crowds indoors and so on. Once enough people are vaccinated, it will be very difficult for the coronavirus to find vulnerable people to infect. Depending on the speed with which we as a society achieve this goal, life may begin to approach something normal in the fall of 2021.
- If I have already been vaccinated, do I still need to wear a mask? Yes, but not forever. Here’s why. Coronavirus vaccines are injected deep into the muscles and stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies. This appears to be sufficient protection to prevent the vaccinated person from becoming ill. But what is unclear is whether the virus can flourish in the nose – and be sneezed or expired to infect others – even if antibodies elsewhere in the body have been mobilized to prevent the vaccinee from getting sick. The vaccine’s clinical trials were designed to determine whether vaccinated people are protected from disease – not to find out whether they can still spread the coronavirus. Based on studies of flu vaccines and even patients infected with Covid-19, the researchers have reason to hope that vaccinated people will not spread the virus, but more research is needed. In the meantime, everyone – even vaccinated people – will need to think of themselves as possible silent spreaders and continue to wear a mask. Read more here.
- It will hurt? What are the side effects? The Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine is given as an injection into the arm, like other typical vaccines. The injection in your arm will be no different than any other vaccine, but the rate of short-term side effects appears to be higher than that of a flu vaccine. Tens of thousands of people have already received the vaccines and none have reported serious health problems. Side effects, which may resemble Covid-19 symptoms, last for about a day and are more likely to appear after the second dose. Initial vaccine test reports suggest that some people may need to take a day off from work because they feel bad after receiving the second dose. In the Pfizer study, about half developed fatigue. Other side effects occurred in at least 25 to 33 percent of patients, sometimes more, including headaches, chills and muscle pain. While these experiences are not pleasant, they are a good sign that your own immune system is building a potent response to the vaccine that will provide lasting immunity.
- Will mRNA vaccines change my genes? No. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines use a genetic molecule to prepare the immune system. This molecule, known as mRNA, is eventually destroyed by the body. The mRNA is packaged in an oily bubble that can fuse with a cell, allowing the molecule to slide inward. The cell uses mRNA to make proteins from the coronavirus, which can stimulate the immune system. At any given time, each of our cells can contain hundreds of thousands of mRNA molecules, which they produce to make their own proteins. As soon as these proteins are produced, our cells fragment the mRNA with special enzymes. The mRNA molecules that our cells make can survive just a matter of minutes. The mRNA in vaccines is designed to resist the cell’s enzymes a little more, so that cells can produce extra proteins from the virus and stimulate a stronger immune response. But mRNA can only last a few days at most, before being destroyed.
Dr. Wiley told them that she herself was looking forward to being vaccinated.
Dr. Virginia Banks, an infectious disease specialist from Youngstown, Ohio, who is black, understands the community’s long-standing distrust of the medical establishment.
But she saw many people – and not all of them old – suffer and die in the pandemic, she said. And Dr. Banks worries about her own risk in caring for patients. “I feel like I’m playing Russian roulette,” she said.
Then, she recites stories to those who hesitate to be vaccinated, like one about a patient she recently treated, out of breath. He asked her, “Am I going to get out of this alive?” She said she didn’t know.
“We have to tell these stories” to black Americans, she said. “And it has to come from someone who looks like them.”
“My friends and family say, ‘Even if the risk is one in a million, I’m not taking it,'” she added. “I say, ‘I understand your distrust, but that is beyond Tuskegee. This goes beyond “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”. We are in a pandemic now. We have to put our faith in science. ‘”
Dr. Banks emphasizes the ripple effects of individual decisions: “If you don’t get this vaccine and it is safe, we will be wearing masks for a while. If you want your life back, if you want normalcy back, you have to trust trusted messengers like me. “
Dr. Leo Seoane, an intensive care physician at Ochsner Health in New Orleans who is Hispanic, has already been vaccinated. When he started talking to friends, family and other people in the community, almost everyone said they would not get the injection.
They feared that the vaccine had been developed too quickly, that it was not safe, that it might not be effective or that it could infect them with the coronavirus. Now, after gentle persuasion, “for one person, they’ve all changed their minds.”
But few think it takes just one or two conversations with a trusted doctor to convert vaccine skeptics into believers.
“When they started talking about the possibility of a vaccine in April, I said, ‘No way,'” said Phelemon Reins, a 56-year-old federal government official. He was suspicious of the speed of the vaccine’s development and knew the history of ill-treatment of blacks by the medical system very well.
“The Trump administration has done nothing to inspire anyone to have confidence in anything that is launched,” he added. “I reject everything they say.”
But Dr. Banks, a friend, made him rethink his reluctance. “In the end, it will be people like her that I will depend on,” said Reins. “I trust her.”
“How do they convince the African American community?” he said. “They may have to have people who look like her.”