Ending Black fears over COVID-19 vaccine means confronting past racism and viral rumors

MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Back in March, the notion that melanin rendered Black people immune to COVID-19 was super-spreading through social media.

But reality revealed that to be a false rumor.

Now, nine months later, COVID-19 has killed more than a quarter of a million Americans. It is killing Black people at twice the rate of white people.

Nonetheless, a past fraught with the devaluation of Black lives, such as the Tuskegee Experiment conducted from 1932 to 1972, in which researchers watched Black men die from syphilis rather than treat them for it, still causes many Black people to cling to fears and social media rumors and conspiracies when it comes to COVID-19.

Like the one that charged that COVID-19 was being put on the nasal swabs used for testing. And the one that claimed that Melinda Gates said Black people must be vaccinated first for COVID-19.

While Gates said that Black people deserved priority to receive the vaccine, many Black people viewed it as her advocating experimentation. Not surprisingly, many responded with remarks like, “We are not crash test dummies,” and “we are not guinea pigs.”

So, as the first COVID-19 vaccines developed by Pfizer and BioNTech are being distributed to the states, medical professionals and others must persuade Black people to take a vaccine to stop a pandemic that is disproportionately sickening and killing them – even through it was developed within a medical system that many mistrust.

It won’t be easy.

According to a report by the Kaiser Foundation COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor, 27% of the public is vaccine hesitant. But while vaccine hesitancy is highest among Republicans – 42% – 35% of Black adults say they probably or definitely wouldn't take the vaccine.

Of the Black adults who say they won't take the vaccine, half say they are worried they may get COVID-19 from it.

This suggests that "messages combating particular types of misinformation may be especially important for increasing vaccine confidence among this group," the report states.

But one place where medical officials and others could start to battle fears and misinformation would be to acknowledge the truths of the past, said Dr. Robin Womeodu, chief medical officer at Methodist University Hospital in Memphis.

While mortality figures weren’t available by race, In Shelby County, Tennessee, Black people make up 57% of COVID-19 cases.

“Some people mention the Tuskegee trials, but many don’t know the details of the Tuskegee trials, but they’re quick to mention it, “Womeodu said. “But we have to acknowledge that things like that did happen.

“But what we have to tell them is that since then, things like that have led to protections for people … the whole research infrastructure has changed, and there are protections in place now.”

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“I think we also have to acknowledge that these biases do exist. … I think people want to hear us say, ‘You’re not imagining these things.’ There is literature that shows biases.”

Yet when it comes to the COVID-19 vaccine, Womeodu said, the medical community has some accomplishments to assure Black people that it is safe.

First of all, a key scientist behind the vaccine development, Kizzmekia Corbett, is a Black woman, and many Black people were involved in the vaccine trials.

Then there’s this: The first person in the U.S. to take the COVID-19 vaccine was a Black woman, Sandra Lindsay, an intensive care nurse in New York City. Former President Barack Obama has also pledged to take the vaccine publicly.

Such visibility can help assuage Black people’s fears of the vaccine, Womeodu said.

“I also think that many of us who are well-respected in the communities, from the teachers, to pastors, to physicians, to health care workers, to a wide range of us, many of us have to speak out in our inner circles and tell people that the science is safe,” she said.

That’s exactly what the Rev. LaSimba Gray of New Sardis Baptist Church, and the Rev. Keith Norman of First Baptist Church Broad, are doing.

Gray said that his church is doing a Bible study on the merits of taking the vaccine, while Norman, who also participates on the Shelby County COVID-19 task force, said that in addition to research, his church will host a town hall in which congregants can call in with questions about the vaccine.

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“Many African Americans have justifiable paranoia, and it’s based on the history of how we’ve been treated by the medical profession,” Gray said. “For years, we had to take care of ourselves. We had to use old folks’ medicine, and I remember as a child, my mother and grandmother knew how to take care of us.

“But I think as the leadership of the African American community steps forward, we will show that this is real, and this is science, and we need to take the vaccine so that we can live. We have a health ministry and we’re taking this seriously.”

“We are encouraging research and education,” said Norman, who said some young congregants have expressed concerns about whether the COVID-19 vaccine can impact fertility.

Norman said that he’s appointed a young woman, who’s a medical school student at Emory University, to research that issue, as well as other ways that COVID-19 impacts her generation.

“(Concerns about infertility are) a well-founded premise,” Norman said. “We’re doing all we can to dispel rumors and report facts. ... But I minister to a wide cross-section of people, so we have to address fears.”

The Rev. Ricky Floyd, pastor of The Pursuit of God Transformation Center in Frayser, Tennessee, worked to bring a COVID-19 testing center there – only to have some people refuse the test because of fears of the virus being planted on the testing swabs.

Now that a vaccine is available, he said he doesn’t plan to tell people to take it, but rather, he plans to help them come to terms with fears preventing them from taking it.

“Much of what they fear is the government, not the hospital,” said Floyd, who said he plans to take the vaccine.

“I don’t think the citizens divide the medical industry from the government industry, and right now, we’re coming out of one of the most racially tense periods that we’ve had in government, so the timing couldn’t have been worse for this.”

Batting down rumors, Floyd said, is still a problem. Someone sent him a video, he said, claiming that the government was paying Black ministers to tell their congregants to take the vaccine.

He said that the medical community has the biggest burden when it comes to distributing knowledge and resources to build Black people’s’ confidence in taking the COVID-19 vaccine.

“As a pastor, I’m telling people they have to come to a place where they have peace within themselves, because if a person takes it out of fear, they’re more prone to side effects – like chills and fever.

But, said Floyd: “Chills and fever are better than a cold body and a funeral.”

Follow Memphis columnist Tonyaa Weathersbee on Twitter @tonyaajw.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: COVID-19 vaccine: Can Black leaders persuade Black people to trust it?