I’m a Black Man Who Chose to Receive the COVID-19 Vaccine
Photo by Daniel Schludi on Unsplash
Covid-19 has killed almost 500,000 thousand people and infected almost 30 million people in the United States alone. Within these high numbers, cases have been incredibly amplified within minority communities. According to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), non-Hispanic American Indian or Alaska Native people had an age-adjusted COVID-19 hospitalization rate about 5.3 times that of non-Hispanic white people. COVID-19 hospitalization rates among non-Hispanic Black people and Hispanic or Latino people were both about 4.7 times the rate of non-Hispanic white people.
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Fortunately, within the past several months there have been vaccines that have been approved for distribution throughout the United States. For now, if you are a front-line worker, interact with people daily for work, or simply have resources and connections that will move you to the front of the line, you can get vaccinated. Sounds good right? We can all get the shot in our arms and then get back to living the life that we once knew.
This is something that sounds like an easy fix to most people, and most news outlets make it seem as if the majority of people in the United States are eager to get the vaccination. This isn’t the case for all people. Not everybody is excited about the vaccine or eager to get it. Even with the high number of infections and deaths, there is a high amount of pushback from the Black community and the eagerness to trust the process of getting vaccinated.
Tuskegee Syphilis Study
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To fully understand why there is skepticism in the Black community concerning the vaccine, we must look back at one of the many pivotal moments in history where the distrust began between the black community and the United States healthcare system.
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was an unethical natural history study conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the United States Public Health Service (PHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The purpose of this study was to observe the natural history of untreated syphilis. African American men were recruited to participate in this study and were told that they were receiving free health care from the federal government of the United States.
The Public Health Service started the study in 1932 in collaboration with Tuskegee University (then the Tuskegee Institute), a historically black college in Alabama. In the study, investigators enrolled a total of 600 impoverished African American sharecroppers from Macon County, Alabama with the help of black nurses. Of these men, 399 had latent syphilis, with a control group of 201 men who were not infected. These men were deceived by the PHS and never were informed of their diagnosis. They also were given disguised placebos and were “treated” with ineffective methods.
The men were initially told that the “study” was only going to last six months, but it was extended to 40 years. After funding for the treatment was lost, the study was continued without informing the men that they would never be treated. None of the infected men were treated with penicillin even though by 1947, the antibiotic was widely available and had become the standard treatment for syphilis.
The study continued under numerous Public Health Service supervisors until 1972, which is when a leak to the press resulted in its termination on November 16 of that year. The study caused the deaths of 128 of its participants, either directly from syphilis or from related complications.
The Tuskegee experiment opened the doors of distrust between the black community and the healthcare system in the United States. It’s one of the main reasons today why we have some black people question everything that medical professionals may tell them to do. It’s a situation where on one hand you know that you need to always seek medical advice if you don’t feel well, but on the other hand, you ask yourself if this doctor has your best interest. Does this doctor even care if I live or die? I know that he or she took an oath to give care to anyone that needs it and to do everything in his or her power to save me if I am in medical danger, but how do I know if they really give a shit about me? After all, that same code of ethics existed during this experiment and we see how that ended. These are the questions that black people have to ask and think about when it comes to the healthcare system, which leads to us gaining the reputation of not going to the doctor when we should (especially black men). Questions like these result in a big “hell no” when we hear the word vaccine.
Before the vaccine
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Let’s be clear, I was not a fan of any type of vaccine before Covid-19. I was definitely one of those individuals who didn’t trust vaccines because of the history of what my people have gone through with having something injected into their arms that they knew very little about. I am someone who has turned down the flu shot every time that it has been offered to me. I’ve turned it down because I have it engraved in my mind that it will probably do more harm than help. I’ve asked doctors and nurses several questions about why they had to inject my babies with certain things once my children were born. What was the purpose of this? How do I know that it won’t hurt them? What happens if it does hurt them? I just didn’t understand the need for them, that is until Covid-19 hit us.
Change of thought
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When I first heard about Covid-19 in late 2019, it seemed like something serious, but I didn’t think that it would rapidly affect the United States for some reason. I didn’t deny its existence, I just felt that it would disappear with time. Soon afterward, I started hearing and reading about a few cases in the United States, but I still thought that it would eventually vanish. Those few cases eventually turned into a few hundred, then those few hundred grew to thousands, those thousands caused sports to shut down, companies to close, and schools to reshape how students would be taught for the next year and counting. Amid these shutdowns and growing numbers, I would see social media posts from old friends saying “RIP” to other common friends. This is when things began to get scary for me.
When you go from thinking that this virus is something somewhat serious and won’t grow to be a big deal, to someone you actually know dying from it, your whole perspective changes. I started to worry about my wife and kids and how I could protect them. We had to make plans for the possibility of somebody in our family catching this virus. What would we do? How would we function?
Listen, I know a lot of people think that this thing is “just the flu”, but when you see people that you know drop dead from it, your perspective changes. Many have argued that Covid-19 is just for old people until they hear the reports of kids dying from it. Then you have individuals who strongly believe that people who have underlying conditions are the only ones that are dying from this virus. I am pretty sure that these underlying conditions could have taken out these individuals a long time ago, therefore, it is no coincidence that as soon as they catch the virus, they die. It seems to me that this virus plays a major role in taking lives whether it has something to do with underlying conditions or not, and I was just not willing to take that chance.
Vaccine
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Currently, the work that I do is considered to be governmental or state-level work. I help a lot of people, and as a result, I may have to interact with strangers in close proximity. Because of this, I was allowed to receive the Covid-19 vaccine if I wanted it.
Honestly, thoughts of distrust immediately popped into my mind when presented with this opportunity, but those thoughts quickly subsided. I thought about how things have changed since the Tuskegee experiment. Yes, there is still racism and racist people that would love nothing more than to see the demise of any other race in America that isn’t theirs, but this isn’t the case. I don’t believe that this vaccine was created to inject harm into people as some type of sick experiment to tear down another race. I have seen scientists work on this vaccine. I have also seen every background that you can think of receiving the vaccine, which put me at ease a bit more than I would have been if I hadn’t.
It took me less than 24 hours after consulting with my wife and kids to make the decision that I was going to take advantage of this opportunity. I love my family more than anything, so this was a pretty easy decision for me. I would be getting the Pfizer vaccine which was proven to be 95.6% effective against the virus.
I received my first dose on January 28, 2021. The only side effect that I had was fatigue for about 2–3 days after the injection. I received my second dose on February 18th, 2021. The following day I had more side effects. If I had to describe it, it would be similar to the flu, without the snot and stuffiness. I would say it was the same type of fatigue that I felt after the first injection but only amplified 3 times higher with a side of chills. The good thing about the second dose was that the side effects only lasted for about a day and a half. Overall, I feel great, and I am back to my normal self now.
The bottom line is that everyone has to make the best decision for them when it comes to the Covid-19 vaccine. I feel that it was imperative to share my experience as a black man receiving this vaccine because of the stigma that comes along with vaccines in our community. If you feel that this vaccine could be more of a help then harm, I would definitely advise you to get it.
This vaccine is bigger than you and I. If we have a tool that is accessible to us that can fight against the biggest virus of our generation, then I feel that we should utilize it so that we can all have a better quality of living. I am here to prove that it’s not that bad. Every day that I log on to social media, I see more discouragement rather than encouragement to take the vaccine among black people, and yet, there are never any alternative solutions or suggestions to get the numbers down in our community. Things have changed, medicine has changed, and we should all consider the vaccine to slow the spread within our community.
