Science has just unleashed the 1st defensive vaccine against the world’s most deadly virus pandemic since the 1918 flu pandemic. Unfortunately, American Blacks are the least likely to trust the Covid-19 virus vaccine, and even though American history is rife with examples of why American Blacks should be skeptical about any new vaccine, there are 3 reasons why American Blacks must trust and take the Covid-19 virus vaccine shot.
Only a slim majority, 53%, of American Blacks trust medical research scientists compared with 68% of American Whites and 67% of American Hispanics. The high distrust rate of medical science among American Blacks is not without merit, research has proven that American Blacks receive lower-quality health services for cancer, HIV, prenatal care, and preventive care. And American Blacks are less likely to receive treatment for cardiovascular disease but are more likely to have unnecessary limb amputations.
The most notorious case of American medical science killing, abusing, lying, and purposely giving American Blacks the wrong healthcare treatment is the Tuskegee Experiment. It was a clinical study conducted by the United States Public Health Service (PHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 1932-1972. Hundreds of American Black men were lied to and told they were receiving free good quality medical care from the U.S. government, but instead were given false diagnoses and false treatments for the secret purpose of allowing American White scientists to observe the effects and progression of untreated syphilis on American Black men.
In 1951 stolen blood cell tissue samples from the cancer tumor of American Black Henrietta Lacks were used to create the HeLa cell line, currently its medical research’s most important cell line used to study the effects of toxins, drugs, hormones, and viruses on the growth of cancer cells without experimenting on humans. Lacks cell tissue was used without her knowledge, permission, or monetary compensation for the billion-dollar industry it created.
The Tuskegee Experiment and the Henrietta Lacks DNA theft only scratch the surface of documented medical fraud, abuse, and lack of quality healthcare that American Blacks have suffered throughout the entire existence of America. Even amid the massive medical discrimination and medical injustice American Blacks have endured, there are 3 reasons why now American Blacks must trust medical science and the virus vaccine:
1) Most Likely To Catch, Most Likely To Die
According to the National Urban League’s “State of Black America” report, American Blacks are infected with the COVID-19 virus at nearly three times the rate of American Whites. The infection rate for American Blacks is 62 per 10,000, compared with 23 per 10,000 for American Whites. There is no evidence that American Blacks have genetic or other biological factors that make them more likely to be affected by COVID-19, but due to the medical discrimination and lack of access to quality healthcare American Blacks are more likely to have preexisting health problems that make them more likely to die if they catch the virus.
American Blacks are more likely to live in multigenerational housing, which places older, at-risk adults in close contact with younger people who may not know they have the virus, are more likely to have jobs that are considered essential that can’t be done remotely and involve interaction with the public. For instance, according to the CDC 25% of employed American Blacks work in the service industry accounting for 30% of all U.S. nurses. And the number 1 reason American Blacks are more likely to die from Covid-19 is that they have jobs that either don’t offer health insurance, paid sick leave, or both.
2) New Vaccine Technology
American Blacks unlike American Whites confront a double negative in their mind when it comes to any vaccine. Aside from the aforementioned racial mistrust of the American medical establishment, American Blacks like American Whites have the same medical doubts and questions about the safety of a vaccine. Questions like, can vaccines cause the disease? Will vaccines cause harmful side effects, illnesses, or even death? Could a vaccine cause long term effects we don’t know about yet?
Most of these medical doubt questions stem from the fact that everybody, including people with no medical training, understands 1 basic thing about a vaccine, that it is a dead or a living weakened form of the virus. So when someone gets a vaccine shot, a dead or a living weak form of the virus is being injected into their body. This is done to train the body’s immune system to produce a defense that will attack and kill a future full strength infection of the same virus. In other words, the vaccine is a sure way to infect the body with the virus, albeit a weak form of it, with the hope that the body’s immune system will produce the defense to kill it. That’s the traditional working principle of vaccines, it is not the working principle of the Covid-19 vaccine.
The Covid-19 vaccine was developed using new vaccine technology. The Covid-19 vaccines are made from messenger RNA (mRNA), not from a dead or weak form of the virus. This means instead of a dead or weak form of the virus protein being injected into the body an mRNA vaccine is injected into the body. It delivers genetic information instructing the body’s cells to produce an internal homegrown viral protein that will attack and kill the virus.
MIT Professor Robert Langer says, “With traditional vaccines, you have to do a lot of development. You need a big factory to make the protein or the virus, and it takes a long time to grow them, the beauty of mRNA is that you don’t need that. If you inject nano-encapsulated mRNA into a person, it goes into the cells, and then the body is your factory. The body takes care of everything else from there.” The mRNA enables the body’s immune system to produce a viral killing protein without the risk of the body being infected with the virus.
3) Inventor Integrity
The technology isn’t the only thing that’s different about the Covid-19 vaccine, it was developed under an opposite circumstance than those of the Tuskegee Experiment and the Henrietta Lacks DNA theft. The opposite circumstance that the Covid-19 virus vaccine was developed under is the most credible reason that American Blacks should trust and take the Covid-19 vaccine shot.
None of the medical scientists involved with the Tuskegee Experiment or the Henrietta Lacks DNA theft were American Blacks, not only was an American Black one of the medical scientist working on the development of the Covid-19 vaccine, that American Black scientist, Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, was the co-leader of the medical research team that created the vaccine. Dr. Corbett, who holds a doctorate in microbiology and immunology, has no interest in leading the development of a vaccine that would harm members of her race.
Dr Kizzmekia Corbett, right, a research fellow at the NIH vaccine research center, in Bethesda, Maryland, with President Donald Trump in March. Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters
American Blacks are more likely than American Whites, American Hispanics, or American Asians to become infected and die from the Covid-19 virus, and therefore for the 1st time in American history, American Blacks must be more likely to TRUST medical science and take the Covid-19 virus vaccine shot!!!