COVID vaccine hesitancy and a history of mistrust
Dr. Charles Drew was the African American doctor whose revolutionary work separating and storing blood plasma has saved millions of lives during and since World War II, but he died in a ditch on the side of a road in Burlington when a segregated hospital refused to give him a blood transfusion following a horrific car crash.
Everybody knows that story, right?
I certainly grew up hearing about it, but like many stories that “everybody knows,” this one is baloney.
It’s true that he died in a car crash in Burlington on April 1, 1950, but the rest of the story is an unfunny April Fools Day urban –rural? – legend.
“My father received the best treatment possible from the nearest hospital,” his daughter, Charlene Drew Jarvis, told me years ago in an interview.
Despite his daughter’s assurances, it’s what many believe happened to Dr. Drew that causes distrust of the medical profession among many African Americans and other people of color.
That distrust is also one of the reasons many say they won’t take the coronavirus vaccine when it becomes widely available.
A poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation notes that 34 percent of all Americans say they definitely won’t or probably won’t take the coronavirus vaccine: that number soars to 49 percent among African American respondents.
The CDC.gov website reports that Blacks and Hispanics are almost four times as likely to require hospitalization from COVID-19 than whites, and almost three times as likely to die from the virus.
Those statistics cause Dr. Allen Mask restless nights. Dr. Mask, a Raleigh physician and the health reporter for WRAL-TV in Raleigh, said in an interview that “Forty percent of the people dying of this viral infection are black. I received the vaccine as soon as I could, with no hesitation, but I can understand why Black and poor people might be reluctant to take the vaccine,” Dr. Mask said.
Dr. Mask received his vaccine on television to encourage others, and filmmaker Tyler Perry said he will do the same.
People of all educational and income levels are leery of the vaccine. My pal, Anthony Myles, a retired Durham librarian, was unmoved by Dr. Mask’s argument that “If you look at the risk/benefits ratio, it is important for us all to get vaccinated against any disease that may threaten your health.”
Myles isn’t buying it - or taking it. “I’m not taking an experimental vaccine. I’m not trusting the government on this one, and I’m not playing Russian Roulette with my life.”
You know how we all know someone who swears that the flu vaccine made them ill, so they no longer take it?
Dr. Mask said that 50 percent of the Kaiser poll respondents said they feared the same thing if they took the coronavirus vaccine. “That’s not possible. It’s not a live virus,” he said. “I have given thousands of influenza vaccinations in my medical office since the early 1990s. There are still a large number of my Black patients who are hesitant to even take the flu vaccine. However, with careful and deliberate counseling, the majority eventually are accepting of the idea, even if it takes a year or two of convincing.”
Let’s hope the same thing happens with the COVID vaccine – although we hope it doesn’t take years of convincing.
For the record, a representative at the Piedmont Health Charles Drew Health Care Center in Burlington said the center is providing the covid vaccine to its patients who are 65 years old and older.