Leonard Pitts Jr.: In pandemic fight, distrust is killing Black Americans

[marmar]

In pandemic fight, distrust is killing Black Americans | Opinion
Leonard Pitts Jr.


They told them they had bad blood.

What they actually had was syphilis, but the U.S. Public Health Service never shared that diagnosis with the almost 400 African American men, most of them poor and under-educated sharecroppers, they recruited for a secret study at Tuskegee Institute in 1932. Indeed, health officials did little for those men for 40 years, except watch the progression of the disease.

That was the goal of the study: to see what happens when syphilis is left unchecked. And they did see. Syphilis is a venereal disease that can lead to paralysis, blindness, deafness, dementia, heart trouble, brain damage and death.

People often point to the so-called Tuskegee Experiment to explain why African Americans tend to mistrust the medical establishment, but while what happened in Alabama was obscene, it was hardly unique. To the contrary, from experimental procedures on the vaginas of enslaved women to grave robbers stealing Black bodies for use in medical schools, from forced sterilization in the name of eugenics to new mother Serena Williams having to battle doctors and nurses who ignored her as she suffered a life-threatening medical emergency, Black people have been routinely betrayed by this profession whose prime directive is, “First, do no harm.” So the mistrust is grounded in hard experience.

....(snip)....

My boys and I, we do this dance. They give me their reasons for not getting the shot, I give them rebuttals.

It was developed too fast, they say. It’s called an emergency, I say; you get out of the house faster when it’s burning.

I don’t know what’s in it, they say. You don’t know what’s in Cheez Whiz, I say, but that doesn’t stop you from eating it.

There may be side effects to taking it, they say. Well, the side effect to not taking it could be death. .............(more)

https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/contributors/2021/08/14/vaccine-skepticism-killing-black-americans/8127308002/

[Treefrog]

1. Well we whites are taking it too.

It’s not like it’s only being offered to blacks as some sort of trick.

[Dream Girl]

2. I know. I always wonder if blacks who say that think there are special vials for blacks only?

Or maybe special vials goes to black areas. It’s beyond stupid. I do wonder if there are anti-vaccine disinformation campaigns targeting blacks with this shit. I’m black and my sister refuses to take the vaccine.

[MichMan]

3. What are the reasons she is refusing it?

[Dream Girl]

4. Conspiracy theories online. She was saying back in spring 2020, that she wouldn't take a vaccine

If it were available. I think it started years ago when the swine flu vaccine vaccine cased adverse reactions. She’s kind of an all or nothing thinking. I’ve tried to convince but it just raises my blood pressure. She won’t budge.

[Treefrog]

6. Two of my black neighbors are not taking it.

The wife is a nurse. Perfectly nice and intelligent people…I don’t get it.

My partner is black, and she was vaxxed before me. One of her sisters, however, is not.

[jalan48]

5. Anti-vaxers cut a wide swath across our society.

[UnderThisLaw]

7. Wow, they're all over this thread