No, Dionne Warwick, Black Americans shouldn't avoid the Covid vaccine

There is a difference between understanding, and sympathizing with, why many African Americans are leery of a Covid vaccine, and choosing to reinforce those fears when so many lives are at stake.

There is a difference between understanding, and sympathizing with, why many African Americans are leery of a Covid vaccine, and choosing to reinforce those fears. Like with many things race, American science has a sordid history of mistreating Black Americans.

The infamous “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male” was conducted by the US Public Health Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 1932 until 1972. The researchers examined the long-term progression of untreated syphilis in 399 Black men who were never informed of their diagnosis — and instead were outright lied to — putting their lives, and those around them, at risk. Throughout the “study,” the men were never treated with the eventual-cure, penicillin.

So it is eminently understandable why many African-Americans wouldn’t trust the US government’s medical advice when it comes to the safety of the Coronavirus vaccine — once burned, twice shy. It is less understandable, however, why public figures with large megaphones would stoke those fears, rather than attempt to alleviate them. You can understand someone’s fear without reinforcing it, particularly when that fear is putting their health at risk.

Washington Post writer, and MSNBC host, Jonathan Capehart, who is himself African-American, penned a piece in today’s paper, titled: “Dionne Warwick wasn’t exactly wrong about the coronavirus vaccine.” The famed singer recently appeared on Capehart’s TV show, where she expressed reluctance when asked whether she would take the Coivid vaccine:

“No. Not yet. It’s a choice that everybody has to make, and that’s my choice is to wait and see. It still takes a good minute to be proven to be quite effective. So I’m going to give it a chance to be effective.”

In fact, the current vaccines are around 95% effective at preventing severe Covid illness. We won’t know for a while how long the vaccines will provide such protection — a matter of months, years, or a lifetime? We do know, however, that people are dying now, and the vaccine is about as good as it gets at preventing those deaths.

In the rest of the article, Capehart explains why he agrees that African-Americans should “wait” to get the Covid vaccine:

What really irked me were the messages I received from viewers who immediately dubbed Warwick an anti-vaxxer. It was an accusation that completely missed the nuance of what she said. “Waiting” is not the same as “never,” and neither Warwick nor my mother, for that matter, ever said, “Never.” It’s a distinction without a difference unless you’re Black, especially a Black person of Warwick’s and my mother’s generation. In that distinction is the difference between safeguarding one’s health and being experimented on.

His is not an essay explaining why African-Americans are afraid of getting the vaccine. It’s an essay telling them that their fear is justified, and arguing that they should avoid the vaccine for now. That’s wrong.

The thing is, if you are telling African-Americans that they have reason not to trust the advice of Dr. Fauci and other medical authorities, both in and out of government, who tell them the vaccine is safe — because the US government might just be participating in a vast conspiracy against their well-being — then you are de facto, if not de jure, anti-vax. Your message is putting the health of those African-Americans at risk from a virus that has done particular damage to their community.

There is important nuance here. There is a difference between understanding a fear, and feeding it. No one questions why many Black Americans might distrust this, or any, vaccine, or the previously-bogus assurances of American medical science. But is the appropriate response to feed that fear, and tell African-Americans that they should hold off on getting vaccinated in the middle of a surging pandemic that could kill 100,000 Americans in the month of January alone?

If you believe there is a real chance that the Coronavirus vaccine is a secret government conspiracy to “experiment on” — in Capehart’s own words — African-Americans, then I understand why you would agree that Blacks should hold off on getting the vaccine. But if you don’t think that Bill Gates is the vaccine anti-Christ, and that Dr. Fauci is behind some sinister effort to bring back Tuskegee in our time, then it’s your job as a public figure to help alleviate those concerns, rather than fan them.