As COVID-19 Vaccine Nears Communities Of Color Are Wary

Speaker 1: 00:00 Even as new COVID cases, continue to rise sharply in San Diego comes the good news that another vaccine is reporting good results of vaccine developed by the pharmaceutical company. AstraZeneca and the university of Oxford is reporting 90% effectiveness in stage three trials, but not everyone is eager to get one of those shots, especially among communities of color in a recent survey by the public policy Institute of California, 43% of Latinos and 69% of black respondents said they either probably, or definitely would not get the vaccine. It appears that public health officials will need to overcome a legacy of distrust in those communities before any COVID vaccine can be effective. Joining me is Jonathan Rosen. He's the San Diego union Tribune biotech reporter, and Jonathan, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me. This may come as a surprise to people outside communities of color because Latinos and African Americans have been hardest hit by COVID-19. What are the concerns that may keep people from being vaccinated? Speaker 2: 01:09 So I, I think many of the basic concerns are widely shared among people of all backgrounds, all races and ethnicities questions about to what role the push for a vaccine has been driven by politics, how safe the vaccine is, what the real contents are, whether people will have access to it. Um, yeah, at the end, once the government has approved a vaccine, but for many people of color, those basic concerns are amplified by a history of, uh, those communities being used in trials and various types of experiments. Uh, not always really with their consent or, or full information. And then on the backend, not being given access to treatments that have done been proven to be safe and life-saving, so I think that there's a history and also present day inequities that shape the issue for a lot of minorities. There's also just the general issue that the push for a vaccine has been driven by the government and driven by drug companies. And those are two institutions that, uh, many people are generally wary of and the don't have a strong presence, always in these communities. Speaker 1: 02:27 Can you give us more of a rundown of where this legacy of distrust of medicine comes from with certain examples from history in the black and Brown communities? Speaker 2: 02:38 Sure. So usually the, the one that everybody will point to is the Tuskegee study, which ran from 1932 to 1972 and essentially the U S government, uh, researchers were looking to track the progression, the natural untreated progression of syphilis and did that and about 400 black men in the South who had syphilis as well as 200 who didn't and essentially just reported their symptoms over the course of 40 years. Uh, despite the fact that those men thought they were being treated, they were not a couple of penicillin injections probably would have cured many of them, and we know dozens of them died. And so that was eventually brought to light in 1972. But, uh, that's one among many examples. You could talk about the founder of modern gynecology, dr. J Marion Sims, who literally performed surgery on enslaved women without anesthesia. And part of the reason for that is this sort of sense that black people tend to not feel pain as acutely as white people. Speaker 2: 03:47 And, you know, there's polling even today that suggests that plenty of people still have that belief. Uh, and you can look at present day disparities in terms of, um, everything from who's been hit hardest by the virus to a groups of women are most likely to die in childbirth. And, um, you know, if you show up to the doctor's office and say that you're feeling pain, are you equally likely to get treated for it depending on your race? So, so this sort of underlying thread here is that there's, uh, a history that has continued and in different shapes and forms into the present, Speaker 1: 04:24 You spoke with an African-American doctor in San Diego who did not want to solicit her patients to join in the vaccine trials. Why not? Speaker 2: 04:32 Yeah. So Suzanne Afflalo, who's at practice as a family physician for about 23 years, uh, through Kaiser. Um, I spoke with her as part of the story and, you know, her initial reaction was essentially, uh, not so fast and the way she explained that was that people have come into that community in the past many time and wanted to collect data or do some kind of study that they then publish get grants for and, and move on from, uh, without any of that benefiting the community in some tangible ways. So, you know, she was coming in, I think, concerned about operation warp speed in the sense that we were moving too quickly with the vaccine, also wanting the process to be well explained to her. One of the things she said was, well, you know, you have to convince me before I'm going to go out into the community and tell people I trust that, that this really is a, uh, a safe and effective clinical trial to be part of that was what they were contacting her about. So she just essentially wanted to be able to ask some direct questions of the researchers before then going into the community and sharing that information with them. Speaker 1: 05:50 Now in your reporting, have you found that public health officials are aware that many people of color are hesitant about getting the COVID vaccine and what are they doing here in San Diego to try to reach out to people like this doctor and people in general who just have these concerns? Speaker 2: 06:10 So they're certainly aware of it. Uh, I know that the County, along with UC San Diego and San Diego refugee communities, coalition has been involved in coordinating focus groups and polling, uh, community as a color to try to get a better handle on what the issue is, what the questions are and how best to address them. And it's not something that I think we've seen the County talk about publicly too much lately, maybe to some degree, because we're right in the middle of dealing with the day to day spikes in cases and hospitalizations. But, uh, they, they definitely realize that we're getting to a point where it's a matter of when, rather than if we have a vaccine and for that vaccine to be effective, uh, we need a large number of people to take it. Speaker 1: 07:02 Mayor Alejandro Sotelo solace of national city has participated in one of the vaccine trials in the County, very publicly. And she's urging more people in her community to join is that kind of leadership needed to help convince people that the vaccines are trustworthy? Speaker 2: 07:20 Well, that's probably one piece, you know, one thing that the mayor told me and that also some other doctors and other people have told me is that it's going to be important to have trusted members of the community that are, uh, the people can look to and say, this is somebody I already know. I already, uh, you know, trust them. And if they believe that the vaccine is safe and effective, then, then that sounds fine by me. And, uh, dr. Rodney hood is part of a panel, both with the state of California, as well as the national medical association, which is a group of black physicians. Who's going to be essentially independently reviewing any approved vaccine. And part of that is to give a sense of independent credibility to that process. So I think having those trusted messengers will probably be very important, I think will also be important as having opportunities for people to ask questions of researchers, of public health officials, about how these vaccines work what's in them and what the various benefits and risks are. So I think it's a combination of the messengers, but also having opportunities to directly ask those questions, Speaker 1: 08:37 You know, to your point previously, Jonathan, I think a lot of Americans have a question in the back of their minds about what this vaccines, a wall hot, these vaccines are and how they could be safely produced so quickly. Should the government be more transparent about this whole process? I think Speaker 2: 08:56 So. I think in some ways the pharmaceutical companies have had to compensate for that. So we've seen a lot of these companies sharing their full trial protocols. These are giant a hundred plus page documents that detail exactly how the trial will be conducted, what side effects they'll look for, what their measures of success will be. Uh, and they've had to come out publicly and say that they won't rush the trials until they meet those criteria and the protocol. And I think one of the reasons that they've had to do that is to combat the sense that, uh, that the government is looking to get as quickly as possible to a vaccine and, uh, lowering the bar in the process. So, yeah, I think that would be a helpful thing. Speaker 1: 09:44 I've been speaking with San Diego union Tribune, biotech reporter, Jonathan Rosen, and Jonathan, thank you. Speaker 2: 09:50 My pleasure. Thank you.