Why a Boston church made Anthony Fauci speak to his congregation

Despite recent promising news regarding a COVID-19 vaccine, a growing body of evidence has shown that the drug faces high levels of mistrust among black and Latin populations – the same communities that have been hit hardest by the pandemic .

So a church in Boston decided to call on the country’s most trusted health expert to overcome this skepticism: Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, addressed the Presbyterian Church in Roxbury at a Zoom meeting last week, urging the predominantly black congregation to trust the development process of independent and scientifically rigorous vaccines.

“Don’t deprive yourself of the advantage of an extremely important scientific breakthrough by not getting vaccinated,” he said. “Protect yourself, your family and your community.”

Communities of color have suffered disproportionately from COVID-19 infections and deaths primarily due to both deep-rooted socio-economic inequalities, often referred to as the social determinants of health, and higher rates of certain illnesses chronic illnesses that make people more vulnerable to the disease. A recent study found that black and Latino residents of Boston were much more likely to be exposed to COVID-19 due to disparities in commuting to work, accessing food, using public transportation, and commuting. exercise, like The Boston Globe reported last week.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, black and Latin American people are 2.8 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than non-Hispanic white people. They are also 3.7 and 4.1 times more likely to be hospitalized because of the illness.

At the same time, polls have shown those same communities to be the most hesitant about a COVID-19 vaccine, which officials hope to start distributing over the next few months and make widely available next spring.

A survey released last Monday found that 52 percent of black respondents, as well as 34 percent of Latino respondents, said they would definitely or probably not receive the vaccine, due to concerns about its safety and effectiveness.

Reverend Liz Walker, senior pastor at Roxbury Presbyterian Church and former WBZ anchor, told WBUR she contacted Fauci after seeing high levels of hesitation about the vaccine in her own community.

“I was really surprised at the number of parishioners, the number of people, not only in the church, but in the community, who said they were not going to get the vaccine,” Walker said. “I wanted to do something about it because I sincerely believe we have to do it.”

Among members of the black community, mistrust of government and racial identity was particularly linked to vaccine skepticism, according to the recent poll – and not without reason. The author of the survey established a link between mistrust and the “deep historical trauma” of racial discriminatory practices on the part of government and health facilities.

For example, they found that knowledge of the federal government’s infamous Tuskegee experiment from 1932 to 1972, in which a group of black men in Alabama who had syphilis were not told or treated so that the researchers could study the disease, was associated with increased reluctance to vaccination. Other examples of medical racism range from the work of Marion Sims to the treatment of Henrietta Lacks.

Mistrust of President Donald Trump’s administration and the perception that vaccine development is rushed have only fueled those flames.

“It’s ironic, but the very reason we feel we are getting sicker is [with COVID-19] It’s because we feel that we haven’t been treated well in healthcare, ”Walker told WBUR. “Now you add to that the political situation, so you have a perfect storm of problems in my community for wanting to take this vaccine.”

Enter Fauci.

Walker said in the meeting, which went live on Tuesday, that more than 2,000 people have registered for the virtual event with Fauci.

During the meeting, the 79-year-old disease expert acknowledged “the history of abuse, particularly from the African American community,” by the medical establishment, specifically mentioning Tuskegee and Lacks, as well as “Mixed signals that we have been entering this dividing society from Washington. “

However, he pointed out that the approval of the COVID-19 vaccines has been conducted separately from partisan officials or pharmaceutical companies as part of an independent, multi-level process overseen by “career scientists, not politicians.”

“What you have is both independence and transparency, and ultimately all of this data becomes public because it will be published in peer-reviewed journals,” Fauci said of the essays. recent who found three different vaccines. be at least 90% effective.

“Second, the speed with which this has been done does not compromise safety or scientific integrity,” Fauci said. “It’s the exquisite nature of the breathtaking scientific advancements that have occurred over the past decade or so that have allowed us to do things in weeks, if not months, which once took years, you wouldn’t so shouldn’t be intimidated by how quickly this was done. …. Safety concerns were paramount on everyone’s mind when testing this vaccine.

However, the effectiveness of the vaccine does not matter if individuals do not get it. And given how hard hit communities of color, Fauci said getting vaccinated is especially important for many people to create community immunity.

“If you have a highly effective vaccine and the overwhelming majority of people get vaccinated, we can crush this epidemic,” he said.

The vaccine distribution plan submitted by Massachusetts also places special emphasis on “critical populations” and includes a public awareness campaign to combat skepticism. Amid evidence that vaccine trials have been slow to recruit minorities, Fauci said he hoped to encourage people of color to volunteer so officials “can watch our African-American and Latin American colleagues. in their eyes and say, “We have proven that it is not only safe and effective for white people, it is safe and effective for you and your community.” “So far, Fauci said there have been no” serious adverse events “from the COVID-19 vaccines.

Fauci noted that the United States had recorded between 1,000 and 2,000 deaths per day from COVID-19 over the past month, even though death rates had fallen compared to spring. Already, he noted, more than a quarter of a million people have died from the disease.

“We have younger people infected,” Fauci said. “We are also doing better to take care of people. But that’s no excuse to just say, ‘Well, who cares? Let more people get infected. If we don’t stop this epidemic, we will have an extraordinarily high number of deaths. This is the reason why vaccines are so important. “