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When it comes to misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines, health advocates have heard it all.
During a recent round of farmworker surveys, there have been a number of concerns ranging from misguided and inaccurate to specific and head-scratching, such as that the shots will in some way change or on the other, the sexuality of a recipient.
“Every week it’s a new myth,” said Hernan Hernandez, executive director of the California Farmworker Foundation, based in Central Valley last week.
Even with the COVID-19 vaccination campaign now nearly 10 months old, immunization officials and advocates across the state say persistent misconceptions and misinformation are hampering efforts to promote vaccines in some. parts of California, including some Latin American communities.
In Orange County, just 47% of Latino residents aged 12 and over received at least one dose, compared to 73% of white residents, according to state data.
And in Fresno County – where hospitals were plunged into crisis because they effectively lacked available intensive care unit beds – 54% of Latino residents in the same age group received at least one dose, up from 67 % of white residents.
Unlike Orange County, where a third of residents are Latinos, the majority of Fresno County residents are Latinos, and the median age – 33 – is younger than that of most of California. In some places, young Latinos are a less likely demographic to get vaccinated, fueled at times not only by a sense of invincibility but also by a drumbeat of false information circulating not only through social media but sometimes as well. by general public information sources.
In general, while about half of farm workers surveyed by the Farm Workers’ Foundation want the vaccine, about 35% have expressed strong opposition and 15% are undecided, Hernandez said. The myths they cite include those that falsely claim that vaccines harm fertility, contain tracking chips that will allow the government to control them, or can cause paralysis, cancer or death.
“It’s not just Facebook… but it’s also the media,” Hernandez said during a press briefing hosted by Fresno County health officials. A deceptive story that aired on a Spanish-language television station a few months ago involved a quote from a rabbi in Israel saying that taking the vaccine changes the recipient’s sexuality.
The story led 100 young farmers to suddenly change their mind and decide not to get vaccinated at a vaccination clinic, Hernandez said. “Although the report is false, the farm workers saw it in their 6 pm news and automatically thought, ‘Well, what if that’s true? “”
Some residents are so afraid of the vaccine that they ask community health workers to escort them to clinics, said Joe Prado, acting deputy director of the Fresno County Department of Public Health.
People always ask, “Is it safe to get vaccinated?” Prado said. “This vaccine hesitation is real and… it seems different for each individual. “
Anti-vaccine messages have become such a problem that social media companies have come under pressure to suppress misinformation and misinformation online. YouTube recently announced that it would ban prominent anti-vaccine activists from posting on its website.
In Orange County, “the biggest myth or the biggest fear is the fertility issue,” Isabel Becerra, executive director of Orange County Community Health Centers, said in a recent briefing. Medical experts say vaccines are safe and effective and there is no evidence that they cause reproductive harm.
In fact, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention strongly recommends that COVID-19 vaccines be given before or during pregnancy. The vaccines “have no adverse effects on the mother or the baby,” according to the agency’s director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky.
But rumors and misinformation about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines continued to spread widely – leading officials, officials said, to devastating real-world results.
Since the start of the pandemic, 22,000 pregnant people have been hospitalized with COVID-19 and 161 have died, including 22 deaths in August, the CDC said. Symptomatic COVID-19 in pregnant people can lead to twice the risk of admission to an intensive care unit and a 70% increased risk of death.
Still, the CDC said only 31% of pregnant people have been vaccinated against COVID-19. There are also disparities according to race and ethnicity. While 45.7% of pregnant women of Asian origin are vaccinated, only 25% of pregnant Latin women and 15.6% of black pregnant women are vaccinated.
“Pregnant women are at increased risk of serious illness, hospitalization” due to COVID-19, Walensky said. “They are also at an increased risk of adverse events for their baby” if they become ill with COVID-19, which leads to an increased risk of prematurity or stillbirth or of transmission of the virus to the infant, which could put the new one -born in intensive care.
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an official health notice in July warning of the threat posed by misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine.
“The truth is that disinformation denies us our freedom to make informed decisions about our health and that of our loved ones,” he said in a briefing at the time. “During the COVID-19 pandemic, health misinformation led people to resist wearing masks in high-risk settings. This has caused them to refuse proven treatments and choose not to be vaccinated. This has led to preventable illness and death. Simply put, health misinformation has cost us our lives. “
Many people who don’t get vaccinated aren’t necessarily passionate immunization advocates, said Dr Rais Vohra, acting health officer for Fresno County. Vohra, who also works as an emergency room doctor, said many of the critically ill COVID-19 patients he treats are unvaccinated adults in their 20s, 30s and 40s who “just haven’t found the time. , or couldn’t get the time away from whatever else they were doing, and they didn’t make it a priority.
Often, these patients seemed unaware that they could get the vaccine as easily as going to a nearby pharmacy. “There are tons of people who just haven’t gotten this very basic message yet about how easy it is to get the COVID vaccine now,” Vohra said.
Other concerns mentioned to managers include people absent from work if they feel feverish after being vaccinated.
“There is also the fear of injections, the fear of needles or just the fear of vaccines,” said Dr Regina Chinsio-Kwong, a deputy health official for Orange County.
Some say they don’t think they need a vaccine if they don’t feel sick, she said, even though the vaccine’s role is to prevent future illness.
Others are also reluctant to get vaccinated if they are uninsured or if they believe authorities will ask questions about immigration status, Chinsio-Kwong said. All COVID-19 vaccines in the United States are given free of charge, and vaccinators do not ask questions about immigration status.
Another lingering myth is that vaccines can somehow restructure someone’s DNA. Health officials say that too is nonsense.
“It’s actually impossible for these vaccines to alter your DNA. There is no mechanism that would allow your DNA to be altered by these vaccines, ”LA County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said at a recent town hall briefing.
In LA County, 54% of black residents and 62% of Latino residents aged 12 and older have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, compared with 72% of white residents, 75% of Native Americans, and 81% of Asian American residents in the same age range.
Despite the fear and concerns, California and the country have made significant strides in their vaccination efforts. Statewide, providers have administered more than 48 million doses of the vaccine to date, and nearly 67% of all Californians have received at least their first injection.
But this progress is not uniform. In Orange County, California’s third most populous, health officials have expressed concerns not only about low vaccination rates across the county among Latino residents, but also among neighborhoods along the coast. where white residents constitute the majority, such as in Newport Beach, Huntington Beach and San Clemente. .
Postal codes with the lowest vaccination rates – where less than half of residents under the age of 65 have received at least one dose of vaccine – include the Balboa Peninsula and San Clemente in Newport Beach, according to the website of the county.
Some regions have made spectacular progress in reducing racial and ethnic disparities in immunizations. In northern California’s most populous county, Santa Clara, 72% of Latinos aged 12 and over received at least one dose, roughly the same percentage as white residents. Seventy-six percent of Latinos in the same age group are at least partially vaccinated in San Diego County; this is higher than the 65% of white residents in the comparable age group.
In San Francisco, 82% of Latino residents of all ages received at least one dose, while 68% of white residents received at least one dose.
While 58% of Fresno County residents of all ages are at least partially vaccinated, 83% of residents in another agricultural area – Imperial County, on the Mexican border – are vaccinated. It’s one of the best rates in the state, and the feat happened in a county where 85% of residents are Latinos.
The successful vaccination efforts are in part due to the fact that farm workers in the Imperial Valley and neighboring Coachella Valley in Riverside County are getting vaccinated at a high rate. The vaccination rate around Mecca’s farming community increased dramatically after a priest – an icon of the community – died of COVID-19, and rose from 40% to almost 100% among those eligible, according to Hernandez.
“Imperial County has a real palpable sense of urgency because there are so many people who have been infected there,” said UC San Francisco epidemiologist Dr George Rutherford. “I think they got the message right and are very careful to maintain their advantage against disease, which comes both from vaccination, and there – to a large extent – from naturally acquired infection. “
Hernandez said surveys of farm workers suggest they would be more likely to be vaccinated if their employer required them to be vaccinated, if their children had to be vaccinated to continue attending school, and if the vaccinations were a condition for traveling, such as visiting family in another country.
“We could continue to educate and educate the public about COVID-19 – debunking all the misinformation they receive every week. But at the end of the day, we need to start looking at politics now and how politics can impact the choices of the communities we serve, ”Hernandez said.
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