Some elderly African Americans are hesitant about the Covid vaccine

BATON ROUGE, La – Flossie West was not at all interested in the coronavirus vaccine.

Carla Brown, the nurse overseeing his care, was determined to change her mind.

Ms West, 73, suffers from ovarian cancer, congestive heart failure and difficulty breathing – conditions that put her at risk if she contracts the virus. As it stands, Covid-19 has killed far too many of its neighbors in Mid-City, a low-rise, predominantly black community stretching east of the Louisiana state capital.

But Ms West’s skepticism about the new vaccines has eclipsed her fears about Covid-19. “I’m just not interested because everyone tells me the virus is a hoax,” Ms. West said. “And besides, this blow is going to make me sicker than I already am.”

On Thursday morning Ms Brown, 62, flew into Ms West’s apartment and delivered a harsh lecture: The virus is real, the vaccines are harmless and Ms West should get out of bed, get her oxygen tank and get into his car. .

“I’ll be damned if I’m going to let this coronavirus take you away,” she said.

Over the past few weeks, Ms Brown has worked frantically to persuade her patients to get vaccinated, and her campaign for a woman provides insight into the barriers that have contributed to extremely low vaccination rates in the black community.

Even as vaccine stocks become more abundant, African Americans are vaccinated at half the rate of whites, according to a New York Times analysis. The disparities are particularly alarming given the disproportionate impact the pandemic has on communities of color, who are dying twice as fast as whites.

The racial gap in vaccination rates is no less marked in Louisiana, where African Americans make up 32% of the population but only 23% of those who have been vaccinated.

Part of the problem is access. In Baton Rouge, the majority of mass vaccination sites are in white areas of the city, creating logistical challenges for older and poorer residents of black neighborhoods like Mid-City who often do not have access. to transport. Older residents have also been upset with online dating systems which can be overwhelming for those without computers, smartphones, or fast internet connections.

But much of the racial disparity in vaccination rates, experts say, can be linked to a long-standing mistrust of medical institutions among African Americans. Many Baton Rouge residents can easily cite the story of the abuse: starting with the eugenics campaigns that forcibly sterilized black women for nearly the mid-twentieth century, and the notorious government-run Tuskegee experiments in Alabama who withheld penicillin from hundreds of black men with syphilis. , some of whom later died of the disease.

“Mistrust among black Americans comes from a real place and pretending it doesn’t exist or wondering if it’s rational is a recipe for failure,” said Thomas A. LaVeist, health equity expert and dean of the School of Public. Tropical health and medicine at Tulane University. Dr LaVeist advised officials in Louisiana on ways to increase vaccination rates.

Ms Brown, 62, the palliative care nurse, has a great idea on how to change the minds of vaccine skeptics: encourage one-on-one conversations with respected figures in the black community who can address doubts and providing reliable information while recognizing what she describes as hereditary trauma scars. “If you look back at our history, we’ve been lied to and there’s been a lot of racial pain, so it’s about building trust,” she said.

It also helps when she tells people she has been vaccinated before.

A Covid survivor, Ms Brown has become a whirling dervish cross over vaccine reluctance in Baton Rouge. His sense of mission is fueled in part by personal loss. Last May, while working as a psychiatric nurse at the hospital, Ms Brown unknowingly introduced the coronavirus to her home. Her 90-year-old husband, son and father all fell seriously ill and ended up in hospital. Her husband, a cancer survivor whom she described as “the love of my life”, ended up on a ventilator. He passed away in July.

With a renewed determination to care for the most vulnerable patients, she quit her job at the hospital and last January began working with the terminally ill.

“My husband couldn’t get the vaccine, but I will be damned if I don’t vaccinate all the people around me,” she said. “I don’t care if you’re homeless. If I come towards you, you get in my car.

She went into overdrive on Thursday after learning that a pop-up vaccination site in East Baton Rouge had dozens of doses to spare.

Ms Brown prefers to do her presentation in person, but less than three hours before the site’s scheduled closure, she pulled her cherry red Toyota Scion into the parking lot of the Hi Nabor supermarket, pulled out her phone, and opened a thick binder with contact details. of the 40 patients she manages as director of nursing at Canon Hospice, a palliative care provider in Baton Rouge.

“Is this Miss Georgia?” she asked. “Have you ever been shot with Covid?” No? Well, get dressed because we are coming to pick you up.

There were several refusals – “I’m still not convinced it’s safe,” one woman said – but within an hour she had persuaded five people to get the vaccine.

She then called the East Baton Rouge Council on Aging, the nonprofit group that runs the vaccination site, and asked them to send in a few of their vans.

In addition to arranging transportation, Tasha Clark-Amar, the organization’s general manager, tries to reduce logistical hurdles by arranging appointments over the phone and asking employees to fill out the necessary paperwork in advance. Next week, she hopes to start sending teams of health workers to immunize 4,000 residents of the city who are bedridden.

Ms Clark-Amar, too, is driven by a sense of urgency: In the past year, she said, more than 140 of her clients have died from Covid-19. Her strategy for convincing the hesitant is reminiscent of Ms. Brown’s, though she often tries to appeal to leaders and respect what elders command in the black community. “I tell them, ‘You are the matriarch or the patriarch of the family, and you have to lead by example,’ she said. When that doesn’t work, she’s more blunt: “At your age, it’s the vaccine or the grave.”

Less than 30 minutes after Ms Brown made her phone calls, a home health aide led Dorothy Wells into the well-lit cafeteria at the senior center. Ms Wells, 84, a stroke patient, initially resisted the vaccination, but was rejected by her son.

Ms Wells’ assistant Rashelle Green, 45, was also reluctant to get the shot. She shared stories she had read on social media about people getting sick or dying after receiving the vaccines, although health officials say adverse reactions to the coronavirus vaccine are extremely rare.

But after seeing people get vaccinated and then come out after 15 minutes of observation, Ms Green changed her mind. While waiting for her turn, she jumped nervously up and down. As she rolled up her sleeve, she winced but barely noticed the prick of the needle. “It wasn’t bad at all,” she said.

Then there was Ms West, the cancer patient Ms Brown had visited at home earlier today. For the past year, Ms West, who lives alone and has no children, has been anxiously awaiting twice-weekly checkups with Ms Brown. Besides the occasional appointment with her oncologist, their visits are about the only time she has face-to-face contact with another person. “I feel like Mrs. Brown really cares about me,” she says.

Given the deep trust that has been cultivated over the past few months, Ms. Brown was quick to win her over.

Sitting in the vaccination site’s observation area on Thursday, Ms West said she was happy to have listened. “When I get home,” she said, “I’m going to text all my friends and tell them to go get their shots.”