After a long year of widespread suffering and death, I recently found myself holding back the tears for an entirely different reason: hope.
I was moved by the images of front-line health care professionals getting vaccinated against COVID-19. And it felt so good! This achievement built on the work that Katalin Karikó — a Hungarian immigrant who paved the way for mRNA technology — initiated almost 30 years ago.
In a widely publicized moment, the careful and symbolic selection of the first U.S. vaccine recipients was powerful: Sandra Lindsay, MS, MBA, RN, an intensive care unit nurse in New York City, received the vaccine from Michelle Chester, DNP, both of whom are Black women.
The message seemed pretty obvious: It’s safe to take the vaccine, and here to prove it are two members of one of the communities most affected by the pandemic, the same one that has a long history of abuse and neglect from the medical system.
As days went by, I started to wonder if the message had been effective. Speaking with relatives, friends and colleagues here and around the world, I became more aware of the challenges ahead as we embark on the largest vaccination campaign in U.S. history.
For some, vaccinating a Black person was a reminder of Tuskegee; for others, it made them feel the vaccine was safe. For some of my immigrant friends and colleagues, it raised again the specter of deportations and public charge. For others, the vaccine represented the bridge back to normalcy. “We’ll be able to travel again in the spring,” said my cousin on the phone — unaware that even after the second dose, we will need to continue to wear masks, maintain a safe distance and wash our hands often until we have a significant number of people vaccinated.
And yet for others in my life, the advent of a vaccine meant nothing: “I’m going to continue working remotely and minimizing my social interactions for a few more months until we have more long-term data,” a friend told me.
In the foreseeable future, all of us in public health have an essential role to play in developing prevention strategies that reinforce healthier behaviors to prevent coronavirus infection. But we must also listen carefully to community concerns about the COVID-19 vaccine so that we can properly address them.
In the mid-1950s, a physician friend of my family brought one of the first batches of the polio vaccine to Mexico. He offered to vaccinate both me and my brother, but my mother declined. A few weeks later, one of the physician’s children got the disease. Apparently, some of the vials in the batch had not been properly manufactured. This experience turned my mother into a vaccine skeptic forever.
I think about my mother today and I ask myself: If she were here today, would I know how to provide her with the information she would need to decide to be vaccinated against COVID-19? Would you?
Let me know how you’d do it. Send me your thoughts.
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- Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association