As the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel begins to come into focus, a hard fact remains; the Black and African-American population in this country accounts for some of the lowest inoculation rates nationwide and in San Diego County.
That’s why leaders across San Diego County have been trying to figure out how to convince Black fellow community members that the COVID-19 vaccines are safe, despite centuries of racism and distrust in the federal government.
Figures released this week by San Diego County health department officials reveal only 2% of vaccinations administered have gone to Black or African-American residents compared to 47.5% of vaccinations administered to whites. The Black or African-American demographic makes up 5% of San Diego County’s population, according to 2019 Census figures.
Adding pressure to the situation is that the Black community has a greater risk of severe disease and death brought on by the effects of COVID-19, making it even more critical for full vaccine protection.
These points and more have sparked a call to action by the Multicultural Health Foundation in San Diego - a race against time that could mean life or death for their community.
Historical Roots of Distrust Can’t Be Pulled Overnight
Even though Felicia House is a Community Health Worker with the Multicultural Health Foundation, she admits she too was skeptical at first when she heard the news of the COVID-19 vaccines. What she heard from the top levels of government down to local officials raised red flags and post-traumatic stress for her community.
"We have good reason to be afraid," House said. “When we hear something like‘ Oh, it’s Warp Speed, ’the first thing that hits our mind is‘ Really? Well, we're just going to let you warp on out of here. ”
Stories of the U.S. government performing medical experiments on their ancestors were handed down as warnings, generation to generation, said House.
“This is a very long historical phenomenon, and we are a culture that is what we call oral-based, so we tell stories to one another, and our elders tell us stories, and those are the best resources as a community that we have had and still do have, ”House said.
Researchers concluded that in 1946, the U.S. government “immorally, unethically and possibly illegally” engaged in research experiments on more than 5,000 uninformed and unconsenting Guatemalan people. The National Center for Biotechnology Information found officials “intentionally infected” participants with bacteria that cause sexually transmitted diseases.
NCIB
Photo of Guatemalan people subjected to U.S. experimentation.
Then, there was the infamous and unethical “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis.”
It was not a study.
Instead, it was a non-therapeutic experiment carried out from 1932 to 1972 by the U.S. Public Health Service and Centers for Disease Control.
National Archives
Photo of a participant in the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment.
The subjects of the experiment included 600 Black men who were given unreliable information on the purpose of the experiment, nor were they informed on the debilitating and life-threatening consequences of the treatments they were to receive, according to the findings of a federal Advisory Panel formed to investigate the matter in 1973.
National Archives
Photo of participants in the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment.
Half of the men enrolled in the study did not have syphilis but were infected with it, and doctors withheld treatments for the disease.
The findings concluded that there was no evidence that “informed consent was gained from the human participants in this study. Such consent would and should have included knowledge of the risk of human life for the involved parties and information regarding possible infections of innocent, nonparticipating parties such as friends and relatives.”
That example and more are why Felica House and other Black leaders have an uphill climb when trying to convince their community to take the CDC’s word on COVID-19.
“Not to say that the elders who told us stories are not valid, they are,” House said. “It has saved us many, many generations over but with this case, for this virus, it is important that we look at the facts to overcome the fear.”
Three Types of Vaccine Hesitancy
Rodney Hood, Ph.D., has heard the fears from his patients time and time again. As a local physician and the Board President of the Multicultural Health Foundation, these concerns and the realities of health disparities, in general, are not new.
Back in January, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors declared “racism a public health crisis,” a fact that Hood said the Black community recognized more than 50 years ago.
“What we mean by structural racism isn’t the individuals themselves saying, ‘I’m going to do something negative with that patient,’” Hood explained. “But the system of infrastructure causing what I call ‘racialized poverty.’”
Even though these facts aren’t new, the systemic problems have been exposed clearly during the pandemic, Hood said.
“The reason why we have excess health disparities in this area, especially for African-Americans, is really historic, and it didn’t begin with Tuskegee,” Hood explained. “It’s been decades of ethnohistoric discrimination and racism towards Blacks and Hispanics.”
Hood’s fears for his community’s safety come from the data behind COVID-19 infections and the effect it’s having on his neighbors.
Rodney Hood, Ph.D., is the managing partner of the Care View Medical Group and President of the Multicultural IPA.
“When the pandemic hit, if Blacks got COVID, they were more at risk to this severe disease and death,” Hood explained, saying it comes down to comorbidities or the presence of two or more diseases in a person at one time. “If you have one comorbidity, your risk is high. If you have multiple comorbidities, it is even higher.”
Hood said those comorbidities include increased hypertension, diabetes, and asthma — health issues that have already plagued Black and Hispanic communities for decades.
“That’s why you see African Americans dying at a greater rate [from COVID-19] because they have higher morbidity,” Hood said.
Hood himself, a member of both the county and state’s task force on COVID 19, said he wasn’t convinced at first of the vaccine’s efficacy, but he concluded that it was safe once he did the research.
Through seeing patients, Hood has identified three types of vaccine hesitancy in San Diego’s Black community and nationwide: hesitancies over a lack of information, hesitancies based on distrust, and hesitancies coming from a place of “holistic resistance.”
There are different approaches to each type, he explained.
“Those that have a lack of information, just getting them that information and data they’ll be convinced,” Hood said. “Those that historically distrust the system… to get to that population, you have to give them data and information, and it needs to come from a trusted source. Somebody who looks like them, and who can identify with them.”
And for those who are entirely resistant to the idea of getting vaccinated, Hood said, “Our approach is we still love them, and we only need to get 70 to 80 percent [of the population vaccinated.]”
Other Leaders Still Not Convinced, Will Not Take Vaccine
Despite the significant health risks for the Black community members, some leaders are still not convinced the vaccine is ready to go.
Leaders have credited Sister Minister Abdul Waliullah “Hugh” Muhammad and his nonprofit “I Am My Brother’s Keeper” as a strong ally for the Black and African-American community during the pandemic.
The nonprofit that Muhammad leads as CEO has organized food drives for those who found themselves out of work, education outreach on safety guidelines during every stage of the pandemic, and creating a “super pantry” of food for southeast San Diego.
Sister Minister Abdul Waliullah Muhammad is the CEO of nonprofit “I Am My Brother’s Keeper.”
Muhammad said the systemic problem of food insecurities — or neighborhoods lacking access to healthy and affordable food options — is one he’s fought hard against while the virus has ravaged through every sector of society and economic norms.
Muhammad — along with Doctor Hood and other community leaders — sits on several local task forces designed to ensure equitable policies and practices for the pandemic response, including the Covid-19 Equity Taskforce and the Southeast Community Rapid Response Covid-19 Task Force.
But when it comes to the vaccine, spiritual leader Muhammad said he couldn’t in good conscience recommend it to his fellow residents.
“I have a responsibility as a Minister’s representative to share what we see through my lens: through the science, history, and scripture,” Muhammad said. “We are taught if we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.”
Muhammad said his concerns about the vaccine’s safety are rooted in U.S. history and the present moment. Specifically, when vaccine producers Moderna and Pfizer asked congress for protection against litigation if the vaccines cause future death or injuries.
In fact, under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness or PREP Act, both Pfizer and Moderna were indeed granted “immunity from liability” if something unintentionally goes wrong with their vaccines. Muhammad said that he would wait to get vaccinated because of this and the country’s history of racism in medical research.
“I’m not yet convinced that this is safe at this point for our people,” Muhammad said, adding that his religious beliefs have taught him to be “a watchman for his people.”
Hood, the medical community at large, and the CDC affirm the vaccines for COVID-19 are effective and safe. Even though the pharmaceutical giants developed the vaccines faster than other vaccines in the past, the companies have assured the public the shots have been carefully tested.
Felicia House said she eventually overcame her fears, based in substantial part on Hood’s direction and facts from other physician leaders in southeast San Diego. She was recently vaccinated and is now trying to educate her community.
“I did get the vaccine, and I didn’t, you know, turn into a zombie or anything,” House said with a smile. “I guess you could call me a ‘trusted messenger.’”
“Now, when I talk to my community, it’s authentic,” she explained. “I can tell them I got the vaccine, and the most that I had [side-effect-wise] was a sore arm.”
Together, House, Hood, and other groups like the NAACP have created the website “Black COVID Facts SD,” where experts lay out the data and findings behind the COVID-19 vaccines and information on case rates among San Diego’s Black community.
House said hesitation to trust the vaccine is rampant, and the only cure to the problem is to put “facts over fear.”
“When you put the facts to the fear, then your mindset changes,” House said. “And remember everything is a mindset, so when you put the facts up against your fear, then you’re able to overcome the fear.”
(CNN) Scientists have taken the first ever photos of a glow-in-the-dark shark producing its own light.
The kitefin shark, Dalatias licha, is the world’s largest known bioluminescent vertebrate, growing to nearly six feet in length.
It was found in an area of ocean known as Chatham Rise, off the east coast of New Zealand's South Island, according to a study published Tuesday by researchers from the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium and the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) in New Zealand.
The kitefin is the slowest swimming shark species in the world.
While specimens had previously shown that the kitefin shark should be capable of producing light, they are “really difficult to observe,” as they live between 200 and 900 meters (656-2,953 feet) below the ocean’s surface, Mallefet said.
Bioluminescence was also documented in two other species of deepwater shark, Etmopterus lucifer (the blackbelly lanternshark) and Etmopterus granulosus (southern lanternshark), as part of the research.
Mallefet noticed that the sharks had been caught accidentallyduring NIWA’s trawling surveys, which are used to measure fish stocks, and contacted the organization.
He was invited to join a survey trip in January 2020 and spent 30 days on board the boat, capturing multiple sharks.
“I was just like a kid at the bottom of a Christmas tree,” said Mallefet, describing how he managed to take a picture of a kitefin shark in a bucket in a dark room on the ship.
The deep sea below 200 meters (656 feet) is described as the twilight zone. Many people mistakenly believe there is no light visible there, but there is some light that the sharks find useful, Mallefet said.
“They use light to disappear,” he said, explaining how bioluminescence can render the sharks invisible against the faint glow from the ocean’s surface.
This protects the sharks from predators swimming below them, and also makes it easier for them to hunt prey, Mallefet said.
“We know that’s the case for Dalatias licha,” he said, as the remains of smaller sharks were found inside the bellies of some specimens despite the fact that the species is the slowest swimming shark in the world.
The luminous sharks haven’t given up all of their secrets, however, including why their dorsal fin glows.
Further research is needed to work out whether this could be used for signaling, Mallefet said, adding: “There are still question marks.”
Mallefet told CNN he would like to study the dorsal fin in greater detail on future trips to the area, as well as looking into what the sharks eat and whether they are eaten.
The aim is to find out more about the deep sea, which remains mysterious despite the fact that it’s the most common environment on Earth, in order to make people think more about preserving it, he said.
“I fear that we have done a lot of mistakes throwing stuff in the sea,” said Mallefet. "I fear what will happen for the next generations."
The House passed a bill on Wednesday aimed at helping prevent police misconduct, naming the legislation after a Black man who was killed by Minneapolis police last May in a violent arrest that triggered nationwide protests against racial injustice and police brutality.
The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act passed 220-212 in the Democratic-controlled House. The legislation bans police from using chokeholds and no-knock warrants, requires data collection on police encounters and ends qualified immunity - a legal doctrine often used to shield police from accountability.
The bill also authorizes new grant funding for community-based organizations to implement evidence-based initiatives like violence interruption and hospital-based violence intervention - strategies to keep neighborhoods safe that mostly don’t involve police.
Ten months ago, then-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who is white, killed Floyd after kneeling on his neck for several minutes while he was handcuffed and face down on the street. Footage of the incident that went viral on social media showed Floyd begging officers for air, saying he couldn’t breathe. After pressure had already built up from repeated deaths of Black people at the hands of police, Floyd's death broke the dam and resulted in protests across the country - with some people calling for police reform, some demanding police funds go to social services and others calling for police abolition.
“My city is not an outlier but rather an example of the inequalities our country has struggled with for centuries,” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Whose district includes Minneapolis, said inside as she presided over House debate and called the vote ahead of the bill's passage.
“Today we find ourselves at a crossroads,” she added. "Will we have the moral courage to pursue justice and secure meaningful change, or will we succumb to this moment?"
House Democrats first introduced and passed the bill, mostly along party lines, last year in the wake of Floyd’s death, but the legislation failed in the Republican-controlled Senate. Democrats hope the bill will pass both chambers this time, now that the Senate has a 50-50 partisan split, with Vice President Kamala Harris able to serve as a tie-breaker for the Democrats.
“We will begin those discussions with the Senate immediately after the bill is passed,” Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.), Who is helping lead police reform efforts in the House, told reporters ahead of the Wednesday vote. “Over the last several weeks, discussions, especially with Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) And Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Have been underway.”
But despite the bill’s passage in the House, not all advocacy groups are on board with what they see as the legislation’s limited scope.
“While we understand the urgency to pass police reform at the federal level, we can't do it in a way that merely provides a veneer of justice while sacrificing real systemic change at the most opportune moment to achieve it,” Maritza Perez, spokesperson for the Drug Policy Alliance, said in a statement.
Perez noted that the bill does not fully address issues such as police militarization, quick-knock raids and police practices disproportionately used against people of color in drug investigations
“Unfortunately, because House leadership chose to fast-track last year’s bill, rather than addressing advocates’ and community members ’concerns, that’s exactly the compromise they have made, and today’s vote solidified those failings,” she added. “The House-passed bill fails to provide for real reform and accountability and we oppose this bill in its current form.”
