The Peridot's Point: Vaccines
Vaccines
an editorial by The Peridot
“Circle…Circle…Dot…Dot…Now I got my Cooties shot!” Do y’all remember that playground chant?
We are quickly approaching our one year anniversary of life with COVID-19. As of December 18, 2020 there have been 75.5 million reported cases of COVID-19, with a death toll of 1.67 million lives lost, and 42.6 million reported cases of recovery world wide. In the United States of America there have been 17.5 million reported cases and over 315,000 COVID-19 related deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
I am vaccinated. I was vaccinated as a child and as an adult. For the last two years I have taken a flu vaccine. I had the chicken pox in the summer of ’97, but never contracted the mumps or the measles, because I received the MMR, Measles, Mumps, and Rubella vaccine that prevents the viruses that spread easily through the air via the cough or sneeze of an infected person. I have received numerous vaccinations in order to attend public school and travel aboard.
I heard children born after 1997 don’t even get the chicken pox anymore. I still have the scars from my bout. But the chicken pox has been eradicated, the measles were too, well until recently.
The measles, which symptoms include cough, runny nose, inflamed eyes, sore throat, fever, and a skin rash, killed 207,000 people in 2019. Measles is highly contagious, but easily preventable by a vaccine. Researchers from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the CDC reported 869,000 measles cases globally in 2019, the highest total in 23 years due to gaps in vaccinations and large outbreaks across multiple countries. That was a 556% increase since 2016, when the world reported historic lows in both death and cases from the measles.
Various groups across online social media platforms have helped spread anti-vaccination propaganda and perpetuate the claim that has since been proven false, that vaccinations cause autism in children.
Humans with autism are whole, intelligent, capable, beautiful people. According to Autism Speaks, analysis of 10 studies involving more than 1.2 million children reaffirm that vaccines don’t cause autism; the MMR shot may actually decrease risk.
Black people deservedly harbor a distrust for the government and modern medicine. Industries built off of our exploited bodies. The crimes done to us robbed us of stolen resources and cures. Relief was kept from us.
The infamous syphilis study, The Tuskegee Experiment, which is often cited as the cause for Black peoples’ vaccination pause, actually has nothing to do with vaccines. The Tuskegee study of untreated syphilis in the Negro male was a 40-year project…yes, the Tuskegee experiment lasted for four decades, beginning before there was even a known treatment in 1932. Syphilis is a contagious venereal disease, meaning that it is infectious through sexual intercourse.
600 African American men in Macon County, Alabama were lured into enrolling in the experiment under the guise of free medical care. The aim of the project was to study the full progression of the disease.
In order to track the development of the disease, the doctors from the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS), which was running the study, provided no effective care to the 399 men with latent syphilis. The others were used a control group. The participants were primarily made up of sharecroppers who had never visited a doctor before. They were given placebos such as aspirin and mineral supplements to treat bad blood, a term commonly used in the area at the time to refer to a variety of aliments, despite the fact that penicillin became the recommended treatment for syphilis in 1947, some 15 years into the study.
The men died, went blind or insane, or experienced other severe health problems due to their untreated syphilis.
This research was conducted at the Tuskegee Institute, a Historically Black University now called, Tuskegee University founded in 1881. Booker T. Washington was the school’s first teacher.
Peter Buxton, A PHS venereal disease investigator in San Francisco, found out about the Tuskegee study and expressed his concern to his superiors that it was unethical.
A committee was formed to review the study and ruled to continue the experiment with the goal of tracking the participants until all had died, autopsies were performed, and the project data could be analyzed.
Buxton then leaked the story to Jean Heller of the Associated Press, who broke the story in July 1972 prompting public outrage and forcing the experiment to finally end.
28 Black men who participated in the project perished from syphilis, 100 more died from related complications, at least 40 spouses were diagnosed with syphilis, and the disease was passed to 19 children at birth.
The man referred to as the “father of modern gynecology,” James Marion Sims conducted his research on enslaved Black women without anesthesia. Sims cared more about the experiments than in providing therapeutic treatment. Medical ethicists say he caused untold suffering by operating under the racist notion that Black people did not feel pain.
Researchers from the CDC reported in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly report in September 2019 that Black, American Indian (sic), and Alaska Native (AI/AN) women are two to three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women - and this disparity increases with age.
Most pregnancy-related deaths are preventable. Pregnancy-related deaths per 100,000 (the pregnancy-related mortality ratio) for Black and American Indian, and Alaska Native women older than 30 was four to five times as high than for white women. The disparity is a complex national problem.
Black people have evidential proof for their skepticism of modern medicine. I do not want to ever minimize those concerns, but it is all of our responsibility not to spread misinformation, especially during a pandemic where our community is the most vulnerable.
On November 09, 2020 Pfizer and BioNtech announced a vaccine candidate that was 90% effective in preventing COVID-19. According to CNN, “the US Food and Drug Administration plans to grant emergency use authorization to Moderna for their vaccine" that is similar to Pfizer-BioNTech, but is more accessible, because it can be stored in normal freezers. The FDA did not approve any of the previous nine vaccine candidates submitted by Moderna, nor had they ever brought a product to phase three of a clinical trial.
The company’s scientist had already been collaborating with researchers from the National Institutes of Health on a vaccine for another coronavirus, Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).
Many are doubtful on the effectiveness of the vaccine because of how rapid the development seems. This is a global crisis, meaning a massive amount of people are highly motivated to find a legitimate treatment. The red tape of funding, which historically has caused delays in pharmaceutical development, is not an issue, and because COVID-19 is a type of coronavirus, vaccines that were already in development could get into a Phase 3 trial within six months instead of two years, because research and studies were already being conducted.
Even if I wanted to get my cooties shot, I couldn’t. Well not any time soon. The vaccine will be administered in phases. Two doses are required given three weeks apart. The COVID-19 vaccine is not mandatory. There are not even enough doses for all those who need it. Front line health care workers are the first to receive the vaccine. Now, I don’t know much, but I don’t think that a microchip will be implanted in those who do receive the vaccination. That seems like a great deal of work when everyone already willingly carries around a tracking device with front and back cameras, and mindlessly accept cookies from every website they scroll through.
All I ask is that you do your own research and make sound judgments based off of analyzing that research with logical reasoning. Don’t be moved by conjecture. Check the sources. Mine are listed below.
Let me know how you feel about vaccines. Let’s engage in some healthy dialogue.
Sources:
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2019/p0905-racial-ethnic-disparities-pregnancy-deaths.html
https://www.history.com/.amp/news/the-infamous-40-year-tuskegee-study
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/17/health/moderna-vaccine-what-we-know/index.html
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_casesper100klast7days
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2019/p0905-racial-ethnic-disparities-pregnancy-deaths.html
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/8-things.html
