Speaker 1: Over the past few months, you've probably heard a lot
Speaker 1: about the Tuskegee Experiment. In the nineteen thirties, researchers began
Speaker 1: a study of six hundred black men with syphilis. Scientists
Speaker 1: told them they were being treated for quote, bad blood.
Speaker 1: That was not the truth. They wanted to study what
Speaker 1: would happen if syphilis went untreated. The study ran for
Speaker 1: forty years, the men never received the proper treatment to
Speaker 1: cure their illness. Or you might also know the story
Speaker 1: of Henrietta A. Lax, a Black woman who underwent cancer
Speaker 1: treatment in the nineteen fifties in a segregated hospital. She died,
Speaker 1: but researchers cloned her cancer cells. These cells became the
Speaker 1: first immortalized human cell line and lead to countless medical
Speaker 1: breakthrough But Lax did not consent to this, and while
Speaker 1: drug manufacturers profit off of them, her family had no
Speaker 1: idea and continued to live in poverty for decades. Or
Speaker 1: maybe you've heard about Jay Mary and Simms, the so
Speaker 1: called father of modern guide incology. He experimented on enslaved
Speaker 1: black women without anesthesia. There was a statue of him
Speaker 1: in Central Park until over the past year, these events
Speaker 1: have become a sort of shorthand for why some Black
Speaker 1: people don't trust the COVID vaccines, And of course this
Speaker 1: legacy of abuse is part of the reason for that mistrust.
Speaker 1: You come to this point in life and you still
Speaker 1: have some of that that trauma that you've you've you've
Speaker 1: held on to the residue from the oral stories that
Speaker 1: have been passed down generationally to your own experiences. That's
Speaker 1: Dr Timothy Sloan. He's the head pastor at the Luke
Speaker 1: a Baptist Church in Humble, Texas. Now, when you talk
Speaker 1: about UM the vaccine, there's the reminder of the trauma
Speaker 1: that was experienced through UM the Tuskegee experiment, and you
Speaker 1: hear the conversations that, um, we need more African Americans
Speaker 1: to be tested UM to get more data for the
Speaker 1: vaccine than that automatically triggers some mistrust. But high profile
Speaker 1: abuses like the Tuskey Experiment don't fully explain why the
Speaker 1: black community is so suspicious of the medical establishment. Dr
Speaker 1: Sloan says, there's a lot more to it. So when
Speaker 1: we talk about the mistrust, I'm a descendant from the
Speaker 1: family of of Briggs. Briggs versus Elliott was the first
Speaker 1: case tried dealing with school to segregation in some No,
Speaker 1: South Carolina. In Briggs versus Elliott, was the precursor to
Speaker 1: Brown versus Board of Education, the landmark case in which
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court ruled that segregating schools was unconstitutional. The
Speaker 1: case was tried in Charleston, South Carolina, not far from
Speaker 1: my grandmother's house. Their good marshal tried the case, and so,
Speaker 1: of course we didn't win that case. That's when they
Speaker 1: went on though towards Brown Versusport of Education. The case
Speaker 1: was eventually appealed and then combined with Brown versus Board
Speaker 1: of Education. Brown would succeed where Briggs had originally failed
Speaker 1: and paved the way for Dr Sloan to be the
Speaker 1: first person in his family to go to a desegregated school.
Speaker 1: Then Dr Sloan told me about another piece of his
Speaker 1: family history. My grandfather was murdered in tarl So, South
Speaker 1: Carolina by a white mob and he was drowned there
Speaker 1: off the seashore. Dr Sloan says that his grandmother got
Speaker 1: a knock on the door and someone said her husband
Speaker 1: had drowned, without giving a reason why or explaining how
Speaker 1: it had happened. They just said he drowned, But everyone
Speaker 1: in this town knew what happened, saw it happen there
Speaker 1: that night. Dr Sloan's family history isn't a diversion. It's
Speaker 1: the point. If you are black in America, there are
Speaker 1: just more reasons to be on the defensive. Your school
Speaker 1: may not want you to get an education, your doctors
Speaker 1: might want to use you as elaborate, and one day
Speaker 1: your loved one just might disappear without any explanation. How
Speaker 1: could you not be suspicious of all of the systems
Speaker 1: and forces that influence your life. Old stories that trickle down,
Speaker 1: They come with a sense of of guards, uptype mentality
Speaker 1: in your way of life. I've talked before in this
Speaker 1: series about how vaccines require trust in order to work.
Speaker 1: Right now, the medical establishment is asking the Black community
Speaker 1: to trust them, and that's a big ask. Medical racism
Speaker 1: isn't just a historical fact, it's a present day reality.
Speaker 1: Black women are three times more likely than white women
Speaker 1: to die because of pregnancy. Half of the number of
Speaker 1: black people receive mental health services. Black Americans have the
Speaker 1: highest mortality rate for cancer compared to every other racial group.
Speaker 1: In this episode, I've made the choice to talk mainly
Speaker 1: about the Black community. Every community's relationship to healthcare and
Speaker 1: vaccines is different, and we could probably spend an entire
Speaker 1: episode on each of them. Polling has also shown significant
Speaker 1: hesitancy among Hispanic people and people who live in rural areas.
Speaker 1: Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to say they
Speaker 1: won't get the vaccine at all. Of course, every individual
Speaker 1: has their own experience too. No community is a monolith,
Speaker 1: but Black Americans have died at twice the rate of
Speaker 1: wide Americans from the virus. So while there may be
Speaker 1: trust issues with the vaccine and communities of color, they're
Speaker 1: also the communities that need vaccines the most. The medical
Speaker 1: establishments need to earn back some of that trust is
Speaker 1: a matter of life and death, and if they succeed,
Speaker 1: it could offer crucial insights into how to get other
Speaker 1: skeptical groups to get the shot as well. I'm Bloomberg
Speaker 1: News health reporter Christin B. Brown from the prog News
Speaker 1: podcast This is Doubt. M On September twelf Reverend R. F.
Speaker 1: Skinner founded the St. Luke Missionary Baptist Church in Humble, Texas.
Speaker 1: Humble is located eighteen miles northeast of Houston, where the
Speaker 1: Woody Big Thicket meets the coastal plains. At the turn
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century, it was a small town along
Speaker 1: a rail line where most residents worked in agriculture or lumber.
Speaker 1: Eventually oil would be discovered there and the town would
Speaker 1: boom and bust many times over. Its residents were both
Speaker 1: black and white, but they didn't really mix. The black
Speaker 1: people of Humble were not allowed to attend white churches.
Speaker 1: St Luke was a black church, but in the story goes,
Speaker 1: the white residents held a meeting they decided the black
Speaker 1: churches of Humble were no longer welcome. They told us
Speaker 1: the next day that there was a vote and we
Speaker 1: had to move our church, and we had if we
Speaker 1: would hurry, we could get some land on the other
Speaker 1: side of the railroad tracks. As Dr. Sloan tells it,
Speaker 1: the congregation of St. Luke was asked to move literally
Speaker 1: across the tracks and landed eventually in an area called Bordersville,
Speaker 1: and we were there up until the two thousand and ten,
Speaker 1: when we bought property and moved back into really the
Speaker 1: center of Humble. For eighty years, St Luke had been
Speaker 1: cast out of the center of town Dr Sloan came
Speaker 1: aboard in two thousand two. Under his leadership, the church
Speaker 1: bought twenty acres of land in prime Humble, built a
Speaker 1: brand new, multimillion dollar worship center that could hold a
Speaker 1: thousand people, and eventually rechristened itself the Luke. This story
Speaker 1: is central to the church's mythology. The ending is a
Speaker 1: story of triumph, but it's also yet another story about
Speaker 1: people of color being cast aside and treated inequitably. These
Speaker 1: issues are baked into the identity of the church, and
Speaker 1: a lot of what we do centers on the challenges
Speaker 1: and struggles at impact African Americans, and for the last year,
Speaker 1: those struggles have included whether or not to trust in
Speaker 1: the COVID vaccines. As a pastor, Dr Sloan is the
Speaker 1: leader of his five thousand member congregation. He's a trusted
Speaker 1: voice throughout the pandemic. He had avoided discussing the vaccine
Speaker 1: and his sermons. Dr Sloane himself was torn over getting one.
Speaker 1: I had really been struggling with it, you know, I've
Speaker 1: been talking about it, trying to figure out if I
Speaker 1: trust the vaccine. Conversations with my wife. His wife, the
Speaker 1: first lady of the church is an orthopedic surgeon, you know.
Speaker 1: We both were wrestling with it. And I started to think, though,
Speaker 1: wait a minute. If I have these questions, and I've
Speaker 1: got access to the information I have access to, and
Speaker 1: surely the typical member of my congregation has the same questions,
Speaker 1: then how are we all going to deal with this?
Speaker 1: And I think one of the big gaps is information
Speaker 1: in communities. So the church did a survey and found
Speaker 1: that the congregation was pretty hesitant. In October, only thirty
Speaker 1: of congregants were comfortable getting vaccinate did And there was
Speaker 1: a lot of misinformation floating around. You heard everything from
Speaker 1: people saying, you know, they're gonna put a microchip in
Speaker 1: you too, You're gonna grow an extra limb, you know.
Speaker 1: And I hear people gonna get cancer from this, you know,
Speaker 1: all kinds of things that were out there, floating from
Speaker 1: what you you see on social media and um and
Speaker 1: I was I begun just reading through all that stuff
Speaker 1: and was thinking, man, that this is just bad information
Speaker 1: and our biggest hurdle is information. Here. Dr Sloan's congregation
Speaker 1: isn't alone in its hesitancy. Different poles paints somewhat varying
Speaker 1: pictures of vaccine skepticism among Black Americans, but many suggest
Speaker 1: there is more concern about COVID vaccines among black people
Speaker 1: than white people. The recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll, for example,
Speaker 1: found black adults say they plan to wait to get
Speaker 1: the vaccine until more people have taken it. Compared to
Speaker 1: white adults. Those numbers are actually a lot better than
Speaker 1: when the vaccines first began rolling out. All of this
Speaker 1: skepticism presented a problem for Dr Sloan. It's not enough
Speaker 1: to just give people the facts. Anyone can pull up
Speaker 1: government statistics. But in an age where everyone seems to
Speaker 1: be hawking a different set of facts, it's not just
Speaker 1: the message that matters, it's also the messenger. And you're
Speaker 1: going to edit all this right, Yes, yes, this is
Speaker 1: I have a producer. You will make you sound lovely
Speaker 1: and me sound lovely, and everything you tell him, I
Speaker 1: want him to make me sound like James Earl Jones.
Speaker 1: All right, this is Dr Stephen Thomas, Professor in the
Speaker 1: Department of Health Policy and Management at the University of
Speaker 1: Maryland School of Public Health. Stephen has been interested in
Speaker 1: healthcare since he was a kid. His mom was a
Speaker 1: nurse and back in the day when nurses kind of
Speaker 1: look like a nurses, you know, the white star tad
Speaker 1: I who remember her as a child polishing those shoes,
Speaker 1: and so that inspired me to be involved in health.
Speaker 1: Stephen has been researching the issue of inequity and healthcare
Speaker 1: since before there was widespread acknowledgment that that was even
Speaker 1: a thing. He wants to understand the context that shapes
Speaker 1: the attitudes and behaviors of people of color when it
Speaker 1: comes to their health. He says, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of things about how we talk about vaccines that don't
Speaker 1: inspire trust. This includes the language we used to talk
Speaker 1: about them. It can be scary, confusing, and sometimes also
Speaker 1: kind to offensive. So you want to come into my
Speaker 1: community talking about her immunity, well, I can remember my
Speaker 1: grandmother telling me at one time White people have thought
Speaker 1: of us like animals, like herds, like chattel. Why do
Speaker 1: you want to come into my community with that? Stephen
Speaker 1: says that when you're talking about vaccination, you can't divorce
Speaker 1: it from all of the other health care inequities that
Speaker 1: can impact people of color. There are hundreds of studies
Speaker 1: that have demonstrated people of color routinely get access to
Speaker 1: worse healthcare in America, Black people are more likely to
Speaker 1: delay care because of cost, they're more likely to have diabetes,
Speaker 1: and they're more likely to die of heart disease. We've
Speaker 1: seen similar disparities play out with vaccination. Black and brown
Speaker 1: communities have been hit hardest by the pandemic, and yet
Speaker 1: not every region has chosen to give communities of color
Speaker 1: more doses of the vaccine. Paiser Family Foundation data shows
Speaker 1: Black and Hispanic people have consistently received fewer vaccines compared
Speaker 1: to their share of cases and deaths. And when inoculation
Speaker 1: sites have been set up to give underserved or minority
Speaker 1: populations better access to shots, sometimes wealthier suburban nights have
Speaker 1: just driven over to get shots there themselves. This is
Speaker 1: really frustrating for people like Stephen. It's clear that there
Speaker 1: is a concerted effort to make an overture to the
Speaker 1: black community. When they announced the Phase three clinical trials
Speaker 1: for the Maderna vaccine, the National Institutes of Health put
Speaker 1: out a Q and A which featured a black trial
Speaker 1: participant talking about why it was important black people to
Speaker 1: take part in the trial. I had questions that about
Speaker 1: what it would be like, about how it impact on
Speaker 1: me and so I'm here today to help others decide
Speaker 1: whether or not they want to volunteer to participate in
Speaker 1: clinical trials. I have to say, the mayor of Tuski, Alabama,
Speaker 1: televised getting his own COVID shot, so did Kamala Harris,
Speaker 1: our first Black Asian and female VP. But lack of
Speaker 1: access it just reinforces existing mistrust. And that doesn't just
Speaker 1: mean having shots available. It also means making sure everyone
Speaker 1: is able to figure out how to sign up for
Speaker 1: an appointment. Don't put systems in place that you say
Speaker 1: are okay, well, everybody has can get online and sign up.
Speaker 1: But I know a whole bunch of people who look
Speaker 1: like me who don't have stable internet, still on flip
Speaker 1: bones and can sit around refreshing, refreshing, refreshing. You get me.
Speaker 1: So these built in inequalities really exacerbate the institutional racism
Speaker 1: we've been living with Over and over again. In reporting
Speaker 1: the series, I've heard from people that they feel dismissed
Speaker 1: or that their concerns about vaccines weren't taken seriously. That's
Speaker 1: a big problem across the board. It's hard to trust
Speaker 1: anyone who treats you like your stupid or your concerns
Speaker 1: don't matter. Inequities make all of this worse. Hesitant doesn't
Speaker 1: mean no, it means let's talk and don't rush over me.
Speaker 1: This moment is a critical one, and there are forces
Speaker 1: conspiring to really try and screw it up. Anti vaccine
Speaker 1: figureheads like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Have been targeting the
Speaker 1: black community. In March, Kennedy put out a documentary called
Speaker 1: Medical Racism, clearly aimed at recruiting more people of color
Speaker 1: to the cause, but honestly a botched rollout of the
Speaker 1: vaccines in which the people who need them the most
Speaker 1: can't get them. That stands to threaten the trust of
Speaker 1: the black community as much as anything else. It's hard
Speaker 1: to trust a system that doesn't seem to prioritize or
Speaker 1: care about people that look like you. Those inequality issues
Speaker 1: desperately need to be addressed better, But efforts to gain
Speaker 1: the trust to the black community do seem to be
Speaker 1: making an impact, and those efforts just might tell us
Speaker 1: something useful about how to inspire trust in vaccines in
Speaker 1: other communities. Stephen says, we know plenty about why people
Speaker 1: of color distrust health care systems. He says, what we
Speaker 1: need now or solutions. The idea for one of those
Speaker 1: solutions came to him over twenty years ago when he
Speaker 1: was getting a haircut. I'll change his name to protect him,
Speaker 1: all right, Joe walks in, and you have to understand.
Speaker 1: And a black barbershop, you have TVs on every wall,
Speaker 1: all to a different shan and the music explaining, and
Speaker 1: everybody's talking. So Joe comes in, Hey, Joe, where you been?
Speaker 1: He said he was in the emergency room. He pulls
Speaker 1: out these pills. He said, the doctor told me I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to take these pills the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: In the barber set, Joe, you know, if you take
Speaker 1: those pills, you won't be able to keep up your obligations.
Speaker 1: And everybody heard that. I don't have to explain to
Speaker 1: you what that means obligations. I'm going to assume you
Speaker 1: know what he means when he says obligations. I looked
Speaker 1: at Joe's face. He's not going to take those pills.
Speaker 1: His doctor has no idea. There's somebody in the community
Speaker 1: with this level of influence. Now Jone has been in
Speaker 1: the hospital. E er, you just counting up the cross
Speaker 1: diagnosed prescribed a medication, got the prescription field walks and
Speaker 1: took on barber's up and not going to take those
Speaker 1: pills anymore. And they not want to go back to
Speaker 1: the doctor because he hasn't been following the doctor's orders.
Speaker 1: This got Stephen thinking, it's easy to avoid the doctors,
Speaker 1: but not so much a barber. Not if you want
Speaker 1: to look good anyway, no self respect and black barber
Speaker 1: whatever is say, I'll get you in and out in
Speaker 1: the fifteen minutes. Okay, there ain't no super cuts, no
Speaker 1: hair cutler, ain't none of that. You're going to spend
Speaker 1: have a day in the barbershop just catching the po thing.
Speaker 1: Some people come in and they don't even need a haircut.
Speaker 1: So in many ways it's a sacred space. And this
Speaker 1: put an idea in Steven's mind. Whatever the barber was
Speaker 1: a partner. What if the barber said, hey, Joe, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're having side effects, you know, a rectile dysfunction,
Speaker 1: don't be ashamed, tell your doctor you can change the medication.
Speaker 1: In other words, Stephen wanted the barber and the doctors
Speaker 1: to team up. He wondered what would happen if health
Speaker 1: advice wasn't only coming from doctors, but also from a
Speaker 1: trusted member of the community. So in two thousand one,
Speaker 1: Stephen started what would become HAIR, the Health Advocates in
Speaker 1: Reach and Research campaign. Through HAIR, he trains local barbers
Speaker 1: and beauticians in Maryland to offer good health advice to
Speaker 1: the community and advocate for things like collorrectal screenings. During
Speaker 1: the pandemic. Stephen has mobilized this network to disseminate accurate
Speaker 1: COVID information, including about the vaccines. Stephen believes that in
Speaker 1: order to get past the mistrust, you have to do
Speaker 1: the work to build trust, and that requires meeting people
Speaker 1: where they are. It requires listening to them, and it
Speaker 1: requires acknowledging the missteps of the past and the inequalities
Speaker 1: that persist today. I don't like to have to throw
Speaker 1: tuskee in your face in an order for you to
Speaker 1: understand that black lives matter, and they don't have to
Speaker 1: be marching in street the matter. They may be in
Speaker 1: a hospital that matters too. With that one word, think
Speaker 1: of what I'm saying to you that these institutions have
Speaker 1: me history of abuse in the name, but I'm here
Speaker 1: to help you in the name of science. Now you
Speaker 1: want me to trust this science this is a legitimate
Speaker 1: distrust and our efforts should be then to rebuild trust
Speaker 1: and then and be trustworthy. At the end of the day,
Speaker 1: even your favorite celebrity probably isn't as convincing as someone
Speaker 1: you know, like your aunt, or your barber or your reverend.
Speaker 1: Back in Humble, Texas, Dr Sloan was struggling with what
Speaker 1: message to send his congregation about the vaccine. The pastor
Speaker 1: still had a lot of questions by the time vaccines
Speaker 1: were starting to roll out. He began thinking about what
Speaker 1: kind of trusted expert the church could turn to for answers.
Speaker 1: I thought to myself, why not asked the top dot
Speaker 1: in the nation? And you know the words he can
Speaker 1: say is no. And you know if he doesn't respond,
Speaker 1: nobody knows us in the letter but me. So he
Speaker 1: sent an email to the office of Anthony Fauci, the
Speaker 1: head of the National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Diseases.
Speaker 1: A week later, Dr Sloan got a response. Fauci was
Speaker 1: in on January six, the same day that pro Trump
Speaker 1: extremists stormed the Capitol. They taped an interview. It would
Speaker 1: air that Sunday as part of the day's worship Service.
Speaker 1: Dr Sloan says that going into that interview, he was
Speaker 1: still feeling pretty conflicted about the shot, but there was
Speaker 1: one moment in which he started to change his mind.
Speaker 1: First of all, I think we need to acknowledge that
Speaker 1: the concern and the hesitation based on what you refer
Speaker 1: to UH as you know, the slights and the mistreatment
Speaker 1: of the African American community historically by the established government
Speaker 1: medical establishment is real in history and we have to
Speaker 1: recognize that it occurred, and we have to emphasize that
Speaker 1: UH situations have been put in place, UH safeguards have
Speaker 1: been put in place that this could never happen again.
Speaker 1: When he did that, I felt like for the thousands
Speaker 1: of people who were watching, guards automatically went down and
Speaker 1: there was there was a receptiveness towards what he was saying.
Speaker 1: And after listening to him, after hearing the thoroughness, after
Speaker 1: hearing the different things explained in Layman's terms, um I
Speaker 1: concluded that conversation with confidence in taking the vaccine. This
Speaker 1: because back to a lot of what we talked about earlier,
Speaker 1: people and especially black people who have been screwed over
Speaker 1: time and time again. I want to be acknowledged and
Speaker 1: heard vout she was putting all of this into practice,
Speaker 1: and I think that's what many people want. They want
Speaker 1: to know that that what I feel is legitimate, and
Speaker 1: he legitimized a lot of the pain and trauma of
Speaker 1: African Americans. And so we were like, okay, all right,
Speaker 1: So here's someone who really understands where we're coming from.
Speaker 1: And I felt that way, Okay, you understand where I'm
Speaker 1: coming from with these questions. So the interview plays as
Speaker 1: part of the Sunday service. After it ends, it's time
Speaker 1: for Dr. Sloan to give his sermon. Dr Sloan says
Speaker 1: that initially he felt uneasy telling his congregation to go
Speaker 1: and get vaccinated outright, even though his own concerns had dissipated.
Speaker 1: This is something I've heard from other leaders of Black
Speaker 1: churches in reporting this. A lot of them say that
Speaker 1: they want to give their congregance good information about the vaccines,
Speaker 1: but they don't want to go so far as to
Speaker 1: tell them they should get it. Many have told me
Speaker 1: that would risk compromising the trust their congregations have in them.
Speaker 1: They don't want to appear as if they're on the
Speaker 1: side of corporations or the government. Instead, of their community.
Speaker 1: I wanted to offer to people, you know, hey, take
Speaker 1: this information and make the best decision. So the reverend
Speaker 1: takes the stage after the interview plays. He's wearing a
Speaker 1: crisp black suit and light pink tie. He has thick
Speaker 1: black frame glasses on. He starts with a story about
Speaker 1: lepers in the Book of Second Kings, chapter seven, beginning
Speaker 1: at verse three, the word of God is recorded. The
Speaker 1: story goes that there were four lepers standing outside a
Speaker 1: city gate. The city is suffering from famine, and the
Speaker 1: lepers are trying to figure out what to do with themselves.
Speaker 1: So they said to each other, why should we stay
Speaker 1: here until we die? If we say we'll go into
Speaker 1: the city, well, the famine is there and we will die.
Speaker 1: And if we stay here, we will die. So let's
Speaker 1: go over into the camp or the Ramians and surrender.
Speaker 1: Doctor Sloan then goes on to say that he's telling
Speaker 1: the story because it's about people making decisions together, and
Speaker 1: then suddenly he switches gears from the Old Testament to today.
Speaker 1: I don't need to tell you how startling the statistics
Speaker 1: are today. There've been over ninety one million cases of
Speaker 1: COVID worldwide. One point nine three mill in deaths, twenty
Speaker 1: two point seven million cases and three hundred eighty one
Speaker 1: thousand deaths in the United States alone, and those numbers
Speaker 1: are still rising as we speak. And while these numbers
Speaker 1: are alarming, there even worse for African Americans. As his
Speaker 1: sermon unfolds, he discusses Tuskegee and why it's understandable for
Speaker 1: black people to be suspicious of the vaccine, and then
Speaker 1: he makes a link between the lepers and the Black community.
Speaker 1: Challenges are nothing new to us, but we've always been
Speaker 1: reminded that overcoming obstacles is going to require an undaunted
Speaker 1: faith in God. And that's why we can so easily
Speaker 1: identify with these lepers in this text. We share similar realities.
Speaker 1: We know what it's like to be ostracized because of
Speaker 1: your skin color. We also know what it's like to
Speaker 1: be written off by others, but use God. He again
Speaker 1: lays out the options the lepers had go into the
Speaker 1: city and die, stay at the gate and die, or
Speaker 1: go to the camp and possibly live. At this point,
Speaker 1: he does something he wasn't planning on. He takes a
Speaker 1: stand on the vaccine. We try to go back to
Speaker 1: normal without the vaccine. Handcuffed by the traumatic past that's
Speaker 1: been inflicted upon us, we'll die. If we stay here
Speaker 1: and just hope things will get better and it'll magically disappear,
Speaker 1: then we'll die. But if we take the vaccine, we live.
Speaker 1: Dr Sloan's plans had changed mid sermon. It wasn't enough
Speaker 1: for him to tell his congregation to just try and
Speaker 1: find the best information about vaccines. He decided to trust
Speaker 1: and he died his congregation to do the same. And
Speaker 1: so I get home and my wife goes, so, I
Speaker 1: guess you just told everybody to take the vaccine. Huh.
Speaker 1: And I said, well, I guess I did you know?
Speaker 1: And I think that is what I really didn't want
Speaker 1: to accomplish. I wanted to let them know how much
Speaker 1: confidence I have in it. And I think it's it's
Speaker 1: it's pivotal for us. Doctor Sloan went even further. In February.
Speaker 1: He put out a video that was basically a p
Speaker 1: s A for vaccination. Vuci's message to the community was important,
Speaker 1: but it carried even more weight when endorsed by a
Speaker 1: trusted church leader. There's evidence the efforts like this are
Speaker 1: paying off in the black community. A lot of faith
Speaker 1: leaders have spoken out if pastors and faith leaders just
Speaker 1: simply continue to waffle about it and not and not
Speaker 1: choose one side of the other, then you're gonna leave
Speaker 1: still a lot of people out there who are still
Speaker 1: sifting through the information with maybe some difficulty and actually
Speaker 1: really comprehending it and never really making, you know, a
Speaker 1: proper decision. So I felt like I need to tell
Speaker 1: you where I stand and what I think is is
Speaker 1: important for us. But just like my sermons you know
Speaker 1: every Sunday pre vaccine. You know, listen, you can take
Speaker 1: it to leave it something. You might not like it,
Speaker 1: but here it is, is what I believe. Dr Sloan
Speaker 1: has heard from his congregants that Fauci's talk really made
Speaker 1: a difference for them. I spoke to one of them,
Speaker 1: Bloody Coverson, a retired teacher in her sixties who was
Speaker 1: also a deacon at the Luke. One day I would say,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take it, and the next day I was like, no,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't think about it for a while. That's what
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take it. I'm gonna take The pandemic has
Speaker 1: been rough for Letty. She feels lonely often and isolated.
Speaker 1: She wants to hug her grandkids and also to stop
Speaker 1: having to explain to them why they can't hug. But
Speaker 1: as much as Letty wants the pandemic to be over,
Speaker 1: she also had lots of concerns about the vaccine. Bloody
Speaker 1: says she first started to really question whether she wanted
Speaker 1: to get the shot once vaccines were rolling out. I
Speaker 1: started thinking about it when it became a reality that
Speaker 1: it was going to happen. That's when I started thinking
Speaker 1: about it. But it was also that in the back
Speaker 1: of my head, why so fast? How can this be
Speaker 1: done so fast? And I began to think about in
Speaker 1: the back of my head the health and equities, um,
Speaker 1: all the things that go alonge was maybe being a
Speaker 1: black female in the history of it. Bloody actually had
Speaker 1: a health scare herself when she was ten. She had
Speaker 1: the measles, but white doctors couldn't figure out what was
Speaker 1: wrong with her and wanted to perform exploratory surgery. I
Speaker 1: haven't remember the words today, and they said if you
Speaker 1: take her from this hospital or she would die. But
Speaker 1: my mom said, no, I'm taking her for a second opinion,
Speaker 1: and she did it, and the doctor who gave us.
Speaker 1: The second opinion say it straight up if they had
Speaker 1: operated on her, and they would have killed her. In
Speaker 1: the end, it turned out she didn't need surgery, She
Speaker 1: just needed a few days to recover. The doctors had
Speaker 1: almost opened her up for no reason. Bloody had been
Speaker 1: put in danger by doctors in the past, so now
Speaker 1: she wondered, why trust them, remembering that experience that I
Speaker 1: had when I was keen, and that's still there. So
Speaker 1: she just kept going back and forth, deciding to take
Speaker 1: it and then deciding not to. And then she heard
Speaker 1: the Sunday sermon with Fouci Like Dr Sloan, it really
Speaker 1: stood out to her that he recognized what the black
Speaker 1: community has been through, and he talked about other medical
Speaker 1: issues that are generational, some of them um diabetes, blood
Speaker 1: pressure hard and it's because of the inequities, and it's
Speaker 1: also because of the jobs that we have. And I
Speaker 1: want people to really understand and hone in on why
Speaker 1: why it is happening to us more often, and it's
Speaker 1: not our fault. It's not our fault. So Leotty got vaccinated.
Speaker 1: She's had both her shots, and she says she felt
Speaker 1: a little fear before she did it, but she did
Speaker 1: it anyway, and then she went home and told her
Speaker 1: family about it, many of whom had also been hesitant
Speaker 1: to take the vaccine. One of her sons actually went
Speaker 1: to Tuskegee University for college, and she told me he
Speaker 1: was afraid of going to the clinic there. The Syphilist
Speaker 1: study loomed over it. And if I got my vaccine,
Speaker 1: my son didn't want to. My husband, Yes, my daughter's
Speaker 1: going to get her some My oldest son and his
Speaker 1: wife had COVID, so they have to wait. They they
Speaker 1: are going to take the vaccine. This gets what Stephen
Speaker 1: Thomas was talking about. Even if your barber isn't an
Speaker 1: mp D, you might trust his advice more than your doctor.
Speaker 1: Or in this case, you might trust your mom, who
Speaker 1: trusted her reverend, who in turn decided to trust a
Speaker 1: healthcare official who took the time I'm to listen and
Speaker 1: address community concerns. A lot of work went into convincing
Speaker 1: Letty to get vaccinated, but it paid off. She even
Speaker 1: blogged about it. I want to say I did it,
Speaker 1: and I'm still here and nothing adverse has happened. And
Speaker 1: I used this analogy about Peter in the boat, and
Speaker 1: he asked Jesus, can I come, And Jesus said, get
Speaker 1: out the boat. And Peter was the only one to
Speaker 1: get out the boat to come to Jesus. But then
Speaker 1: doubt came across and and he fear, and he began,
Speaker 1: he began to drown. But I tell the people I
Speaker 1: talked to, I'm getting out the boat. I'm getting at
Speaker 1: the boat. Letty got out of the boat, she got
Speaker 1: her shot. The majority of Americans are facing this very
Speaker 1: same choice for the first time as vaccines become available
Speaker 1: to everyone. In the series, we've shown how mistrust and
Speaker 1: misinformation conspire to make people hesitant and how some people
Speaker 1: are working to solve that problem. On the series finale
Speaker 1: of Doubt, we'll take a look at where things stand
Speaker 1: and if enough people are getting vaccinated that we can
Speaker 1: finally go back to normal. Doubt is written and reported
Speaker 1: by me Kristin V. Brown To for Foreheads is our
Speaker 1: senior producer. Molly Nugent is our associate producer. Our theme
Speaker 1: was composed and performed by Hannis Brown. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Bloomberg editors Tim Annette and Rick Shine. Francesco Levi is
Speaker 1: the head of Bloomberg Podcast. Be sure to subscribe to prognosis.
Speaker 1: If you haven't already, and if you like our show,
Speaker 1: please leave us A review helps others find out about
Speaker 1: the show. Thanks for listening, See you next time.