San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Scheduling a COVID vaccine was team effort
COVID-19 has made us all fluent in the language of vaccines. In ways we’d not have been able to do one year ago, we speak knowledgeably about efficacy rates, vaccine trials, and the pros and cons of Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson
One year ago, we had no idea how dramatically COVID would change our lives and that it would steal the lives of more than half a million of our fellow Americans. As the pandemic spread and its enormity became clearer, we waited and fixed our hopes on the arrival of the vaccines and the immunity they would deliver.
On April 12, 1955, the announcement from the University of Michigan that Dr. Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine was successful, triggered a nationwide celebration of church bells ringing, factory whistles blowing and people running into the streets in tears.
Last December’s rollout of the first vaccine for COVID-19 didn’t set off that kind of unrestrained joy, but it did unleash waves of relief, happiness and optimism, across the country that steadily rose, especially as we moved into Phase 1B for folks 65 and older or those with underlying conditions, which made them more vulnerable to the virus.
In the first days of January, my family began trying to get an appointment for my mother, who was coming up on her 80th birthday.
Much has been reported about the reluctance of African Americans to get vaccinated; a reluctance not rooted in conspiracy but in the historical knowledge of how, for generations, Black bodies, living or dead, have been used for medical experimentation. While there are several examples, only one word is needed to understand this fear: Tuskegee. As in the, “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.”
From 1932-1972, the U.S. Public Health Service conducted an experiment on the progression, without treatment, of the deadly venereal disease. The secret study recruited 600 Black men, 399 of whom were diagnosed with syphilis and 201 without the disease who were a control group.
Some of the men thought they were being treated for other ailments and promised free meals and other enticements. None of the men in the experiment gave their consent and those with syphilis were never told they weren’t being treated, and the reason for their participation was so researchers could observe their deterioration before examining their corpses.
During the experiments over 40 years, 28 men died of syphilis, 100 others died from related complications, at least 40 wives were infected and 19 children contracted the disease at birth.
Overcoming the Tuskegee study’s bad blood legacy and convincing African Americans of the safety and necessity of the COVID vaccine explains the outreach programs by public health agencies and African American organizations and institutions.
My mother didn’t need to be convinced. She was eager to get vaccinated last year when there was no vaccine. She was eager to get vaccinated when the vaccine came out and has been eager every week since, despite our inability to get her an appointment every week since.
As it was with so many in the city and elsewhere, the supply of vaccines didn’t keep up with the enthusiasm to get vaccinated and left us trying for weeks, at any stray hour we could, logging onto this site and that site, calling this number and that number, trying this back channel and that back channel. Sometimes the frustration tipped into anger before tipping back to frustration when it was remembered that everyone was doing the best they could.
The New York Times developed a tool that calculates the number of people needing a vaccine in each state and county and estimates your place in line. Last week, there were 773,000 people ahead of my mother in Bexar County.
Last Wednesday evening, a friend called to say that University Health System had just opened some slots. She began trying to get one online. I did the same for 40 minutes when another friend texted me, asking for my mother’s info so that she could try to get her in.
Minutes later, a third friend, one who lost her mother to COVID this month, and who doesn’t know the other two friends, texted me for my mother’s info so she could try. In five minutes, I received an email saying my mother has an appointment for March 5. I can’t thank my friends enough.
Ideally, it shouldn’t take three people working independently of each other to get someone a lifesaving vaccine. But it’s another reminder that in this time of COVID, whether it’s wearing masks, socially distancing, volunteering at food banks or helping secure appointments, we’ll get through this by looking out for each other.
This past Friday, my mother turned 80. Happy birthday,
Mom!