S.D. ADVOCATE RAISES CONCERN ABOUT COVID-19 VACCINE
Shane Harris says Pfizer has not reached out to communities of color
As the first doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine arrived Monday, destined for San Diego’s health care workers, a local civil rights advocate tweeted about safety questions and accused the drug company of insufficient outreach to communities of color.
The Rev. Shane Harris, founder of the People’s Alliance for Justice, shared in a now-deleted tweet that he would not get a Pfizer vaccine and would not encourage community members to take it.
“Nope I’m good,” he wrote Sunday. “I will be ambassador to encourage others in my community not to take it either. I will use my platform to push back. Too much history and complete carelessness to even address it!”
The tweet was accompanied by a falsely labeled photo that has been circulating on social media, which claimed to show Pfizer trial volunteers who developed Bell’s palsy, a temporary paralysis or weakness on one side of the face.
The photo was taken in 2019, a year before the trials, according to Reuters.
When reached by phone Monday, Harris would not comment on the tweet or why it was deleted.
He said he believes Pfizer has not done enough to educate San Diego’s communities of color about the vaccine and its possible side effects.
“There’s a lot of people of color that are concerned about the Pfizer vaccine,” Harris said. “I think because of the stories people are hearing. ... The Black community has never had a good history with these vaccines.”
The People’s Alliance for Justice, a civil rights organization based in San Diego, has at least 5,000 members, Harris has said.
When asked about Pfizer’s outreach to Black community members, Pfizer spokesman Steven Danehy said public education about the need for vaccination and the process of developing vaccines is critical, but it requires collaboration with government and health
partners.
“We are already partnering with patient organizations, medical, and public health institutions to provide our expertise in helping them to create and deliver education they need,” Danehy wrote in an email Monday.
Pfizer has published information about the race and ethnicity of its trial participants on its website.
About 30 percent of its U.S. trial participants have “diverse backgrounds” — 10 percent are Black, 13 percent are Latino, 6 percent are Asian and 1.3 percent are Native American, the website says.
A U.S. Food and Drug Administration report last week concluded that Pfizer’s vaccine is about 95 percent
effective in preventing COVID-19. Common side effects include fatigue, headache, muscle pain, chills, joint pain and a fever.
There were four people among the trial’s 44,000 participants who developed Bell’s palsy, but the FDA said it could not reach a conclusion about that ailment’s relationship to the vaccine and recommended more surveillance of any future cases.
Harris said Pfizer and other vaccines companies are not doing enough to reach and educate communities of color.
For instance, rather than national data on the ethnicity of trial participants, Harris said he requested regional data from Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca, the other companies close to developing a vaccine. Pfizer was the only company that responded to his request, but it did not
provide regional data, he said.
“They wouldn’t give us regional race and ethnicity data, but they want us to trust them?” he said.
Harris is not alone in asking for more information for communities of color.
Francine Maxwell, president of the NAACP San Diego branch, said she supports Harris’ call for information on the ethnic makeup of trial participants.
But she believes government and health officials, not the drug companies, should be held accountable for communicating with under-served communities.
“We are looking for some intentional and bold leadership from the county and health leaders to reach out to the most vulnerable,” Maxwell said.