VP: Virus doesn’t care about your vote
Vice President Kamala Harris last came to Detroit on Election Day 2020, when she and President Joe Biden were in the final hours of a fight to turn not only the state but the nation blue.
On Monday, she returned to the Motor City as vice president, focused on voting rights and COVID-19 vaccines.
In an exclusive interview with the Free Press at the TCF Center down
town, Harris talked about how getting coronavirus vaccines into the arms of people in Detroit, across Michigan and the nation is the only way to end the suffering from this pandemic.
The following is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation:
Question: Here in Detroit, the largest majority Black city in America, vaccination rates are below 40% — as low as they are in some of the nation’s leastvaccinated states. Access and supply are no longer issues; people in Detroit can get vaccines brought to their doorsteps. So how, exactly, is the Biden-Harris administration going to get through to people, to change hearts and minds about vaccination in the city?
Answer: One of the reasons that I’m back in Detroit is to say, the vaccine will save your life and your life is precious. And you have the power to make this decision. Don’t let anyone take the power from you.
The fact is, people who are in the hospital right now with COVID-19, virtually all of them are unvaccinated. People who have been dying in our hospitals from COVID-19, virtually all of them were unvaccinated. And so it’s about you.
It’s also an extension of love thy neighbor — not only because if you get it, you can give it, in terms of the virus. But also, it’s about the responsibility that each one of us has to take control.
You know, some people said, ‘Well, I want to wait and see how this all turns out. I’m gonna give it six months.’ Well, It’s July. So, it’s your time. Go get that shot.
It’s not only about you. It’s about love thy neighbor. It’s also about your friends and your family. Don’t put them through that, being in the hospital. You know, for any of us who have been in the hospital with somebody who’s facing an acute illness, it’s an awful, awful experience to put your friends and family through the possibility that you may die from something that was preventable, and have them go through that level of loss.
You know, let’s really think about this. What are we weighing? What against what?
Q: There are some safety concerns with these vaccines. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration added a new warning about the potential for a rare side effect called Guillain-Barré syndrome tied to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in addition to one it already put in place with a risk of thrombocytopenia. There also is an association between the mRNA vaccines and myocarditis. How will you and the president address that, especially in the Black community, which already is skeptical because of historic medical trauma?
A: The FDA is doing an assessment, and so we’ll wait and see what that is. But again, the bottom line is that the vaccines will save your life. I just go back to the same point and I will repeat it over and over again because it’s such an important fact: The people who are currently hospitalized from COVID-19, the vast majority are not vaccinated. Same for those who have died.
We can go back to the point about America’s history with experimentation and how that has been ... targeted at Black Americans . ... I know that is true. I’ve known it since my birth that that is true.
You know, one of the scientists who created this vaccine is Dr. Kizzy Corbett, a Black woman who was advocating everywhere that everyone should take it, that it is safe. (Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett is an immunologist at the National Institutes of Health who helped to develop the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.)
You can look at it in the context of also what we need to do to make it accessible for people. So for example, I was speaking with Rev. Anthony and other community leaders about what they’re doing in Detroit to have mobile vaccination sites. (The Rev. Wendell Anthony is Detroit Branch NAACP president and pastor of Fellowship Chapel.)
So that’s been something that we have been focused on. There are a whole lot of people who haven’t been vaccinated, but they’ve not said they’re not going to get vaccinated. We need to make sure that it’s accessible, that it’s easier for them. You know, these are people who are working two jobs, people who have child care issues. Those have been some of the areas of focus for our administration. We want to try and get the word out and and also make it easier for people to get the vaccine.”
Q: Urban centers like Detroit aren’t the only places with low rates of vaccine uptake. It’s also a problem in rural parts of Michigan — like Cass County and Hillsdale County — and nationally, too. These are places that skew heavily conservative. Can you talk about the politics of this pandemic, and how this administration plans to bridge the partisan divide to convince Republicans in these rural pockets of the state and country to get vaccines?
A: This virus does not care who you voted for the last election. Period.