Online rumors cause some black people to shun COVID-19 tests
The Rev. Ricky Floyd is worried.
Worried that even though 70% of those who have died from COVID-19 in Shelby County are African American, for some that statistic might not be scarier than actually being tested for it.
“I was a strong vocal advocate for bringing testing to Frayser,” said Floyd, whose church, The Pursuit of God Transformation Center, is in that community — where drivethru COVID-19 tests are being done at Christ Community Health Center. “But now that the testing is beginning, I’m hearing from people who don’t trust the process. … Some remember Tuskegee (the syphilis study), and they think they might be injected with the virus.”
One would think African Americans would be clamoring to be tested for a virus that is disproportionately stalking them. But as Floyd is discovering, many continue to fear the very system that’s supposed to help them.
Some also fear that same system could weaponize the COVID-19 tests to stigmatize them and deny them jobs and opportunities at a time when they desperately need them.
It’s not difficult to see how.
While the Tuskegee experiment — in which African American men were allowed to die of syphilis so that scientists could study the disease’s progression — ended in 1972, social media is reviving much of that mistrust. In addition to rumors about novel coronavirus being manufactured , suspicions are swirling around stories such as the one about hospitals exaggerating COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths to receive more Medicare reimbursements.
While it’s true that hospitals receive higher Medicare reimbursements for COVID-19 patients by way of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security, or CARES, Act, no proof exists that hospital administrators are lying about whether people have the virus to get extra money.
Yet some have jumped to that conclusion.
On some Facebook threads linking to that hospital story, people have been warning those who are hospitalized for any reason to not allow themselves to be listed as COVID-19 patients.
In fact, a friend admonished me, after I was recently treated at an emergency room for a cut that required stitches, to please not let them say I had “that virus.”
Huh?
“Some of our people are saying that if you go out and get the test, and they put the swab in your nose, they’re actually putting the virus in,” said an exasperated Altha Stewart, senior associate dean for community health engagement in the University of Tennessee Health Science Center’s College of Medicine.
But for African Americans who don’t trust the medical system because they’ve seen people who look like them experimented upon, as in the Tuskegee experiment, or exploited, as per Henrietta Lacks, whose living cells were stolen in 1951 and have been used without her or her family’s permission ever since, it becomes easier to believe
“Right now, we really need people to get tested, and these major, misguided beliefs being spread on social media are hurting us.”
Altha Stewart
senior associate dean, University of Tennessee Health Science Center’s College of Medicine
that the purpose of a test might not be altogether pure.
Also, a number of studies have found that black people are more likely than white people to endorse conspiracy theories. In fact, a study published in 2018 by the European Journal of Social Psychology found this happens largely because black people think society values them less.
Wonder how they came to believe that?
Oh, and there’s this. Because African Americans tend to fear they’ll be blamed or shamed for conditions such as asthma, obesity and high blood pressure that make them vulnerable to COVID-19 rather than be helped.
Some, like Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-louisiana, have indicated they view these conditions as a result of black people’s diet and lifestyle choices, while ignoring the fact that those choices are governed by food deserts and systemic racism.
“I know highly educated people who have had the virus but won’t say they’ve had the virus,” Floyd said. “But the problem with that is that it adds to the idea that the virus is not real.”
Nonetheless. Floyd said he will continue to encourage his congregants and people in his community to overcome their fears and be tested. He recently joined other Shelby County pastors in offering to be tested and setting the example for their flocks.
And Frayser resident Charlie Caswell, CEO of Legacy of Legends CDC, videotaped himself getting the COVID-19 test to alleviate people’s fears.
“People have reason to believe, based on the history, that nothing good is going to come to them,” Stewart said. “But right now, we really need people to get tested, and these major, misguided beliefs being spread on social media are hurting us.”
It’s past time to let go of those beliefs. Because in this moment of pandemic, they can be deadly.