Prayer and science led me to the vaccine

Opinion polls show that African Americans have the biggest hesitation of any group about the Covid vaccine. These suspicions are rooted in centuries of abuse as well as illegal and unethical experimentation by the country’s medical institution. In the 19th century, James Marion Sims, the man who is considered the father of modern gynecology, conducted numerous experiments on addicted women without anesthesia. The infamous ‘Tuskegee study of untreated syphilis in the Negro man’ continued in the 1970s.

Outcomes in health care are also not encouraging. African Americans have twice the infant mortality rate of whites. African American women are more than three times more likely to have their white counterparts die from pregnancy-related causes. The mortality rate for breast cancer is 42% higher for black women than for white women. My dad passed away when I was just 16, mainly due to misdiagnosis and abused high blood pressure. Disturbing news reports about divergent treatment in US healthcare facilities surfaced during the pandemic.

Unfounded rumors about the attempt to use the vaccine to wipe out the black community have gained traction among my fellow African-Americans. I understand the general mistrust, but the painful truth is that black people need the vaccine more than anyone. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says we are almost three times as likely as whites to die from Covid.

As a pastor, I have personally witnessed these deaths. I buried many friends and congregation members. At the height of the pandemic, I regularly received reports of two or three deaths each day. I struggled to comfort and advise their survivors, most of whom could not be in the same room with their loved ones, when they breathed their last. This weekend I lost an old friend and colleague due to the virus. But I believe that the God who brought us through slavery, Jim Crow, the Spanish flu and lynchings can also send us through this crisis.

As a father, grandfather, pastor, and community leader, I understood the importance of understanding the vaccine. This means that the facts must be obtained early from the most qualified scientists and doctors. A panel discussion I hosted in early January with some of the country’s leading experts on infectious diseases – including Anthony Fauci, Kizzmekia Corbett and Yale medical professor Onyema Ogbuagu – gave a thorough description of the process of given the development of vaccines. Particularly useful were the details provided by Drs. Corbett, a young black woman and key scientist behind the development of Moderna’s new mRNA vaccine, was provided.

I received invaluable advice from my longtime doctor, a black woman and member of my church who received the vaccine herself. Because I believe in the multitude of advice, I have also spoken to several leading infectious disease specialists here in the Dallas area, a metropolis where many world-renowned healthcare facilities reside.

Eventually it came to common sense. I am a 63 year old black man, a little overweight and with an underlying health condition. The vaccine has been shown to reduce the chance of people like me getting the virus. To date, the side effects of the vaccine have been minimal or inconsistent. It is true that no one knows anything about possible long-term side effects. But this is what we know: the virus has killed more than 500,000 people in this country, but the vaccine has not killed a single person yet. Furthermore, there is a lot of information about persistent debilitating symptoms among those who survive the virus.

I do not consider myself a proponent of taking the vaccine. It’s a personal decision. However, you should not make a critically important personal decision without information – or bad information. At a time when the boundary between fact and fiction is gradually eroding, it has never been so important to prevent people from being spread all over the internet by misinformation or by the innumerable falsehoods.

Here is my unsolicited advice: do your own research. Pray. Consult various credible sources, from your personal physician to federal agencies such as the CDC. Your serious search for the truth can save your life – and your loved ones.

Bishop Jakes is senior pastor of Potter’s House, a 30,000-member church in Dallas.