"If [the vaccine] came out today, I would not take it," said Lonzo Bullie, a retired school principal who has called Tuskegee, Alabama, home for 26 years. "I'm still reluctant … because I do not have enough information on it."
The two FDA-authorized COVID-19 vaccines are more than 95% effective at preventing symptomatic illness, and side effects reported are minor. The trials -- which included more than 30,000 volunteers each -- demonstrated that the vaccines work equally well among people of all races and ethnicities.
But Bullie, who's also president of the Tuskegee-Macon County branch of the NAACP, said that skepticism about the vaccine within the African American community stems from "the history of the United States government experimenting on Black people" and years of "mistreatment."
Tuskegee, where Bullie resides, is ground zero for the infamous 1930s syphilis study. The U.S. Public Health study at the Tuskegee Institute, which recruited 600 Black men, was meant to record the natural progression of syphilis infection, but the researchers did not inform the participants nor did they ask for their consent. The study lasted 40 years and left an indelible mark on the Black community.
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