Yahoo Finance ‘Let people know they don’t have to die’: Rev. Barber, Cohen get vaccine, set example
The Rev. William Barber II made his way to the vaccine tent, removed his ministerial robe and pulled his shirt down to show his bare shoulder.
Then North Carolina’s leading voice for civil rights took the Johnson & Johnson shot in his left arm, pumping his fist as a line of cameras rolled.
“Y’all show my good side,” he joked. “Don’t want people seeing everything. Too pretty for that.”
Barber got publicly vaccinated at PNC Arena on Friday alongside N.C. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mandy Cohen — two among more than 2,000 people Wake County can now handle at each event.
Their high-profile appearance highlighted the state’s push to ramp up vaccinations, even as COVID-19 numbers drop statewide.
“Let people know they don’t have to die,” Barber said. “They don’t have to get sick and go to the hospital.”
Turning to Cohen, he added, “It will probably only be known in heaven how many people your efforts have saved.”
N.C. Gov. Roy Cooper announced earlier this week that front-line essential workers now would be eligible for the vaccine, a week ahead of schedule, as a shipment of 83,700 doses of the newly authorized Johnson & Johnson vaccine came to North Carolina. There are now three vaccines that people can receive, including the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines that were authorized in December.
Front-line essential workers include a diverse group of industries, from grocery store workers to emergency personnel and public transit workers and restaurant employees. Public health workers and clergy are included in this group.
Cooper and Cohen also said the state would move early to Group 4 and begin with those who have medical conditions that put them at high risk from COVID-19, homeless people and those who are incarcerated who haven’t yet received a vaccine.
Cohen emphasized that the state’s biggest obstacle to vaccinating its population has been short supply.
But vaccine availability is widening, she said, especially with the one-shot Johnson & Johnson variety, though not enough to put aside the priority system now at front-line workers.
Addressing inequities
She and Barber also addressed inequalities in vaccine delivery, which Cohen said is easing.
In the past four weeks, she said, 20% of COVID-19 shots have gone to African-Americans, though Latino numbers are still low.
Barber said it is a mistake to assume suspicion is so widespread that minorities everywhere will resist vaccination. Despite history of uneven distribution and race-based experiments, he said, when public health services reach minority communities, people will take them.
“What I love about the secretary,” he said of Cohen, “she says I’m not going to blame Black and brown folk. ... I’m going to take the services into the community.”
Both Barber and Cohen emphasized that the vaccines do not inject the virus into patients but rather train the body to fight it. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine contains no fetal tissue, Cohen said, dispelling a rumor.
Whatever troubling history exists between minorities and vaccines, Barber emphasized the need to focus on the here and now.
“We almost have to be like the air,” he said. “We have to be everywhere. Either everybody gets out of the ditch, or nobody gets out of the ditch.”
With that, he returned to his work, equipped with a vial’s worth of protection and an extra bandage, just in case.
