To sell the vaccine program, many church leaders in the U.S. are seen as a potential asset in getting the message out about the COVID-19 vaccines to the public.
As we have been reporting, Black Americans have expressed concern about receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, with one-third of those polled saying they would refuse the jab.
On 10 February, the Wall Street Journal featured a story from a pastor in Boston at Pleasant Hill Missionary Baptist, Reverend Miniard Culpepper, who met with other pastors and came up with a plan to present information about the vaccines. He eventually got vaccinated with some other pastors publicly. Some in his congregation told the paper that seeing him receive his first dose was enough for them to sign up for the shot.
Martini Shaw, a pastor of Philadelphia’s St. Thomas, the oldest Black Episcopal church in the country, told the Philadelphia Inquirer, “The church has always been the focal point of where people have been able to come in terms of joyous times and celebratory times, but also in times of need.”
The “Sell Blacks” Trend
According to the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases survey released on 4 February:
“Only 49 percent of Black adults plan to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Among that group, only 19 percent plan to get vaccinated as soon as possible, while approximately 31 percent prefer to wait. Thirty percent of Black adults do not plan to get a COVID-19 vaccine, with an additional 20 percent unsure of whether they would get vaccinated.”
When the first vaccine was administered in the U.S. on 14 December, the front-page photo of The New York Times, blasted across the nation, was of an African-American nurse receiving an injection from a fellow African-American nurse. The recipient was widely quoted as saying she took the shot to encourage Blacks to get vaccinated because they are hesitant to do so and are suffering from COVID-19 in disproportional numbers.
According to the Office of Minority Health, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services:
“African American women have the highest rates of obesity or being overweight compared to other groups in the United States. About 4 out of 5 African American women are overweight or obese… non-Hispanic blacks were 1.3 times more likely to be obese as compared to non-Hispanic whites.”
The same office reports, “African American adults are 60 percent more likely than non-Hispanic white adults to have been diagnosed with diabetes by a physician.”
Yet, absent from the daily doses of selling fear and hysteria and promoting vaccinations as the only way to win the COVID War, the mainstream media rarely, if ever, report on vitamins, nutrition-related ways to build stronger immune systems, and natural healing protocols.
Note: To help build your immune system and stay healthy, we’ve added a new column to the Trends Journal, “Trends in Getting Healthy” by Gary Null. (See this week’s new article, “EFFECTIVE WAYS TO KEEP YOUR RESPIRATORY SYSTEM HEALTHY.”)
