January 13, 2021 The Skanner Portland & Seattle Page 5
Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Interview: Portland Physician on
Coronavirus Vaccine, Reaching
Out to Wary Communities
Black Americans report highest
levels of distrust as country
distributes millions of Pfizer and
Moderna Vaccines
By Saundra Sorenson
Of The Skanner News
W
ith more than
1,600
Orego-
nians having
lost their lives
to coronavirus, and
124,000 cases reported
within the state, the deliv-
ery of two FDA-approved
vaccinations gives hope
for widespread inocula-
tion and an eventual re-
turn to normalcy.
But experts are con-
cerned that misinfor-
mation
and
misun-
derstanding about the
vaccinations will un-
dermine public health
efforts to protect from
a virus that as of Friday
had infected 22 million
Americans and claimed
the lives of 367,000 -- es-
pecially within the Black
community, the hardest
Dr. Carl Anderson
hit by the pandemic and
statistically, the most
skeptical of it.
While Black Ameri-
cans are dying of coro-
navirus at a rate of two-
and-a-half times that of
White Americans, fewer
than half of Black Amer-
ican adults intend to get
the vaccine, according to
a survey by the Pew Re-
search Center
There is significant dis-
trust “in the Black and
also in the Latinx and
the Asian Pacific commu-
nities, simply because
their experiences with
Western medicine, at
least in the US, has not al-
ways been trustworthy,”
Dr. Carl Anderson, a lo-
cal physician, told The
Skanner.
Anderson served as a
preventative medicine
physician in the U.S.
Army Reserve for nine
years, and was deployed
as a preventive medicine
officer in Kuwait in 2012,
where he tracked the
SARS-like virus during
Operation
Enduring
Freedom. In 2016, he
served as acting chief
of preventive medicine
at Fort Sill, Okla., moni-
toring mosquito species
capable of carrying the
Zika virus.
He sat down with The
Skanner to clear up con-
fusion about the vaccina-
tion.
Two Vaccines Approved
The two vaccinations
currently approved by
the FDA are by Pfizer
and Moderna, with each
company under contract
to reserve their first 100
million vaccine doses
for the U.S. government,
which is distributing
doses in a taxpayer-fund-
ed effort. A third, the
AstraZeneca vaccine, is
currently under review
in the U.S., with OHSU
conducting a clinical tri-
al of at least 13,000 volun-
teers.
So far. 6.7 million
Americans -- about 2%
of the population -- have
received their first dose
of the vaccine, which re-
quires two shots spaced
out over three weeks to
a month. Vaccinations
are currently being ad-
ministered with the most
at-risk populations being
prioritized,
including
health care providers,
hospital workers, elderly
care facility staff and res-
idents, and anyone over
the age of 80.
President-elect
Joe
Biden this week an-
nounced his goal of dis-
tributing 100 million
vaccinations during his
first 100 days in office. On
Friday, he announced he
would free up all avail-
See INTERVIEW on page 6