Why Biden, ex-presidents Obama, Bush, Clinton will take COVID-19 vaccines: Need to build trust in new drug

WASHINGTON — We’re at ground zero when it comes to the new COVID-19 vaccines awaiting federal Food and Drug Administration emergency use authorization.

There are unfolding stories about how the vaccines are being distributed and cold stored and who will get the shots in the beginning since there won’t be that many doses available in the first wave.

Then there is the matter of trust, especially when the vaccines become widely available. People have to be convinced they are not lab rats.

There are many reasonable folks who just want to make sure the COVID-19 vaccine will work and they won’t suffer from awful side effects or worse.

Building trust in the midst of this pandemic will be a challenge. President Donald Trump rushing FDA scientists does not build credibility.

President-elect Joe Biden said on CNN on Thursday night he would be “happy” to get vaccinated in public. Ex-Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton also have volunteered to get a COVID-19 vaccine in public — when it’s their turn.

We’re in a climate where, sadly, conspiracy theories and baseless notions get traction.

The last thing this nation needs as coronavirus cases spike is for an anti-vaxxer movement to take root over the new vaccines. It could happen, given how easily false information moves on social media.

The FDA stamp of approval — expected later this month for the first two vaccine makers, Moderna and Pfizer — will be more credible if the public believes the scientists were not pressured by President Trump into a premature decision.

Obama, doing tons of interviews to promote his new book, “A Promised Land,” told SiriusXM host Joe Madison he would “absolutely” take the vaccine. Madison asked Obama about Blacks being skeptical about getting a COVID-19 shot.

There’s history here.

To the shame of the nation, the federal Tuskegee syphilis study — starting in 1932 and lasting 40 years — used Black men as human subjects without their consent — and they were lied to about getting medical treatment.

Obama told Madison, “People like Anthony Fauci, who I know, and I’ve worked with, I trust completely. So if Anthony Fauci tells me this vaccine is safe, and can vaccinate, you know, immunize you from getting COVID, absolutely, I’m going to take it. … And I promise you that when it’s been made for people who are less at risk, I will be taking it.

“I may end up taking it on TV or having it filmed, just so that people know that I trust this science, and what I don’t trust is getting COVID. I think at this point, particularly in the African American community, we are — African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans — we have the highest death rates from this thing, and are most exposed and most vulnerable, in part because we have a lot of preexisting conditions.”

A spokesman for Clinton told the AP he will “definitely” be willing to get the vaccine when it is “available to him.”

Bush’s chief of staff, Freddy Ford, told CNN that Bush had him get in touch with Fauci and White House COVID-19 adviser Dr. Deborah Birx to let them know when the “time is right,” Bush wants to help encourage people to get vaccinated. Trump, consumed with trying to overturn the election, has said he would take the vaccine, but we don’t know if he would do it in public.

The timing of when the ex-presidents do their thing is important, because they do not want to cut in line.

States, working with guidelines set by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, are setting priorities. Dr. Ngozi Ezike, the Illinois Department of Public Health chief, recapped at Thursday’s briefing with Gov. J.B. Pritzker that the first wave of vaccines will go to long-term care residents and “hospital related” workers.

FLASHBACK: Obama’s public HIV/AIDS tests

Obama’s been down this public testing road before.

In 2006, then-Sen. Obama took two public HIV/AIDS tests to highlight disease prevention, one in the U.S, and another in Kenya.

During an Aug. 26 visit to Kenya that year — in the province where Obama’s father was raised — where men resisted testing despite a 15% infection rate, Obama with Michelle took highly publicized HIV/AIDS blood tests in a mobile unit and then had “couples counseling.”

This was back in the day before everything they did was highly advanced and perfectly staged. I observed that, at first, the Obamas were chatting with their “counselor” with a very solid, erect, easily visible phallus on the table next to them. By the time they got fingers pricked and had some “couples counseling” — with the door to the exam room open so the thousands of people who turned out could watch — that item had been removed.