Today President Barack Obama pre-taped an interview with SiriusXM host Joe Madison to promote his new memoir, A Promised Land.
When asked about African-Americans potentially being skeptical about taking a COVID-19 vaccine given past medical experiments on the community, President Obama said he would “absolutely” take the vaccine himself:
“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 couple of things. H1N1, we were lucky that it was not as contagious, and it turned out not to be as deadly as we thought it was, or as COVID is. I’m still very proud of all the work we did around it, and it actually laid the foundation for us creating a pandemic playbook that helped us deal with Ebola when that came up. And that, by the way, we gave a whole blueprint to the Trump administration in terms of how they should deal with this and early warning systems, et cetera, that they completely ignored. So we did not end up having a widespread vaccination program for H1N1, just because we were able to stop it relatively early. In terms of COVID now, obviously at the end of the day, one of the great things about having Joe Biden and Kamala Harris back in charge on January 20th, is they will also then put scientists and medical experts in charge.
“And 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 understand, historically, everything dating back all the way to the Tuskegee experiments and so forth, why the African-American community would have some skepticism. But the fact of the matter is, is that vaccines are why we don’t have polio anymore. And they’re the reason why we don’t have a whole bunch of kids dying from measles, and smallpox, and diseases that used to decimate an entire populations and communities. So, you know, I think it is important for people to follow the guidelines that are going to be issued.
“I anticipate that the vaccines will be first made available to people who are at highest risk. And if you are in that category, if you are elderly, if you’ve got a preexisting condition, if you’re a frontline worker, if you’re a medical worker, if you are in a grocery store, if you’re a first responder, you should take that vaccine. 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.”