Black couple who refused vaccine due to infamous Tuskegee syphilis study die from COVID-19 three hours apart

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A Black couple who refused to be vaccinated because of concerns about the federal government's infamous Tuskegee study have died from COVID-19.

Martin Daniel, 53, and his wife, 49-year-old Trina Daniel, died just three hours apart on July 6, according to Atlanta's ABC affiliate. They had been married for 22 years.

Martin Daniel graduated from Tuskegee University in Alabama — which collaborated on the study — and "the government's syphilis experiments on Black men during the 1930s influenced his and his wife's decision not to get vaccinated," according to the station.

"Just tying these two events together and understanding the historical context of what's going on, it really wears on me sometimes," said Cornelius Daniel, Martin's nephew.

The Daniels' family has launched a fundraiser to benefit the couple's two teenage children.

The Tuskegee study, which ran from 1932 to 1972, has frequently been cited as one factor behind lower COVID-19 vaccination rates among African Americans.

In the study, designed to observe the natural history of untreated syphilis, the Public Health Services recruited 600 poor Black sharecroppers in Macon County, Ala., with the false promise of free healthcare.

"In order to track the disease's full progression, researchers provided no effective care as the men died, went blind or insane or experienced other severe health problems due to their untreated syphilis," according to History.com.

By the time a PHS whistleblower exposed the unethical study by leaking information to an Associated Press reporter, "28 participants had perished from syphilis, 100 more had passed away from related complications, at least 40 spouses had been diagnosed with it and the disease had been passed to 19 children at birth."
https://www.rawstory.com/black-couple-w ... urs-apart/

It i no wonder why so many Black people refuse the vaccine. Especially with the rightwing anti-vaxxers spreading so much disinformation and outright lies about the vaccine.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: Black couple who refused vaccine due to infamous Tuskegee syphilis study die from COVID-19 three hours apart

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Their deaths are tragic and the Tuskegee study was real, but that was in the 1930s.
This is 2021 and they chose to live in the past and not get vaccinated, then that was their decision. There are many reasons why people won't get vaccinated, this is just another one.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Black couple who refused vaccine due to infamous Tuskegee syphilis study die from COVID-19 three hours apart

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highdesert wrote: Thu Jul 22, 2021 5:27 pm Their deaths are tragic and the Tuskegee study was real, but that was in the 1930s.
This is 2021 and they chose to live in the past and not get vaccinated, then that was their decision. There are many reasons why people won't get vaccinated, this is just another one.
Your post suggests that racism is over.

Even as a white guy, I can see it isn't. Evidence is all around me, including my city of residence's response to the killing of Breonna Taylor and the protests related to that killing.

I can totally see why Black people would not trust the US Government, since the latter is built on the backs of slaves, and progress away from that seems to have come to a screeching halt fifty-some years ago.
Eventually I'll figure out this signature thing and decide what I want to put here.

Re: Black couple who refused vaccine due to infamous Tuskegee syphilis study die from COVID-19 three hours apart

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BearPaws wrote: Thu Jul 22, 2021 11:34 pm
highdesert wrote: Thu Jul 22, 2021 5:27 pm Their deaths are tragic and the Tuskegee study was real, but that was in the 1930s.
This is 2021 and they chose to live in the past and not get vaccinated, then that was their decision. There are many reasons why people won't get vaccinated, this is just another one.
Your post suggests that racism is over.

Even as a white guy, I can see it isn't. Evidence is all around me, including my city of residence's response to the killing of Breonna Taylor and the protests related to that killing.

I can totally see why Black people would not trust the US Government, since the latter is built on the backs of slaves, and progress away from that seems to have come to a screeching halt fifty-some years ago.
:thumbup:
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: Black couple who refused vaccine due to infamous Tuskegee syphilis study die from COVID-19 three hours apart

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BearPaws wrote: Thu Jul 22, 2021 11:34 pm
highdesert wrote: Thu Jul 22, 2021 5:27 pm Their deaths are tragic and the Tuskegee study was real, but that was in the 1930s.
This is 2021 and they chose to live in the past and not get vaccinated, then that was their decision. There are many reasons why people won't get vaccinated, this is just another one.
Your post suggests that racism is over.

Even as a white guy, I can see it isn't. Evidence is all around me, including my city of residence's response to the killing of Breonna Taylor and the protests related to that killing.

I can totally see why Black people would not trust the US Government, since the latter is built on the backs of slaves, and progress away from that seems to have come to a screeching halt fifty-some years ago.

I agree racism is not over. The Tuskegee study began in Roosevelt's US Public Health Service, continued under Truman's and Eisenhower's and Kennedy's and Johnson's and into Nixon's. Shades of Nazism and their experiments on different groups. Clinton condemned it.

I understand hesitancy and trust issues, but millions of people have been vaccinated and millions of them have been black, the vaccines are life saving. Ultimately it was their decision.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Black couple who refused vaccine due to infamous Tuskegee syphilis study die from COVID-19 three hours apart

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Indeed. The Tuskegee Experiment wasn’t shut down from the inside. This study was shamed to death by the outrage of African Americans and their allies. The same can be said about racism in voting rights of the same era. The struggle for justice in health is by no means over as the death of this couple due to Covid -when a vaccine was easily available!- actually attests to.

This tragedy does not just speak to the ignorance of two old black people (married for decades). To me it reveals the poor messaging of health officials and politicians when it comes to communities of color who have cause to distrust them due to personal history or that of their family members. It reveals that not enough had been done to correct the injustice wrought by public officials on an economically vulnerable population. And finally it says to me that an apology was not actually made in a way which it could be received. An imbalance of power remains.

Now, with wide vaccine availability during a pandemic each unvaccinated Americans’ reasons may be quite different than the next but to throw our collective hands up and accuse them all of the same ignorance may actually reek of insensitivity or unwillingness to face a darker truth about one’s own history and possible complicity through silence. That to me is the final tragedy of racism in this country which James Baldwin eloquently spoke of repeatedly out of love for his countrymen: White Americans have benefitted from and allowed racism to continue through a “Donna Reed” style bubbly ignorance pickled in drunken consumerism and self-importance. The ‘70s counterculture may have been the nascent beginnings of recognition and rejection of the caustic nature of racism and inequalities in our country. But clearly the following decades was a dramatic swinging of the pendulum toward the opposite direction (and “greed is good”).

A final ending of racism in America has never truly been wrestled with. This pandemic ripped the covers off the problem when inebriating consumerism was no longer available as an option while endemic poverty and other economic/social inequalities magnified, a confluence of eddies in one storm that really pushed people over the edge from denial.

Our country is slowly going insane. But like a fever in the body of a culture, the illness must burn itself through, everyone must get real about the life & death struggle of our nation before we can hope to come out the other end transformed with another chance to square ourselves with, “All men are created equal...” And this to me is actually a hopeful view of what’s going on.

So this black couple who regularly voiced fear for the Covid vaccine due to the Tuskegee experiment to me are indirect victims of that experiment and a system of public health (and policy experts) that would do human experimentation on people they considered “less than” themselves... the very definition of racism and “racial superiority” in policymaking. In some sense racism is even more insidious here in the United States than Nazi Germany! At least the Nazis made no qualms about openly stating their Aryan Race superior to everyone else while they stomped on the rights (and lives) of others. Yes, they ultimately got stomped on in return by other White folks who celebrated their demise in the 20th Century. Yet I can’t help but wonder now in 21st century pandemic America whether the lip service paid to hating Nazi’s is not just some perverse form of projection? Something which a portion of Americans (GQP) obviously engages in with relish.
"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent." -Gandhi

Re: Black couple who refused vaccine due to infamous Tuskegee syphilis study die from COVID-19 three hours apart

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Bisbee That is a very good post.
We defeated the Nazis in 1945. White Racist lynched and shoot black fourteen year old Emmett Till in 1955. Even after two decades of Civil Rights marches protests and legislation, in 1998 a black man, James Byrd Jr. was chained and dragged to his death behind a pickup by John William King, who is white and an avowed racist. King was later executed by lethal injection at the TDC Ellis unit.
We are still seeing Racism today. A prime example look at LEOs and how many, not all, treat white people vs POC.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: Black couple who refused vaccine due to infamous Tuskegee syphilis study die from COVID-19 three hours apart

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Martin Daniel graduated from Tuskegee University in Alabama — which collaborated on the study — and "the government's syphilis experiments on Black men during the 1930s influenced his and his wife's decision not to get vaccinated," according to the station.
Tuskegee is a private historically black university. The US Public Health Service, their surgeons general and many administrations of both parties share blame and so does Tuskegee University. This is a stain on our history, but we can't change it. If we could, I'd wipe out the first half of the 20th century, from the Bolshevik Revolution to about 1950.

I agree, public health messaging needed to be better and that really started when the first vaccine was given EUA in December 2020. There is a lot of misinformation that needs to be overcome and PH messaging is one way, people also need to talk with their primary care physician and other sources they trust like black, Latin, Asian churches, senior groups... 53 and 49 years of age are much too young to die from this virus, but we don't know about their preexisting medical conditions that could have contributed to their death, it's a Raw Story article and we don't know anything else about them.

At a certain point everyone has to make a decision to overcome hesitancy for many different reasons and get vaccinated or take your chances with the virus. I have a few close relatives and I made sure they got vaccinated, but ultimately it's up to the individual to make that decision unless they're in conservatorship.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Black couple who refused vaccine due to infamous Tuskegee syphilis study die from COVID-19 three hours apart

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TrueTexan wrote: Fri Jul 23, 2021 2:04 pm Bisbee That is a very good post.
We defeated the Nazis in 1945. White Racist lynched and shoot black fourteen year old Emmett Till in 1955. Even after two decades of Civil Rights marches protests and legislation, in 1998 a black man, James Byrd Jr. was chained and dragged to his death behind a pickup by John William King, who is white and an avowed racist. King was later executed by lethal injection at the TDC Ellis unit.
We are still seeing Racism today. A prime example look at LEOs and how many, not all, treat white people vs POC.
Agree..law enforcement wonders why morale is so low, recruitment is so hard...why many people, including a lot of white people yell ACAB..Maybe when LE stops killing or tasing people for no reason other than 'guilty of being black(or no white).
As an aside. Cleveland baseball team changes their name to 'Guardians'..trump the traitor didn't like that..no surprise, he IS a racist, after all.

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