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Mike Pence gets televised vaccination to show confidence in shot
Pence received the first of two doses of Pfizer Inc.’s vaccine at an office building on the White House compound. Second Lady Karen Pence and Surgeon General Jerome Adams also received the vaccine.
Vice President Mike Pence received the coronavirus vaccine in a televised event at the White House on Friday in a bid to encourage Americans to get the shot.
Pence received the first of two doses of Pfizer Inc.’s vaccine at an office building on the White House compound. Second Lady Karen Pence and Surgeon General Jerome Adams also received the vaccine.
“History will record that this week was the beginning of the end of the coronavirus pandemic,” said Pence, who chairs the White House’s coronavirus task force. “But with cases rising across the country, hospitalizations rising across the country, we have a ways to go.”
The US distributed about 2.9 million doses of Pfizer’s vaccine this week, the first since its approval for use. More than 300,000 Americans have died from the virus, and new cases and current hospitalizations have reached record levels this month. Moderna Inc.’s vaccine could receive an emergency use authorization within hours, Pence said.
Recent polls have shown that confidence in the vaccine is increasing but that many Americans still harbor doubts. Adams made a specific plea to the African American community to get the vaccine -- acknowledging lingering mistrust of the medical community after episodes such as the Tuskegee syphilis study, in which Black men were told they were receiving free health care from the government but were instead given placebos and other ineffective treatments for the illness.
“Lack of trust, especially in communities of color, is not without good reason,” Adams said, pointing to the Tuskegee experiment and also the case of Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman who unwittingly donated cancer cells at Johns Hopkins Hospital, creating the first immortalized human cell line. Lacks was never asked to consent to her cells being reproduced for research.
“As the U.S. Surgeon General and a Black man, I am equally aware of the symbolic significance of my vaccination here today,” Adams said at the event on Friday. “It would truly be the greatest tragedy of all if disparities in Covid outcomes actually worsened because the people who could most benefit from the vaccine can’t get it or won’t take it.”
Trump has said he will take the vaccine, but hasn’t said when. Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Tuesday declined to set a timeline, or to commit to him getting it while still in office.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, hailed the milestone but warned that the pandemic won’t end quickly.
“We all hope, and I think this is doable, that by the time we get to several months into this year, we will have enough people protected that we can start thinking seriously about the return to normality,” Fauci said.
Pfizer’s vaccine requires two doses, meaning Pence and Adams will need to receive a second shot in three weeks.
“I didn’t feel a thing,” Pence said of the shot.
