by Travis Mateer

On this MLK day I would like to focus on vaccine equality.

I know what you’re thinking: isn’t vaccine SAFETY a little more important than vaccine EQUALITY? Sure, if you’re a white privileged asshole selfishly worrying about what vaccines might do to you, personally, then yes, SAFETY is probably going to be your main concern.

But if you’re a virtue-signaling true believer in the benevolence of science with a strong financial incentive to sell minority populations an experimental vaccine, then focusing on EQUALITY might be the ticket.

One of the problems with emphasizing equality over safety for our “local” newspaper, the Missoulian, is this: history. More specifically, the medical/industrial complex doesn’t have the most stellar history when it comes to “helping” minority populations with their “medicine”. Some of that problematic history includes sterilizing indigenous populations.

To counter the potential for this troubling history to translate into vaccine hesitancy amongst Native populations, the Missoulian is doing its part to promote vaccine equality with this article from January 1st, titled Tiny needle, big result: Native leaders fight vaccine hesitancy. From the link:

D’Shane Barnett didn’t even feel the poke when he got his COVID-19 vaccine Tuesday.

“I was actually trying to do a video to promote vaccine usage among the Native population and I didn’t even realize she had already stuck me,” Barnett said.

Compared with other vaccinations he’s gotten, Barnett said the Moderna shot was hardly noticeable because of how small the needle is. Barnett is the executive director of the All Nations Health Center, previously known as the Missoula Urban Indian Health Center. He was among a group of 33 people who got their shots at the center on Tuesday. He still posted a video of himself getting the vaccine to his Facebook page.

Transparency was a huge part of the All Nations Health Center’s rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine. Barnett, who is Mandan and Arikara, encouraged his staff to share photos of themselves getting the vaccine. The pharmacist who gave the vaccine to the Center’s staff is a member of the Blackfeet Nation.

For this PR effort to convince Native Americans to take an experimental vaccine to be effective, it’s important to get authentic Natives to do this to themselves, because when it was WHITE people doing it to them, well, there’s an unfortunate history there that our benevolent media corporation is trying to skillfully address. Here’s more tailored media propaganda targeting Natives (emphasis mine):

As dozens of health care providers in the Missoula community and across the state receive the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, experts are considering how best to approach vaccine hesitancy among the public. According to several polls conducted in November, the majority of Americans are willing to get a vaccine once it is available. However, some populations are reluctant.

Dennis Yi Tenen is a professor at Columbia University who studies the intersection of language and technology. Right now, he is looking at vaccine hesitancy in online communities.

Vaccine hesitancy is often considered a problem with what information people are consuming, Yi Tenen said. Health officials believe the solution to this is to continue to give people more science and more proof a vaccine was effective.

But what his team is observing is that people are hesitant to take vaccines for all sorts of reasons. And sometimes, they’re quite well-informed about the vaccines. So giving them more science might not address their concerns. People object on political grounds, on religious grounds and because of complicated histories with the medical community.

Ah, yes, “complicated histories” is a nice euphemism for blanket biowarfare and sterilization programs. But that was back in the day, when EVIL WHITEY was doing the mad scientist shit, like eugenics. That’s all in the past, Native Americans. Now there are red faces giving you this “medicine” instead of white ones, so it should all be good now. It’s called a “culturally informed approach”:

Congress has acknowledged instances of unethical medical practices and experimentation on Native American and Alaska Native communities. A stark example of this was brought forward in 1974 when Dr. Connie Pinkerton-Uri, Choctaw and Cherokee, found that one in four Native American women had been sterilized without consent, according to a timeline by the National Library of Medicine.

Two years later, the U.S. General Accounting Office reported at least four out of 12 Indian Health Service regions sterilized 3,406 Native American women without their permission between 1973 and 1976.

This history is why Barnett took a transparency approach. What has changed between 1970 and 2020 is how many Native American doctors, epidemiologists and pharmacists are working today, Barnett said.

“Almost every atrocity that’s ever been committed against Native people — by the United States’ government, by American medicine – there have not been Native experts at the table,” Barnett said. “And that is what has changed.”

Yes, instead of just white faces going to University to learn about western medicine and the healthy society western medicine has helped create in America, red faces were ALSO allowed to those universities to learn about western medicine. This is what is known as EQUALITY. Here is more evidence of this equality:

Native Americans are now working at the National Institute of Health. These educated Native professionals are the people Barnett is trusting. Not to mention his own knowledge. Barnett is getting a doctorate in public health and researched the safety and efficacy of the vaccine.

Cool, Barnett will have a doctorate AND he’s researched the safety and efficacy of the vaccine, so I guess there’s nothing to worry about, like why vaccine “efficacy” doesn’t mean reducing transmission, or the risk of pathogenic priming, or why Big Pharma got a sweetheart deal under Reagan to protect them from lawsuits when their vaccines hurt and kill people.

No, those concerns should just be shelved because Native Americans are now working at the NIH, and if that doesn’t convince you to take the WARP SPEED vaccine, then how about some MICRO-TARGETING?

Yi Tenen’s belief is that the way to help change minds about vaccination is to micro-target communities across the country in a similar way to Barnett’s strategy.

His team will collect the conversations of people in vaccine-hesitant communities online and then analyze what is being said to try to understand the reasons behind the hesitancy. Step one is to observe and understand. Step two is to help craft outreach campaigns based on the data about these conversations.

The goal is to be as scientific with the messaging about the vaccine as researchers were about its development, he said. Because both are important. All of the physical challenges of getting a vaccine to people, such as keeping it at the right temperature and away from light, won’t matter if officials can’t address the ideological component of not wanting to take the vaccine.

For the vaccine to be effective, a large number of people need to be willing to get it.

Do you feel better about vaccines yet, Native Americans?

I wonder what other “vaccine-hesitant communities” have been identified for micro-targeting? Are conspiracy theorists one community, or should they be broken up into smaller segments for micro-targeting? I’m sure the caring people at Lee Enterprises will let us know once the studies of us have been completed.

One significant question NOT being posed in this article is this: what if a large number of people are NOT CONVINCED and REFUSE to take the vaccine? Are there more coercive strategies ready to go for that scenario?

If you think the answer to that last question is “no” then CONGRATS, no more micro-targeting for you is required.

As for those of you who still might be exhibiting troubling displays of “hesitancy”, I’m sure being locked out of any semblance of living a normal life will be enough to convince you the science is sane and the oligarch eugenicists are your friends.