Second gentleman Douglas Emhoff, others drum up support for COVID-19 vaccinations in Alabama
Second gentleman Douglas Emhoff, husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, poses for a photo with the Jackson-Olin High School cheerleaders during a visit to Alabama to urge people to both get the COVID-19 vaccine themselves and encourage their friends and family to get it. (Solomon Crenshaw Jr. / Alabama NewsCenter)
Before he posed with Jackson-Olin High School cheerleaders, second gentleman Douglas Emhoff led a cheer of his own during his visit to Alabama to drum up support for COVID vaccinations.
“I’ve been saying four simple things and you can say them, too,” he said during an event Thursday at the high school in Birmingham’s Ensley Neighborhood. “Vaccines are safe, effective, free and available. Vaccines are safe, effective, free and available. Vaccines are safe, effective, free and available. If you just have those four things, that’s all you need to know.”
Emhoff visited with U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Denis McDonough and Dr. Cameron Webb, senior policy adviser for the White House COVID-19 Response Team.
Second gentleman Douglas Emhoff pumps his fist during his appearance at Jackson-Olin High School in Birmingham. (Solomon Crenshaw Jr. / Alabama NewsCenter)
The trio attended a kickoff event with volunteers and community organizers before the community members set off to canvass the neighborhood with educational information to encourage people to get vaccinated. Afterward, Emhoff and McDonough toured the vaccination clinic inside Jackson-Olin High.
Later Thursday, McDonough and Webb toured a vaccine clinic in Montgomery hosted by the American Legion, in concert with a conference for veterans and their families.
At Jackson-Olin, Emhoff acknowledged that “we’ve got work to do” to reach President Joe Biden’s goal of 70% of the country receiving at least one vaccination shot by the Fourth of July. He acknowledged that he was preaching to the choir, speaking to an audience that had already gotten its shots.
But the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris recruited the choir, urging everyone who’s been vaccinated to talk to those who haven’t.
“Here in Birmingham, Alabama, we have work to do,” he said. “I need your help. We need your help. You have to go out … into the communities and talk about why, why is it so important.
“It’s going to keep you safe, but, most importantly, it’s going to keep others safe.”
Earlier, Webb called vaccinations “the best shot of hope” the nation has in combating the virus. He recalled the first time he walked into the ward at the University of Virginia that was filled with COVID patients.
“The thing is they all looked like me, like my parents, like my cousins, like my neighbors and so many of my friends,” he said. “It hits really hard when you see the toll, the disproportionate toll this pandemic takes.”
Webb has felt safer on more recent trips to that unit, he said, because he’s been vaccinated.
“The science was there. I knew that I was safer now than I had been at any point in the nine months I had spent working on that COVID unit,” he said. “That’s what these vaccines do. That’s why we trust them. That’s why I encourage my mom and my dad, my brothers and my sisters, my neighbors and my friends to all get vaccinated, because this is truly our shot of hope.”
McDonough said veterans are often susceptible to disease because of the sacrifices they’ve made. “Our best way to protect them, to thank them for their service, is to not only continue to support the VA professionals who are vaccinating and caring for them every day,” he said. “It’s getting our neighbors, our sisters and our brothers vaccinated with that extra immunological defense.”
Thursday’s event at Jackson-Olin launched the latest vaccination site in a Birmingham city school. Superintendent Mark Sullivan said the school system recognized some of the mass vaccination sites will close in the next few weeks. That means people will have to go to their family physician or neighborhood pharmacy to get vaccinated, options that may not be available to some.
“For many communities of color, you don’t have a pharmacy in your neighborhood or you may not have a family physician,” Sullivan said. “One of the things that we did a few weeks ago was to start to provide vaccination sites within our schools.”
Thursday’s event also launched a local neighborhood canvassing effort to spread the word about vaccinations, with support from multiple organizations.
Jessica Montgomery is deputy program director of Made To Save, a grassroots group working to ensure that people in places hardest-hit by the pandemic can get the vaccine and the latest health information. She said the organization, part of Civic Nation, is focused on supporting equitable access to the vaccine in the most marginalized communities.
Rising Jackson-Olin junior Courtney Palmer celebrates getting vaccinated with her sisters Kahlera Palmer and Jamiyha Armstrong and their great-aunt Vickie Harris. (Solomon Crenshaw Jr. / Alabama NewsCenter)
“We work through supporting funding, bringing a bus tour to these organizations that are hosting vaccine clinics, that are doing outreach, to make sure that we can amplify their work,” she said. “We know that the most effective way for people to get vaccinated is through trusted messengers.”
“Trusted messengers” strike closer to home than public service announcements featuring celebrities, Montgomery said. “These are people that they know every day in their community, that they work with. It’s their neighbor, their brother or sister.”
Vickie Harris was at the high school to get her great-niece, rising junior Courtney Palmer, vaccinated. Harris said she, Palmer and the rest of her household all contracted the virus.
“Initially, I had some misgivings about the vaccine,” Harris said. “But as more information came about, I was fine. I did my own research and also my physician, Dr. Hernando D. Carter, did a lot of research about it and he assured me that everything is OK.”
Emhoff said more than 50% of the U.S. population has gotten at least one shot. The numbers in Alabama are lower.
“We’ve got light at the end of the tunnel. We know that we’re close,” he said. “But, especially here in Alabama, Birmingham, we’ve got to do better. We cannot declare victory yet. We can’t rest on our laurels, especially with the variants coming. We’ve got to get vaccinated.”
