Children of color represent most of the children dying from COVID-19, and authorities, politicians, and parents need to do more to protect them. Meharry Medical College President and CEO Dr. James E.K. Hildreth said this during a candid interview with the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA).
Hildreth, a member of the White House COVID-19 Equity Task Force and a Food and Drug Administration member, empaneled to approve Covid vaccines, was unequivocal when asked whether schools should reopen before children vaccinated.
“The short answer is, for most places, in my opinion, it is not safe because mask mandates are not in place,” Hildreth responded. “In Tennessee, for example, there is a mask mandate, but the governor is giving parents the option to opt-out of this.
“A mandate with exceptions is not a mandate. It’s just a recommendation, and recommendations won’t stop this virus,” Hildreth continued.
Children now represent 26.8 percent of the weekly COVID-19 cases. Hildreth and other health experts have sounded the alarm about the lack of mask mandates in schools.
“We’re now seeing infection rates among children that are much higher than they’ve ever been for most of the pandemic,” Hildreth said.
On Thursday, Sept.16, Hildreth received the 2021 NNPA National Leadership Award for excellence and innovative leadership in Black America. Dr. Ebony Hilton, Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Congresswoman Cori Bush (D-Missouri), and Olympic record-setter Allyson Felix also will receive National Leadership Awards from the NNPA, the trade association of more than 230 African American-owned newspapers and media companies.
Born and raised in Camden, Ark., Hildreth now serves as the 12th president and chief executive officer of Meharry Medical College, the nation’s largest private, independent, historically Black academic health sciences center.
As schools reopen, Dr. Hildreth expressed more concern about the health of children.
“Even though children might do well, they can get long Covid, and since children are not small adults, their nervous and skeletal systems are still developing,” Hildreth warned. “Long Covid could have an impact long term on a child’s development. Therefore, I believe we should do everything we can to keep COVID-19 out of our children, especially Black and Brown children because most of the children who died of Covid happened to be Black and Brown.”
Hildreth demanded that those around children should be vaccinated and wear masks.
“That’s what we should demand of our leaders, but unfortunately, we don’t have leaders. Instead, we have politicians,” he exclaimed. “We need to do everything that we can to protect our children, and school systems all over the country are now shutting down, even temporarily, and this is really a challenging situation.”
Hildreth also addressed vaccine hesitancy, the process taken in developing the vaccines, and he decried those using unconventional tactics and medication like ivermectin.
“I acknowledge that ordinarily, people who are not in science or medicine might have questions,” he stated. “That is reasonable. But, when all the questions are answered, and you think about the risk of getting sick and dying, understand that African-Americans have such a higher burden of heart disease, hypertension, asthma, and obesity that makes us a greater risk than White people.”
He continued: “So, we as a community need to be vigilant about this especially. I’ve been studying viruses for 40 years, and I have researched for more than 30 years. I have also studied the immune system, and I can tell people that none of the steps of the vaccine were omitted. I understand that it was developed relatively fast, but we have the technology available, and it accelerated the process.”
“Ivermectin is not a wise thing to do. It’s a drug used to treat parasitic infections in horses, and there is no study in the world of ivermectin in humans. Compared to the vaccines evaluated with hundreds of thousands of people, there is no evidence whatsoever that this would be effective against Covid. I realize there’s a level of desperation, but that desperation should lead to getting vaccinated.”
