Opinion: Vaccines: I’ll take mine with no screams, please!

By Maurice Switzer

Even though my elementary school days are a mere dot in the rearview mirror, it’s impossible to forget Gloria Carey.

We were classmates from Kindergarten to Grade 8 in Lakefield Public School, and I can still picture her curly blonde hair and clear plastic-framed eyeglasses.

My indelible memory of Gloria is not due to her ravishing beauty or significant academic achievements, both of which might be deemed average by the most impartial standards.

It’s not actually Gloria that I recall so vividly, as much as the blood-curdling screams she emitted on the periodic occasions when our students had to submit to vaccinations against smallpox, polio, tuberculosis, or other such scourges that village health authorities perceived as a threat to the wellbeing of our school’s 300 pupils.

Those memorable shrieks echoing through the corridors of LPS instilled in the other 299 of us the distinct feeling that the sinister little syringe being wielded so efficiently by our uniformed nurse was in fact capable of causing much more damage than whatever invisible plague it was supposed to prevent.

In today’s COVID-19 world, they would say we had “vaccine hesitancy”.

Baloney! We were terrified. Why would anyone scream like that if they didn’t have verifiable evidence that something really bad was about to happen?

Gloria’s shrieks – however sincere— scarred the remainder of my medical adolescence. One time after carelessly slicing a wrist I tried to negotiate my way out of the predictable tetanus shot by promising my parents I’d forego my allowance for a month if they didn’t make me go to the doctor. It didn’t work.

When word circulated that a village boy had to have rabies shots after being bitten by a raccoon, kids whispered in hushed tones about the knitting-sized needles they heard were being repeatedly and agonizingly thrust into the poor child’s abdomen.

In my current state of informed adulthood, I of course understand that such youthful attitudes were symptomatic of irrational fears. The brief insertion into your arm of a sterilized needle less than half a millimetre in diameter is likely to be less of a health hazard than picking one’s nose with a dirty finger.

Speaking of noses, I frequently encounter young people on the street whose snouts, earlobes, and lips are permanently pierced by strips of metal that dwarf vaccination needles, and I understand they sometimes hire tattoo virtuosos to permanently install similar studs in various other less visible areas of their anatomies. Obviously, any fears that needles cause pain must be greatly exaggerated.

As for the serum contained in medical syringes, like most of the world’s sentient beings, I require no further scientific proof that inoculation has prevented modern societies from being stricken by various viruses.

Some 55,000 Canadians died from the 1918-20 outbreak of Spanish Influenza. Many panicked citizens were convinced the deadly virus could be transmitted by telephone calls. These days, thanks to routine vaccination programs, no more than 1,000 Canadians – mostly the frail and elderly— die each year from the common flu.

In 1980, 2.6 million people died of measles. By 2014, global vaccination programs had reduced the number of deaths to 73,000.

Smallpox is estimated to have killed up to 300 million people in the 20th century and around 500 million people – many of them Indigenous— in the last 100 years of its existence. As recently as 1967, 15 million cases occurred a year around the world. In Canada today, the disease is considered eradicated, thanks to inoculations received by most of us in our infancy.

We live at a time when political leaders tell so many lies that members of their publics are convinced that anything bad that happens must be somebody’s fault, a conspiracy of sorts. One of Donald Trump’s legacies is that, although 600,000 U.S. citizens have died from COVID-19 – more than all the country’s soldiers who perished in the First, Second, Korean, and Vietnam Wars combined – a substantial number of Americans are still not convinced that the pandemic is real, let alone serious.

Conspiracy theories can be as contagious as pandemics, and there are still a sizeable number of people who think all of the fuss about wearing protective masks or practising social distancing or getting vaccinated is some kind of subterfuge. There is never a sensible reason given for these fantasies, leaving one to wonder if so-called “anti-vaxxers” have been sniffing too many vapours from household solvents while being cooped up for the last year or so.

If anybody has a legitimate reason for being suspicious of government-mandated programs, it’s Indigenous peoples. At various times, Canadian authorities have approved such practices as deliberately withholding food rations from First Nations, using them for guinea pigs to test nutritional theories, and sterilizing their women without their knowledge or consent.

Canada also tested the efficacy of tuberculosis vaccines on children attending six Indian Residential Schools in the 1940s.

This shameful history explains the current concern by health officials about providing a comfort level to Indigenous peoples about the COVID-19 vaccine program. It’s also why governments are supporting such initiatives as the Indigenous Primary Health Care Council (IPHCC), an Indigenous-governed agency established to support the provision of culture-based health care services across Ontario.

IPHCC members include 29 provincial sites – including North Bay’s Indigenous Hub – where primary health care is offered to on and off-reserve clients.

The organization provides an important link between non-Indigenous health-care providers and the Indigenous populations they are intended to serve. One of the most important roles it fulfills is informing doctors and nurses about some of the historic reasons why Indigenous peoples might mistrust even the most sincere efforts to keep them safe and healthy.

In a recent webinar that involved over 100 health-care professionals involved in the COVID-19 vaccination program, IPHCC staff recounted such historic injustices as enforced sterilization of Indigenous women – 580 instances in Ontario alone – as well as the racist epithets voiced by nurses to  Joyce Echaquan as she lay dying in her Quebec hospital bed.

They talked about the need for “culturally-safe” health care in settings where familiar racist attitudes towards Indigenous peoples could have life-threatening results.

And they discussed ways in which interactions with Indigenous patients could be “healthier”.

I took the opportunity to praise the COVID-19 vaccination clinic that I attended at the North Bay Hub. There were language speakers available on site to facilitate communication and comfort levels of Indigenous clients. Cedar boughs were placed beneath our chairs; cedar is regarded by Anishinabek as a medicine that supports our immune system and fights infection. I also opted for a steamy cup of cedar tea instead of water or a soft drink.

During the recommended 15-minute post-vaccine waiting period, we could watch a video of Sheguindah Elder and Anishinabek Nation Head Getzit Gordon Waindubence offering some cultural teachings on a big-screen television set.

Every participant received “goody bags” – courtesy of the Hub and North Bay’s Indigenous Friendship Centre – that included everything from a stylishly-decorated COVID-19 mask to a fresh loaf of whole wheat bread. The Indigenous tradition of “giveaways” helps cement relationships.

People left feeling more like we had attended a community celebration than been subjected to medical treatment.

I wouldn’t pretend to have attained what the IPHCC folks referred to as a state of “vaccination enthusiasm”— I still avert my eyes when anyone sticks needles into my fingers or arms.

But it was a darned sight better than having to listen to Gloria Carey screaming her head off.

Maurice Switzer, Bnesi, is a citizen of the Mississaugas of Alderville First Nation. He lives in North Bay, where he operates Nimkii Communications, a public education practice with a focus on the treaty relationship that  made possible the peaceful settlement of Canada.