What is in the COVID-19 vaccine, how effective and safe is it, and what documents do you need to get it? These were among the dozen or so fundamental questions asked during a town hall meeting hosted by Santa Barbara County Public Health on February 11. The forum was geared toward the multiple ethnicities in Santa Barbara County — and was simultaneously translated into Mixteco and Spanish — and the questions had been gathered prior to the meeting.
More than 4,000 county residents tuned in to hear the answers from Public Health officials, including Van Do-Reynoso, director of Public Health; Dr. Henning Ansorg, the agency’s health officer; and Paige Batson, deputy director for Community Health. Notably, all spoke simply, directly, and gently, even when delivering painful information such as the inequity in the death rate among Black and brown peoples.
Trust was clearly an issue — trust that the vaccine won’t be harmful, trust that it works, trust that lining up for a vaccine won’t backfire. “We can only move at the speed of trust,” Do-Reynoso said, adding that her department was committed to removing time and location barriers and finding ways to enable everyone to be vaccinated. Though her department had experienced difficulties getting adequate vaccine supplies, which are scarce, she assured viewers that fully 81 percent of the vaccines the county had received was going into arms.