City Health Department addresses vaccine hesitancy among black community with cool representative superhero

Recent surveys have indicated that while roughly 20% of the White, Hispanic, and Asian communities would not take the covid-19 vaccine even if it were available to them, nearly 40% of the Black community would skip out on the opportunity. Dr. Ronnie Wood, chairman of the city’s Got Shot? campaign, has been tasked with overcoming this systemic hesitancy, and he has this to offer: “Blacks have historically been treated badly by the United States’ healthcare system. Perhaps the most famous example of this is the infamous Tuskegee Study of Syphilis in the Untreated Negro Male, in which Black Americans were deceived into thinking they were receiving treatment for syphilis when in fact they were not. Over 125 men lost their lives, when a simple dose of penicillin would have saved them. And this was a collaboration between the US Public Health Service and the CDC. It’s both shocking and shameful, and it goes a long way toward explaining why Blacks might be suspicious about the government coming around and sticking a needle in their arm ‘for their own good.’”

Happily, says Dr. Wood, the San Diego Department of Well-Meaning Gestures has come up with a way to address this suspicion. “The covid-19 pandemic is a disaster of global proportions, and if the past ten years have taught us anything, it’s that global threats demand superheroes to save the day. Black Panther was a monster hit for Marvel, and what was the lesson of Black Panther? That a Black community thrives when its blessed with a bit of magical stuff called vibranium falling from heaven, and a black superhero is born when he eats an herb affected by that vibranium. So it was just a matter of getting Black people to see the vaccine as their very own version of vibranium. A piece of technology that could render them impervious to the threat posed by this deadly enemy. And what better way to get them thinking in superhero terms than by creating a custom superhero? Thus was born The Blaccinator — the awesome alter-ego of Bucky Black, a mild mannered hospital janitor who is transformed into a crusader against covid after he is injected with an experimental…oh. Wait a minute. Let me get back to you on this.”