Parting Words on Health, Wellness, & Vaccination, by Carolina Soto & Michael Colbert

This month, we’ve had a series of dispatches that developed out of extensive conversations in our workshop around Covid-19 and the vaccination, particularly the logic of whether our members plan to to get it. We conclude this conversation (for now!) with two dispatches from workshop members Carolina Soto and Michael Colbert.

Skeptical and Vaccinated

By Carolina Soto

I am a skeptic when it comes to allopathic medicine. I became a Holistic Health Counselor certified by the American Association of Drugless Practitioners and The Institute of Integrative Nutrition (INN) before entering prison in 2002. I am a child of the sixties, a health-food, organic, climate sensitive hippie. Brown rice only, please, and leave out all the sugar and simple starch to make room for vegetables. I read about vegetarianism and nutrition for almost thirty years before studying with the institute and different famous health writers. The primary message is to eat your vegetables.

I have a deep-seated distrust of the white coats and their inability to break free of the pharmaceutical companies which govern modern medicine. The “health” system, run by the pharmaceutical companies, is both poisonous and deeply racist. Why is the infant mortality rate twice what it is for black and brown people in the wealthiest country in the world? Why is the “health” care available to racial and ethnic minorities of lower quality of care than whites? This leads to more significant morbidity in black and brown communities. Capitalism relies on poverty and racism for profits.

My health remained good while in prison. The amount of cancer I see is significant among the long-term formerly incarcerated population. I blame diet, anxiety, poor treatment with no follow-up on medical problems. I think I would jump at the chance to vaccinate from COVID if I were in prison during this pandemic. The thought of dying from overcrowded and non-hygienic conditions comes through almost every story I read from incarcerated women.

I have had my moments of skepticism about this vaccine and all vaccines. In my mind, there is still no quantitative proof that multiple vaccinations of infants did not cause an enormous spike in autism in the United States. I believe children should be vaccinated with one vaccine at a time. Personally, I never take a flu vaccine, but I have suffered the flu once with a duration of three long, weak, sick weeks. Sometimes one’s immune system is not enough to combat very infectious viruses. 

Skeptic or not, if one is dealing with a global pandemic, one must also think globally. 

For instance, measles causes a significant amount of unnecessary death and blindness in children, especially in Africa and parts of Asia. Death and loss of sight due to measles are health care disasters that need not occur. According to The World Health Organization, vaccination campaigns have saved nearly 20 million children’s lives in poor countries since 2001. 

Do I trust the statistics? I have decided that The United Nations has accountability to the global south, and because of this is trustworthy. I have read several of Dr. Paul Farmer’s books, followed his activism in Haiti and Peru, and was quite enthralled with his latest book, Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History. He recommends getting the entire population vaccinated.

I have a retired family friend who maintains a lab at the National Institute of Health to study T-cells. He and his wife are both famous immunobiologists. They urge me not only for my health but for the health of everyone I come in contact with to vaccinate as quickly as possible.  

This is what I understand:

The vaccine does not give you the virus or any part of the virus. The vaccine contains messenger RNA (mRNA), a set of instructions for our cells to make a certain protein that appears on the outside of the coronavirus. The vaccine does not change a person’s DNA. The protein does not mean you have the virus. The protein is what alerts the immune system and tells it how to fight the virus in the future. The first shot starts building protection, but we need two shots to get full protection. This technology is relatively new, but the Johnson & Johnson vaccine uses the more traditional vaccine technology of a disabled adenovirus to deliver the instructions. This adenovirus is not related to coronavirus. Adenovirus is the common cold viruses that scientists have a lot of experience making mild. It differs entirely from the COVID virus. Although it can deliver instructions on how to defeat the coronavirus, it can’t replicate in your body. It will not give you a viral infection. You have a choice of vaccines.

Will I rely on the medical system to keep me from dying of a deadly infectious disease? Yes. I am grateful for all the testing and views, MRI, etc., that modern medicine offers, and then I decide how to proceed. Here, I chose the vaccination.

Side effects result from the body’s immune system learning to fight COVID-19. A tiny number of the millions vaccinated so far have had severe allergic reactions that require immediate medical treatment. No one knows if there are long-term effects from the vaccine. The long-term effects of the COVID virus are apparent and seem much worse than something that may show up down the line. I distrust the system, but I want to be safe. I would like to see my community and loved ones safe.

Medical practices and vaccines, are u afraid!

By Michael Colbert

From hearing the many reasons why one should take the Covid-19 vaccination shots, to hearing the many reasons why one should not take the Covid-19 vaccination shots, or why one should wait, could really weigh on one’s psyche and have one confused and uncertain with medical practices and the taking of vaccinations. 

When hearing or reading about the government’s past experimentation on people of color, along with the indigenous people, with the outcome of side effects and the damage of long term effects years later, it is no wonder so many people will hesitate or become frightened today of something that might help in this pandemic situation. I grew up as a child when the chicken pox, mumps, measles, the flu, tuberculosis, smallpox, polio, to name a few, diseases that were so frightening to us children in the early sixties, we as children back then was mandated to get vaccinated for school but back then it wasn’t the vaccine that scared or frightened the child as much as it was the needle itself.

Then I’ve gotten older, and as time went by, I was no longer afraid of the needle pinch, but perhaps what became intriguing now was the sometime stories one would hear of what might have or could have been put into those vaccines. Somehow the stories are more frightening as an adult, with the what if conspiracies. It really didn’t hit me too hard until I started a jail career. Everytime I entered the prison system in detainment you had to be medically cleared for general population, and not only is the drawing of blood required to make sure there’s no blood borne diseases but the testing of tuberculosis and other diseases whereas they inject you with vaccines especially for a tetanus shot against stepping on a rusty nail, a shot that lasts for five years, to injecting you with the dead TB cell to see if you have tuberculosis was worrisome. I’ve been injected with that dead TB cell seemingly numerous times from the early years of my incarcerations as well as trying to get into treatment programs. That TB injection feels like hell; I’m always scratching it and it’s always a positive result on my arm, then I found out that I was actually allergic to the injection of the dead cell, so now I’m only permitted to take the chest x-rays which always come out negative. I thank God for that or I would have been taking a medication called I-N-H, something like that. 

Even when I started my Rikers Island time back in 1977 at a very young age, there was one, probably one and a half inmates housed in diagnosed with mental problems, but today almost two-thirds of the population in prison, particularly Rikers Island are medically medicated inmates. We call them MOs (for mental observation). How did that happen? The food? The water? The early injections? Something don’t seem right, so here I am today, 3 years out of prison, still afraid from the many stories of conspiracies, some true some maybe not. The Tuskegee experiment was horrible. 

So now I’m seeing so many celebrities and entertainers on television telling the public to take the vaccine, it’s alright. What I recommend is if you do or don’t, keep continuing safe practices such as washing your hands daily, to keeping your face mask on. I pray that we overcome this pandemic soon, and may we all be safe. 

Editors' Note: For up-to-date information about Covid vaccines, treatment, and prevention, please visit this page.

One of “the real women of Orange Is the New Black,” Carolina Soto is one of the founding members of the Re/Creation writing workshop at Restoration Plaza. Unlike the fictionalized Yoga Jones, Carolina has a long history of work in social justice and advocacy, and is a seasoned painter and visual artist. Since beginning her work in the Re/Creation writing workshop at Restoration Plaza in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, Carolina has increased her confidence and aptitude with both the written and spoken word, composing speeches and essays for her advocacy work and as well as written memoir. In particular, her essays and memoirs illustrate her vast capacity for empathy in her descriptions of people with whom she shared time inside. She now splits her time between living in New York City and the Dominican Republic.

Michael Colbert is one of the pillars of this intriguing creative writing course who would like to share and welcome all to a fun reading and writing of his personal experience in a long journey of an imaginative mind. Michael has been part of Re/Creation since participating in its earliest workshops on Rikers Island, and has been instrumental in developing our organization.