With all the misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine that is circulating the internet, some Latinos have decided they would rather take their chances and not receive the jab over the advice of medical experts.
According to a recent survey by Voto Latino, 24% of Latinos said they would not get vaccinated and an additional 23% said they were unsure about getting a vaccine that would protect them from a virus that has killed more than 568,000 people in the United States alone.
That’s why Latinos who have a bigger platform than most are trying to bridge that gap between Latino communities and medical professionals with correct information. In a new video about the importance of Latinos getting the COVID-19 vaccine, actors Benicio Del Toro (Traffic) and Zoe Saldana (Guardians of the Galaxy) are teaming up with SOMOS Community Care to dispel the conspiracy theories and bad info that is using fear to keep people from making a decision that will not only benefit them, but the nation, too.
In a new video campaign released Tuesday (April 20), Del Toro and Saldana, along with Dr. Gustavo Del Toro, chief medical officer at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn, have a series of short conversations about the effectiveness of the vaccine, side effects, and some of the false claims people are making about the vaccine.
Some of the questions the actors bring to Dr. Del Toro include, “What are the side effects of the vaccine?” “Can I get the vaccine if I am undocumented?” and “Will the vaccine change my DNA?”
“The Moderna and Pfizer BioNTech vaccines have RNA from the virus,” Dr. Del Toro says in the video. “But
these genetic materials have no ability to get into the human DNA. End of story. It cannot happen.”
To get some of your questions answered about the COVID-19 vaccine, watch the video series.
