Consider This from NPR - How Faith Leaders In Israel And The U.K. Are Fighting Vaccine Hesitancy

Episode Date: April 26, 2021

Israel and the United Kingdom are among the most-vaccinated countries in the world. Their success is due in part to public health campaigns designed to fight vaccine disinformation in faith and minority communities. As part of NPR's series on fighting disinformation, London correspondent Frank Langfitt visited a mosque-turned-vaccination center on the frontline of that battle. In Israel, NPR's Daniel Estrin followed the man who helped lead the public health campaign for vaccines. In participating regions, you'll also hear from local journalists about what's happening in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating tomorrow, today. More at iu.edu. As a worker at a hospice in the English city of Birmingham, Shahnaz Sajjan was among the first group of people in the UK eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine, which began rolling out in December. And they asked me, oh, Shanaz, are you going to have it? And straight away, I just jumped and said, no, of course not. I'm not having it. Sajjan had been inundated with disinformation and false claims about the vaccines. Some of the claims

seemed specifically designed to scare off Muslims like her, like one about vaccines being made with pork product, which they are not. If you have these messages bombarded at you, you know, from morning till night, somewhere, you know, along the line, you just think maybe they are right. But despite a flood of disinformation, Sajan recently joined at least several million other Britons who, public opinion polls reveal, have changed their minds about getting a COVID-19 vaccine. In Sajan's case, that change came after leaders at her mosque reached out to Britain's National Health Service to turn the site into a vaccination center. And her imam made a personal show of getting the shot.

I think the imam plays a very important role. We see him three or four times a week. We have a lot of trust in him. And the fact that now that the mosque has made itself a hub for the vaccination, I think it's really, really incredible. Consider this. Some of the world's most successful vaccine campaigns have been waged in countries where religious communities face a flood of disinformation. Our international correspondents dig into how faith leaders in two communities, one Muslim and one Jewish, are fighting back. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Monday, April 26th.

The following message comes from NPR sponsor, Yogi Tea. Soothe your stomach with a zesty warming cup of Yogi mango ginger tea, blended with ginger and Ayurvedic warming spices like cinnamon and cardamom. Reach for this delightfully spiced herbal tea whenever your tummy needs a little taming. Find your flow with Yogi Tea. I'm Yo-Ai Shaw. I'm Kia Miyakunatis. We're the hosts of the NPR podcast, Invisibilia. You can think of Invisibilia kind of like a sonic black light. When you switch us on, you will hear surprising and intimate stories. Stories that help you notice things in your world that maybe you didn't see before. Listen to the Invisibilia podcast from NPR. It's Consider This from NPR. Per capita, the UK and Israel are among the world's most vaccinated countries. In both places,

more than half the population has received a shot. In the U.S., by contrast, that number is closer to 40%. The strong performance in both Israel and the U.K., not just the result of public health efforts in those countries, it is also thanks to the work of some local religious leaders who have watched disinformation spread rampantly. There were so many rumors going around about the DNA would damage the DNA to interfere with it. Every time you opened your phone in the morning, there'd be these messages, you know, coming to you saying, don't have it. That's Shahnaz Sajjan, who you

heard from earlier. Her mosque, the Al-Abbas Islamic Center in in Birmingham was the site of a first-of-its-kind vaccine outreach effort in the UK, an effort that targeted a wave of disinformation head-on. NPR's Frank Lengfet, our correspondent based in London, picks up the story from here. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has tried to counter disinformation with statements like this. Look, I've got no inhibitions about getting a vaccine, but the anti-vax is total nonsense. You should definitely get a vaccine. But the prime minister couldn't persuade people like Shahnaz.

She pointed out that Johnson downplayed the pandemic when it first emerged and then landed in the ICU himself with COVID. And his government bungled its early response, leading the UK to the highest COVID death toll in Europe. You lose confidence, don't you, in the leaders. So then you do then have to get your confidence back by listening to people who are close to you and who are concerned about you. My name is Sheikh Nour Mohamed. Sheikh Nour has served as the imam at the Al-Abbas Mosque here in Birmingham for more than four years.

As the government began rolling out the vaccine, congregants bombarded him with questions about it. The first one is, Sheikh Nour Mohammed, is this halal? So halal meaning, is this lawful as per the teachings of Islam or not? Number two, we are here to live and die. Why do we have to go for vaccination? Everything is in the hand of God, and he is the one who manages us. Sheikh Nuru drew on Islamic scripture for answers, emphasizing that good health is a gift from God.

And during his online Friday sermons, he hammered away at disinformation. We should not allow conspiracy theories and fake news control and manage us. Let's rely on the experts, not someone who threw something on Facebook. And let us take the advantage of this vaccine when the opportunities are given to us. The government planned ahead and acquired millions of vaccine doses, but millions of Britons were still skeptical. With the enthusiastic approval of the National Health Service, Nourou turned the mosque into a vaccination center in January, the first of its kind in Britain. But maybe the most effective thing he did was to get the vaccine himself.

When I took it, it wasn't that easy. Even I had some close friends who said, why? Why did you rush for it? You Should have waited. Let's see the reactions. I said, no, no, no. There is nothing to wait about. It paid off. Hundreds of congregants have received doses, and the mosque has delivered more than 15,000 doses to people in the area. Hello. Happy vaccination day. How'd the jab go? Yeah, fantastic. How are you? It wasn't just Sheikh Nuru railing against disinformation that changed thinking.

People in the nearby community also saw friends and family members get the vaccine and remain healthy. Femida Begum said her mother, who arrived at her appointment with the help of a cane, is a good example. At the beginning, she was very hesitant to have it. But then her sisters have had it, other family members have had it, and I think when there's word of mouth and people haven't had side effects, it's just a bit of a confidence boost. We've seen a really big shift in vaccine hesitancy. Parth Patel is a physician and research fellow at University College London. He's analyzed a national survey which tracked attitudes towards the vaccine. About 86 percent of people who were unsure about taking a vaccine in December have gone on to change their minds. Patel thinks one reason is local leadership,

says Sheikh Nour's approach is instructive. Using the mosque as a vaccination center, I think that's a really sort of significant event. It's about where is the message coming from? It's about trust. Is it the government telling you to get a vaccine or is it the mosque up the road? That's quite different. Since Noura's mosque opened as a vaccination center, more than 50 others have offered vaccines around the country. Kari Asim chairs a national advisory board for mosques and imams. When you are constantly urging people to take the vaccine, people are challenging you at times, saying, are you a proxy for the government?

Are you getting paid by the government to deliver this message? But as imams, we believe that this is not about the government or about the NHS, it's about saving lives. Asim says the tide began to turn in February. Locally, in some of the mosques, in one day, there are 150 people coming in who might not otherwise have come.

The messenger is as important as the message in this pandemic. And there's another lesson about attitudes towards vaccines. People learn through watching what happens to others, and public opinion can change very fast. NPR's Frank Lankfitt in London.

Now, no country has vaccinated a majority of its adult population faster than Israel. Just like in the UK, Israel also had to deal with vaccine skepticism, particularly among some ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities. But there were key differences in how that disinformation was spreading and what officials did to fight it. Here's NPR's Daniel Estrin in Jerusalem. On a recent night, I drove with a man who helped wage Israel's war for the vaccine. Avi Blumenthal is an ultra-Orthodox

PR consultant hired by the health ministry. We passed through Sanhedria, one of the neighborhoods he considers his battleground. Avi, you were just pointing out, very cramped apartments, very crowded conditions. The virus spread fast in these

devout Jewish communities. He says many ignored the coronavirus rules against congregating because that's the glue that keeps their communities together. They meet three times a day for prayer. They attend religious schools. Some rabbis worried they would lose followers if they couldn't congregate. Infections rose, driving nationwide lockdowns and angering other Israelis. Despite many rabbis' reluctance to follow lockdown rules, Avi says he still kept a line

of communication with them. He needed them on his side because he knew they would have the most influence on their followers to convince them to get vaccinated. But when he first approached them about the vaccines, the rabbis said, Let's not be first. Let's wait and see the vaccine's effects. Within a week or two, the rabbis changed their minds. I asked Avi, did he appeal to their religious responsibility to save lives? Did he cite Jewish law? Avi says, no, the rabbis did not need a lesson in Jewish

scripture. What they needed to know was the science, the effectiveness and the safety of the vaccines. So he brought in Israel's top public health official. Their meeting lasted two hours and the rabbis came out in favor. The next battle was to try and confront rumors and conspiracies that spread in these neighborhoods. Many ultra-Orthodox Jews shun TVs and smartphones and get their news from street posters and telephone news hotlines. Anonymous hotlines like this one warned against the vaccine, sharing stories of people who got their shots and died, without proving it was because of the vaccine, sharing stories of people who got their shots and died, without proving it was because of the vaccine.

Avi convinced an influential council of rabbis to put anti-vaccine hotlines on a telephone blacklist. Then he went after anti-vaccine posters in the streets. Avi shows me the walls where new anti-vaccine posters would appear all the time. He hired neighborhood locals to cover them up with pro-vaccine posters that said things like, the leading rabbis of Israel have been vaccinated. He says the poster war lasted two weeks before his opponents gave up. Today, you have to look hard to find anti-vaccine posters in the streets.

Despite all this work, what really helped turn the tide with many remaining skeptics was something unplanned, a funeral. 31-year-old Osnat Ben-Shitrit was ultra-Orthodox and ran a wig and bridal salon. She was about to give birth to her fifth child. Osnat remained hesitant, even after doctors made up their minds and endorsed vaccines for pregnant women. Her husband Yehuda finally made her a vaccine appointment, but it was too late. She caught COVID and died. Her newborn died too.

Yehuda, speaking through an interpreter, told me that is when the lies started to spread. All the various conspiracy theorists, they decided to fight us, and it was like an organized army. They were claiming that my wife, she was vaccinated and therefore she died. It was like they were twisting a knife in our stomach. And so the family set the record straight in interviews to ultra-Orthodox and mainstream media in Israel. They said she hadn't been vaccinated, and if she had been, she would have survived. Avi, from the health ministry, saw an opportunity to get people to listen. He organized a public campaign,

Get Vaccinated to Honor Osnat's Memory. It sparked a wave of vaccinations. That was apparent from my visit to one Hasidic neighborhood. This is Ruth Tabib with a new baby in a stroller. She hesitated because there was a lot of rumors. But what convinced her was this ultra-Orthodox girl that died during her pregnancy and left four children without a mother.

Today, more than 80% of ultra-Orthodox Israelis above the age of 30 are vaccinated or have recovered from the virus. Yehuda, the widower, shows me around his new home, where he just moved with his four small children. They couldn't bear being in their old home without mom.

Memories were very difficult. Their mattresses are on the floor. Their holy books are still packed in boxes. Yehuda says strangers have called him, hesitant about taking the vaccine, and he's invited them over. And they saw the situation with the kids at home. It didn't take them much time to realize

the vaccine is the answer. It wasn't the official campaign or even the pleas by rabbis that convinced many on the fence. It took the story of a young woman who didn't get vaccinated and who ended up in the same grave with her baby. NPR's Daniel Estrin reporting from Jerusalem. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.