Transcripts

text | pdf |

---

CATHY WURZER: I want to tell you about Stacey Danner. Mr. Danner was a cheerleader for North Minneapolis, where he grew up for the marginalized communities he worked to stabilize and for his wide circle of friends, from all walks of life. But as the pandemic waned this spring, Danner remained skeptical of vaccines and fell gravely ill with COVID-19. As Catharine Richert reports, Danner's story illustrates that vaccine hesitancy in Minnesota's black communities is complex.

CATHARINE RICHERT: In 1991, then 16-year-old Kianna Ramos Baker was mourning the death of her brother, all while trying to figure out how to fit in as the new kid at DeLaSalle High School in Minneapolis. One day, a junior named Stacey Danner walked up to her and said--

KIANNA RAMOS-BAKER: "Hey, girl. What's your name?"

CATHARINE RICHERT: She says Danner took her under his wing because that's just how he was. He made friends everywhere and saw the potential in all of them. He even suggested--

KIANNA RAMOS-BAKER: "How about I don't have any siblings, you be my sister and I'll be your brother?"

CATHARINE RICHERT: Ramos-Baker lost Danner, her surrogate brother of 30 years to COVID-19 on July 11 at the age of 46, after a nearly two-month standoff with the virus. Danner's story peels back the layers of suffering COVID-19 has inflicted on communities of color in Minnesota and nationally, a pandemic that, through severe illness and death, has hit Minnesotans of color harder than white residents.

These very same communities are lagging in vaccination for a host of complicated reasons. Access, trust, and disinformation all play a role. Danner wavered on getting shots because he wasn't sure they were safe.

A recent American Public Media Research Lab survey found that among unvaccinated Black Minnesotans, about 40% are still deciding whether they want shots compared to 26% of white respondents. State vaccine equity director and pediatrician, Dr. Nathan Chomilo says vaccination gaps between white Minnesotans and communities of color are closing, but addressing vaccine hesitancy requires understanding why people of color feel betrayed by health care institutions in the first place. Patients ask him--

NATHAN CHOMILO: Well, how do they get a vaccine to this disease, this virus, so fast but we've been dealing with HIV in our community for decades, and we haven't had a vaccine? How all of a sudden is all this free and accessible, widely available yet we haven't been able to just get our basic health care needs met in the past?

CATHARINE RICHERT: Stacey Danner loved swimming and karaoke, traveling and comic books, and his music collection, R&B artist Al Jarreau mingled with English pop band tears for fears. He studied justice and peace studies and Sociology at the University of Saint Thomas, and he earned a master's degree in urban studies.

Friend Lorena Munoz says Danner's intellectual curiosity and intense work ethic were cultivated by his mother and grandparents who raised him in North Minneapolis. She says in college, Danner made it cool to be an intellectual.

LORENA MUNOZ: And it was OK to be a straight-A person. It was OK not to go out to the club and stay and engage in critical conversations about race, power structure, all of that from his dorm room.

CATHARINE RICHERT: Kesha Tanabe also met Danner at Saint Thomas. As a 19-year-old residential assistant, Tanabe says Danner created a campus-wide program to help students of color feel more comfortable within a largely white student body. Tanabe says, it was an early example of how Danner would operate in the world as an adult.

KESHA TANABE: He did have a bit of magic this way. I thought of him as socially intelligent, revolutionary in the sense that he didn't think the status quo was a prescription or a Fait accompli. He really could come up with a new idea.

CATHARINE RICHERT: When Danner graduated in 1996, Saint Thomas created an award in honor of his work. Ramos-Baker says Danner's upbringing in North Minneapolis guided his career working at firms and for nonprofits that built wealth in communities of color and supported Black entrepreneurs.

KIANNA RAMOS-BAKER: I think a lot of what Stacey did was from growing up from the North side. I remember, therefore, I will help change that system because this is what I saw growing up. This is what I want to make better for my people.

CATHARINE RICHERT: Without a spouse or any living close relatives, it was Tanabe, Ramos, Baker, and others in Danner's chosen family who tried to convince him to get a COVID-19 vaccine this spring. Danner had diabetes, which put him at higher risk of contracting a severe case of COVID. So Ramos-Baker said he was taking precautions to protect himself while traveling for a new job.

Danner used his travel schedule as a reason to put off getting the vaccine. But Ramos-Baker says he was also hesitant to get a shot because he thought it hadn't been tested rigorously on black people. State Vaccine Equity Director Chomilo says that perception is not true. Depending on the vaccine, between 9% and 15% of participants in studies identified as black, more than most clinical trials for other drugs.

NATHAN CHOMILO: That's one of the unfortunate misconceptions that is grounded in historical truth, but not for these vaccines.

CATHARINE RICHERT: Within Danner circle of friends, even those who watched him suffer in the hospital, vaccination remains divisive, igniting new fears that another member of their group could get sick and die. Friend Terrall Lewis hasn't gotten shots. He says he doesn't trust a society and its institutions that undervalue Black people like him and that generations of police violence and economic marginalization underscore that mistrust.

TERRALL LEWIS: It's a lived trauma that hasn't stopped. Everywhere we go, we're reminded that your life is expendable. So, what difference does it make?

CATHARINE RICHERT: For Danner, a vaccine would have made a difference. And for his friends who are vaccinated, they're hoping Danner's story sways more people of color to get shots. After returning from a trip in early May, Danner tested positive for COVID-19 and deteriorated quickly.

He was admitted to the hospital. And about a week later, he was put on a ventilator and then ECMO, a device that oxygenates blood when the lungs can't. Ramos-Baker was given power of attorney.

His friends kept vigil at Danner's bedside for 40 days. They hung pictures in his hospital room. Tanabe brought quilts from home to cover her friend. They trimmed his beard and filed his nails. Ramos-Baker says they did these things to show the hospital staff that this single Black man was loved, a step she doesn't think white people have to take to get good care.

KIANNA RAMOS-BAKER: We had to humanize him, making sure people saw him as a person, as somebody who was a brother, a friend.

CATHARINE RICHERT: In the hospital, Danner had near-death moments, but he always rallied. So July 11th started like any other day. Ramos-Baker came to Danner's hospital room. She turned on Al Jarreau's rendition of "Your Song," one of Danner's favorites. Another friend came to visit, and they prayed over him.

KIANNA RAMOS-BAKER: And I was like, you are so strong. I said, "I am so proud of you." And we prayed, and we said, Amen. And he flatlined. He was just gone.

CATHARINE RICHERT: The shock of that moment has started to wear off for Danner's friends. They memorialized him gathering at DeLaSalle High school, where so many of Danner's friendships began. And they started a scholarship in his honor with the Minneapolis YWCA to help kids learn to swim. It's an idea, they say, Danner would be proud of because it brings together things he valued most-- swimming, community investment, and his unshakable belief in the potential of people. Catherine Richert, NPR News.

[AL JARREAU, "YOUR SONG"] Girl, the best I can do is see

My gift is my song and this one's you