Vice President Kamala Harris hosts a virtually meeting with founding members of the COVID-19 Community Corps to discuss the COVID-19 Public Education Campaign.
Transcript
mhm. Well, good morning, everyone. And thank you so much for joining all of us today. My name is Dr Vivek Murthy, and I’m honored to serve as a surgeon general of the United States. In my role, I’m charged with looking out for the health and well being of each and every American. And I consider this to be a sacred responsibility, particularly in this grave moment when we’re living through a once in a century pandemic. I know we’re here because we all know that Covid 19, has caused tremendous suffering for millions of Americans. Many of us have lost family members to this virus. I myself have lost seven, including my Uncle Roman earlier this year. Many of us have also felt what it’s like to be worried sick about your loved ones getting coated, especially family members of ours who are elderly or who might work on the front lines. You know, over this past year, every time my father and my sister went to work in their medical practice, I couldn’t help but fear that this was the day that they were going to be exposed to the virus. And during the pandemic, people have also lost many other things jobs, the chance to go to school, the possibility of holding loved ones close the fact that this pandemic has also affected some people far more than others. It is also underscored the profound racial and geographic disparities in health that have long plagued our nation. But despite the heavy toll that Covid is exacted, this pandemic has also reminded us that a fundamental truth that we need each other, that our happiness and our survival depends on our connection to one another and our community. During this past year, even as Covid separated as physically. So how many people have stepped up to help one another delivering food to neighbors who are too worried to go to the grocery store, checking in on friends who were having a hard time putting their own lives at risk, to provide medical care and hospitals, to keep grocery stores open and to keep our neighborhoods safe? That spirit of community is what makes our country great, and it is what we need now more than ever, as we seek to bring in this pandemic to an end. Now, we’re all here today because all of you have agreed to be founding members of the Covid 19 community core in nationwide grassroots network of leaders who are stepping up to protect your communities. And together our goal is to help our communities get vaccinated and by doing so to stop the spread of Covid 19. Now I know that we’ve made great progress on the vaccination front. But even though nearly 100 million Americans have already received at least one shot, there are still millions of Americans who are not protected against the virus. But your leadership has the power to change that. Collectively, you can reach out to millions of people with the facts about covid and the covid vaccine. And this is so important because hearing the facts from trusted sources is what will help people make good decisions about their health. And that’s why I firmly believe that your involvement will save lives. And that’s why all of us are so grateful to you for being a community core leader. As we begin our conversation today and as we embark on this work together, I’m also reminded that this initiative has been made possible by the hard working men and women of the administration. who are committed to addressing covid with the power of science and compassion and partnership, that commitment starts at the very top. Having champions in the White House for public health is absolutely essential. And that is why I am so honored today to introduce one of our nation’s most important leaders. One who has broken barriers and lifted up communities. A leader who is kind and strong and who has inspired millions of people, including my son and daughter, who took to calling her camera anti in the very first time they saw her picture. Ladies and gentlemen, the vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris. Uh, thank you, Mr Surgeon General Murthy. Um, and I just in front of all of the friends who are here. Um, I just have to tell you, he has been tireless, um, for months and months working on this issue. And so, in front of everyone, I want to thank you, Vivek, for all you have been doing, um, to lift us up as a nation and to also lift up the importance of following the science and and the fact that we are in this together and so lifting up the power and significance of the collective and so to everyone. Thank you. Good morning. I know it’s very early for all of the friends on the West Coast and, um, to all of you, Thank you for for joining for this first meeting, this inaugural meeting of of our community core. And, um, we are truly very excited about the participation and the collaboration and the coalition building potential of this group of leaders. And And I’ll tell you when we look at the number of vaccines that are being administered each week, um, they are increasing, and that gives us a sense of optimism. We are breaking records all of the time. Our goal of 100 million shots in 100 days is now 200 million shots in 100 days. And by april 19th, nine in 10 adults in the United States will be eligible to sign up for a shot. And we want. And the president feels very strongly about this. We want every adult in the United States to sign up and get vaccinated when they can, and when it’s their turn, because that’s what will make us strong. And that’s what will make us healthy and get us through this pandemic. And so this is what we’re here to discuss. And again, thank you all for for taking the call to be part of this around this virtual table, we have some of the most trusted leaders in the United States. I’ve got a big screen here where I can see everyone. I hope you all can see each other. Uh, we can just Let’s wait. Uh, what a collection. We have community leaders. We have faith leaders. We have union leaders. We have business leaders, leaders, leaders, leaders. And and we know that the people of our country look to leaders like you. And they have been looking to you. They have been looking in your eyes searching to to believe that there should be a reason to have hope. They have been looking in your eyes and looking to you to give them some confidence that we can get through this and give them a sense of knowing that they are not alone. This is what you all have been doing over the course of this last year. And you, of course, are leaders that are leaders in your communities um, you are the people that folks on the ground no and rely on and have a history with. And when people are then making the decision to get vaccinated, they’re going to look to you. They’re gonna look to you to help answer the questions that they may have that may include what’s in the vaccine. It may also include How do I sign up? How do I get there? The transportation piece. And so that’s why today, as part of our broader public education campaign, we are launching our covid 19 community core. And so everyone, as the surgeon general has said, everyone gathered here is a founding member, and I thank you on behalf of myself and President Biden for stepping up. Um, this is a really important moment, and we have a great opportunity at this moment. And as we all know, each day is not equal. We are at a phase where, with the increasing number of supply of vaccinations, we are at a phase at this moment where we can actually get ahold of this thing and advance where we want to be as a country in terms of protecting our neighbors and so as members, you will have access to the latest information and a host of resources that you can then share with those you serve. And we will work with you to get creative. And we want your ideas about how we can be most creative to be most effective, uh, through our share the MIC program, for instance, we can set up a Q and A A question and answer with a doctor or a nurse on your platforms. This work couldn’t be more important. And as we know, our public health professionals are some of the most trusted in terms of a source of information about what is in the vaccine and how it works. Um, but here’s the other truth that we must speak in some communities, some of our hardest hit communities. It’s too hard to access the vaccine or get information about it. And we have to be honest about that. We certainly are. Um, we have to be honest. And in some communities there is a concern about getting vaccinated, some based on mistrust based on history, some based on just rooted in misinformation, of which there is a lot out there and we need your help to combat that. Um And so these are These are some of the concerns that people have, and these are These are fair concerns, which we must address. Um, but no matter the community trusted leaders are the best way to boost confidence and trusted leaders. You are the best way to deliver information. You know, yesterday I actually convened a group of faith leaders from around the country, and they were very clear. Um, they said, Look, sometimes people just need basic information, you know? I mean, you’re asking people to take a shot in the arm they need. They need to know what’s going on. They need to know things like, what’s in the vaccine. How does it work? Um, and they need to hear from the people they trust. And again, that is you. And so that’s why we are investing the bulk of our time and resources in this group of leaders and you who are the trusted leaders of America. Last week we announced that we’re investing nearly $10 billion in grants to community organizations to health centers and local governments to help build confidence and increase access to the vaccine and with our community core. We will empower more leaders with more information to reach more people. So you kind of get the theme here. We need to do more and we need your help to do it. Um, whether you run a faith, a faith based organization that’s going door to door to schedule appointments, which so many of you have been doing, or Food Assistance program. That’s making sure that folks have transportation to vaccination sites or a community health center doing the beautiful, culturally competent work, the bilingual health outreach. Speaking to people in the language, they speak literally and culturally. And the basic message, of course, we all know is pretty straightforward. The vaccine is safe and it will save lives. The vaccine is safe and it will save lives. And so the community core is about getting that message out as far and as wide as we possibly can. And, you know, I’ve been I’ve been calling our broad public education campaign, though we can do this campaign, Um, because I do believe I know and I have faith that we can do this. And so, with your help, let’s do it and I look forward to hearing from you about what you are doing, how it is going, how we might help you scale your good work. And again, you know, this has been a moment of great crisis, as our surgeon general has said, Great loss, um, loss of life, loss of jobs, loss of normalcy for our Children, loss of very significant phases of their educational process. And, um, there is light at the end of the tunnel. We are now, you know, we’re in spring. I’m here in D. C. And I just got a peek at the cherry blossoms blooming and, um, and around the world, regardless of your faith or where you might be, this is a time where we celebrate renewal and hope. And I’m very much feeling that. And I know we are collectively feeling that. But we have to then couple our hope and our faith with action, because that’s the only way we will achieve all that we hope to achieve in game. And so that again brings me back to you because you are people of action and we are so honored to have you join us. And so now we’re going to hear from several of our community core founding members. And the first is I’m introducing Dr Reid tucks in of the Black Coalition against Covid. Doctor tucks in, Well, thank you so much. And Good Morning, Madam Vice President Insurgent General Murphy. The black coalition against Covid is pleased and privileged to be included in this timely and essential initiative. Our work began on Easter Sunday of last year in recognition of the devastation that would inevitably be experienced by the black community from the then growing pandemic. As the former commissioner of public health for Washington, D. C. During the height of the AIDS epidemic in the mid eighties, I learned firsthand the essential importance of mounting grassroots campaigns to partner with and support the work of governments. As such, we reached out and engaged the steering committee that enabled us to reach into almost every aspect of D C community life and engage key influencers whose voices had credibility and resonance. These included leaders from communities such as community based organizations, faith organized labour, small business musicians, poets, visual artists, actors, domestic abuse workers, returning incarcerated citizens, physical, mental and public health professionals, substance abuse experts, social workers and of course, the Howard University academic community, among others. Our efforts then and now are devoted to raising awareness of compliance with the best scientific and up to date guidance on mask wearing, physical distancing, hand washing and avoiding congregating indoors. As we confronted, though Madam Vice President the challenges of gaining acceptance for participation in vaccine related clinical trials. We broaden our team by adding a specific health coalition comprised by the presidents of before historically black medical schools. Howard McCrary, Morehouse and Charles Drew. Along with the National Medical Association and the National Black Nurses Association. We augmented this team with the National Urban League and the largest digital publisher of health information for the black community black doctor dot org. Together we have produced numerous, uh, what we call making it plain national town halls for the black community generally and many targeted at specific sub communities, such as a recent one with almost all of our major fraternal, social and political organizations that reached 700,000 people. Another, which was, I’m sure near to your heart, Madam Vice president. We did with Sisters United for Reform, which reached 250,000 black women and another one that we did just recently with the Congressional Black Caucus. Through the course of our work, we’ve been continually impressed by the opportunities inherent in collaboration as the surgeon general, Murthy said. In this time of crisis, there has been an incredible outpouring of goodwill, and we have benefitted benefitted from collaborations with senior federal leaders in your administration, particularly at the c. D. C, as we’ve worked with them to foster a more clear and dynamic role for community based and faith based organizations and vaccine administration. But we’ve also been able to work with faith community leaders such as those running Choose Healthy Life, The Values Partnership Black Ideas Initiative in the A. M. E Council of Bishops. We’ve worked with media companies and content producers such as Real Chemistry, CMR, Joy Collective in the Ad Council, the Kaiser Family Foundation and YouTube and Google. Other companies have come to our aid, such as the Boston Consulting group Bio farmer Henry Schein and the maid, to save in closing Madam VP and Surgeon General Murthy. We believe our work is having an impact because we use black doctor dot org, which has a great ability to do polling and we can tell that the polling over the last several months has flipped from 70% negative in the black community, wanting to take the vaccine to now down to 28%. Uh and we know that the people in the middle are definitely reachable. We see April as the critical month in this flat out race to the finish line, and so we are doubling down on all of our work. We’ll be working with all of our partners to produce major events at least once a week, along with numerous of the local D C. Community based activities were especially interested in realizing the benefits of our developing partnership with young creative entrepreneurs such as John Smith and Chris Holiday, who have deep creative connections with our athletes and music celebrities. We have to focus much more intently on their audiences of young people who need to receive science based and relevant information from black medical experts that are filtered through engagements with the people that they pay attention to Madam based Vice President Insurgent General Murphy. You have the full support of the black coalition against Covid as you and leaders such as Marcella Nunez Smith and Cameron Webb and others in your administration. Move us forward, Madam Vice President. We can do this. Yes, we can. Thank you, Doctor Texan. And you know, I as I was listening to you and your campaign about making it plain. You know what? What is also clear to me about this moment of crisis is that there is the opportunity to reintroduce and remind folks of what is available to them in their community by way of public health assistance and health care. Um, and we should think about this that way because it is about first and immediately. And like you said, April is a critical month, so it is immediately about the vaccines. But it can also be a conversation that reminds folks of what is available to them in their community health centers in their in their community based organizations to get them access to health care for all of the other needs that they have. And so that’s where I see a great opportunity again. This is a moment where this crisis gives me hope that we can potentially leapfrog over the covid issue into a place where we also accelerate getting people access to the overall health care they need, because in many ways I think that this pandemic has been an accelerator. Um, for those for whom things were bad before they even worse now. But if we can see it is also an opportunity to accelerate into a better place than we were even before, um, our work will be worth it. I think it’s the It’s the leapfrogging concept. It’s also building the bridge. That’s right you’re creating is it’s funny, because this is what you and the president are doing. We’re building an infrastructure. That’s right, and that if we build it right and we build it with an eye to the future, then we lose what we built in the pandemic. That’s exactly saying us in the future, exactly. Making it plain. And next. I am excited to introduce Neil Bradley from the United States Chamber of Commerce. Thank you, Neil, for joining us. Well, Madam Vice President Dr Murphy, thank you so much On behalf of the U. S. Chamber. We want to applaud your leadership throughout this pandemic, but also today in launching this covid 19 community core, you know, across the United States. Since the beginning of the pandemic, businesses of all sizes across all sectors have been honored to answer the nation’s call, whether that was converting their operations in the early days to make PPE and hand sanitizer and ventilators, or whether it was the front line companies who kept our country going in some of its darkest hours. Or the telecommunication companies have made meetings like this today possible. And, of course, our pharmaceutical industry, which developed a vaccine from inception to deployment in record time. But Madam Vice President, you noted, we’re in a different phase now, and American businesses are pleased to answer the call. In this phase, they are ready to step forward whether that’s offering vaccination sites on their own properties or in their own facilities or getting basic information to their employees and to their customers. Providing paid time off so that individuals can go to the pharmacy can go to a doctor, can go to one of your mass vaccination sites to receive this vaccine. A few weeks ago, we launched something called the Rally for Recovery at the U. S. Chamber. We’ve signed up nearly 400 employers that collectively employ over four million Americans, and they all took a pledge to do their part to do the things that I just mentioned to make sure that we get as many Americans vaccinated as quickly as possible and that as soon as someone’s vaccine is available to them that they know how to get it. I’m confident, and we’re confident that the U. S. Chamber that with this new initiative that you’ve launched that together, working collectively, we can reach every business irrespective of size and reach down to every main street in America across the United States. Today, there are hundreds of state and local chambers of commerce who are itching and excited to bring this pandemic to a close. They’re ready to do their part. And collectively, I think we can do this. So I want to echo doctor toxin together, we can get this done. Who is echoing you, Madam Vice President. And we are We are honored to be a part of this today, and you can count us in to do everything in our power to support you, to support the administration and to end this pandemic. That’s fantastic. Thank you, Neil. And, um, please express our thanks also to all of those business leaders who have stepped up too, in particular offer paid sick leave so that their employees can go and get vaccinated because we don’t want our workforce to have to choose between earning the money that they need to feed their kids with and getting a vaccine. So thank you. And please pass on our thanks to your members. Um, next we have Mary Kay Henry, the great leader of S E I U. Hey, Mary Kay. Thank you so much. Madam Vice President and Surgeon General Vivek Murphy. The two million members of S. E I. U are so proud to join with the rest of the nation in creating this covid 19 community core. We’re so encouraged with the leadership you have demonstrated Madam Vice President and Surgeon General Vivek Murphy with taking command even in the transition, uh, to your administration of creating a nationally coordinated plan to crush this virus prove bold action that we just witnessed in the passage of the American rescue plan and in the announcement of the American jobs plan yesterday we’re proud to stand with you in fighting for the hardest hit communities to have equitable access to this vaccine, and it s e i u. And across the labor movement, we are doing our part to educate our members the essential workers who have kept our country running throughout the pandemic. And we’re fighting to make sure they have access to the vaccine as trusted messengers. Here’s what we’ve done just as a sample of what we hope to contribute to the community court. To make sure S e I U members have the information they need to protect themselves and their families. From the spread of this deadly virus, we’ve held over 100 town halls in nine languages. The most recent one was in Cantonese, with 90 member leaders who are connected to tens of thousands more with a trusted Cantonese physician who was able to break through the misinformation and build trust. S E I. U has even held pop up clinics from coast to coast, where thousands of members have been vaccinated for home care workers in Washington and Oregon for janitors and security officers in California. In Connecticut, Michigan, Maryland and New York and New Jersey, we’ve partnered with nursing home employers, both employers who are union and employers who are non union that are just want the partnership in order to get every nursing home worker and resident vaccinated to hold education cess it and clinics in skilled nursing facilities. Through our own polling, we’ve seen how these education and outreach efforts have given essential workers black, brown, Asian, native, immigrant and white the information and facts they need to make the decision to get vaccinated and stop the spread. Sylvia Liang, who is a home care worker in Seattle, Washington, is just one example. She’s 64 years old but didn’t plan on getting the vaccine until her client was also eligible. But it was seeing her fellow in home caregivers get vaccinated and share their stories on social media. That made the difference for her after she got vaccinated. She was so grateful that the whole process was easy because of her union. Sylvia got her vaccine during an in home caregiver pop up clinic that was a partnership between the city of Seattle and S. E. I. U 775 R Washington State Caregivers Union. We are doing this across the country. Are clinics nationwide are on track to vaccinate 200,000 people by mid April. We have the potential to do this at a much larger scale, I believe, Madam Vice President. That’s why you’ve asked us to serve as part of the Covid 19 community core. And we’re eager to partner with you and all the White House and with the Chamber of Commerce and the Black Coalition against Covid and all the other partners gathered today so that we can ensure that every essential worker has access to the vaccine and that we prioritise those who are putting their lives on the line. The health of our nation depends on how we protect one another, regardless of the color of our skin, our ethnicity or income. And we’re ready to work with all of you to pull through this pandemic together and make sure that all essential workers are respected, protected and paid what they’re worth. Thank you so much for including us. Thank you, Mary Kay. And please, on behalf of all of us, thank your members, those essential workers who from the beginning of this pandemic, we’re going to work often taking public transportation. Um, without the equipment that they needed to be to be sure that they could be safe. But out of their commitment to caring for strangers, often they kept going to work, exposing themselves and their family to harm. But their commitment to the health and well being of our country has been extraordinary. And so, please, on behalf of all of us, thank them for their You see them, Madam Vice President. They received your phone calls on Thanksgiving. Being grateful for their service were and the Vek included one of our registered nurses in the task force before inauguration. We’re very, very grateful. Thank you. And next, it is my joy to introduce Zippy Devon, who is with the American Farm Bureau Federation. Zippy, thank you for being here. Well, thank you. Vice President Harris and Surgeon General Murthy. We want to thank you for the invitation for us to join you in promoting the health in our communities. We appreciate the effort that this administration as, uh as a nation continues to fight against this pandemic. American Farm Bureau’s made up of six million members across this country. We have 2800 active county farm bureau. So you want to talk about grassroots and and working from our communities We are one of those organizations that can put forth some positive information about this. But early on in this pandemic, American Farm Bureau work with our members across all 50 states and Puerto Rico to make sure that our farmers we’re aware of the best practices to mitigate the spread of covid 19. It is important to Farm Bureau that our farmers and our employees have priority access to the vaccine, given the important role that we play on the front lines of our food supply. Now that the vaccine supply is ramping up, we look forward to the next step, which is addressing the barriers, uh, to receiving the vaccine and making sure that folks understand that the vaccine is safe and effective. We recognize that there are still some concerns around the vaccine, and we are working with our state farm bureaus to address these concerns, and we are leading by example. I was grateful to get my first dose recently, and I wrote an op ed about the experience and the importance of these efforts to getting our country and our in our industry to the other side of this pandemic I’ve heard of. I’ve heard encouraging reports from our Farm bureau leaders and our members across the organization who are not only getting their vaccines, but they’re bringing their employees along with them to get their vaccine. Our state farm bureaus are finding opportunities to share stories about our leaders, uh, and and their members promoting the vaccination in rural areas. For example, just last week, North Carolina Farm Bureau President Sean Harding, who is a farmer, shared a video documenting his vaccine experience as part of his State Farm Bureau’s larger efforts to promote farmer and employee vaccination and awareness. Another Farm Bureau leader in Idaho, Stephanie McNichol Seuin, hosted a vaccine clinic at her farm. For her employees, this is just one a couple little snapshots of many, many efforts that are being documented by my staff that’s going on all across America, at our Farm Bureau County Farm Bureau level to protect our workforce. We urged the White House in our states to continue to bolster vaccine supply, and Palm Bureau is committed to bring play an important part in the solution. We are we want to promote the benefits of vaccine and we don’t work together to fight this pandemic. So that we can protect our communities and to protect our food security. Uh, Madam Vice President, we are committed to be a partner with you. We are honored to be part of this community movement. And thank you for allowing us to participate. Appreciate you having this today and we can It’s our time to make a difference. And we can do this. Thank you, Zippy. And, you know, our American farms. Um there’s been so much food insecurity around our country, and our American farmers have been stepping up in extraordinary ways. You know, to the extent that I’ve been able to travel in the midst of covid, I’ve been to so many food distribution centers, Um And what are American farmers have been doing that has been just, uh, just not only courageous about being out there and continuing to grow the food supply in our country. But what they’ve been doing in terms of the donations they’ve been making, um has really been extraordinary. Because while they’re trying to make it through the month, they’ve been so generous and and I’ll just take a moment of privilege to also just share with everyone. Um, I went to one food distribution center, and the folks who are working there told me that you know, people would line up in their cars for hours, um, waiting to get to the point where they can receive the donation and what they were finding. What the volunteers were finding is this. A car would pull up, and then because of covid, there’s no physical interaction between the volunteer and and the document of the car. But the occupant of the car. They pop open their trunk, and the volunteers were finding often that when the trunk opened, there’d be a piece of paper there with handwriting on it, where the occupants of the car wrote notes to the volunteers to thank them. Um, from time to time, the trunk would pop open and there might be a note and a $5 bill. The occupants of the car, who are in a food line, stretched to the limits but still wanted to give back something and at the very least, honor the dignity of the work of the volunteers and the and the farmers and everyone who was contributing to that. There’s so much about this pandemic and the crisis that has also shown the grace, you know, and and and And what? What? The beauty and the strength of human beings and what I believe is our fundamental nature to be kind and to be thankful and to to be a community. Um, so thank you and again, Zippy. Thank you for for and your members for all that they’ve been doing. Madam Vice President, we, uh we have documented $5.4 million being given by farmers and over a million pounds of food, and I don’t know how many hundreds of thousands of hours and a lot of people question whether or not the farmers were gonna go, stay, go back to work. When the pandemic kid we started hashtag still farming, it touched over 100 million people, 90 different countries. And we assure the people of America that we’re gonna be there to make sure that their pantries are full and keep food security for our country. Hashtag still farming. I like it. Thank you. Zippy. Um, next is my great honor to introduce Hey, pin em of our faith and community empowerment. Hey, Pin, it’s great to see you. Good to see you again Thank you so much for this invitation and for your leadership with Dr Murthy. I have to say that it is such a change of air with the new administration when you, uh, in leadership that there is great hope. And I see the tangible changes and the world opening up. So again. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Um, I this morning or yes, it’s still this morning on both coasts. Um, I’m here to represent the voices of over 400,000 houses of worship in this country For us. Uh, even when the covid shut the world down, we are still open. As you say, the spirit of generosity, service selflessness are very much at the core, uh, people of faith. And so, for many of us, we have been open providing food, providing medical care, providing the human touch, even in spite of the danger and the threat of covid 19 as an organization. From the start, we have been, uh, connecting resources, uh, to our faith leaders so that they might be able to share with their congregation where there’s distribution of mass. Uh, where to get the vaccines. Vaccine codes. We’ve been partnering with the governor’s office, coordinating off efforts with the mayor’s office with mobility of, um, vaccine units, uh, and others. And we’ve been hosting forms, uh, sharing again information the truth because there’s a lot of misinformation that is spreading. I’ve learned such things as that is, the Covid 19 vaccine is like the mark of the beast, and it’s just unbelievable of that, Um, and so again, being able to share that communication, we have over 35,000 names in our database of leaders of leaders, including faith organizations, uh, business organizations, community based organizations, elected officials and and such. And so again, um, I think that our voice has been missing Um, and, uh, in many places. But again, faith organizations are integrated into every sector, every segment of society geographically, nationally. And I have to say that they really serve as first responders. Uh, my parents were called to ministry. They thought they were going to preach the gospel, save a lot of souls. They did a lot of that, but they in essence, they ended up becoming unpaid social workers because not just my parents, but all faith leaders. People look upon them with trust their accessible, and they’re free. So in many ways, um, they are the first people that people go to. But again, more than anything else, it is about trust. I also want to say that I’m here today to also be a voice for the Asian American community. Uh, you know, one out. I’m sorry. Over 20% of doctors in the United States. Our health, our Asians. Almost 10% of the nurses in this country are Asians. One out of four are frontline workers are an essential business. And yet one of the doctors recently said in a press conference, uh, they are treating us like the virus when we’re treating the virus. And and so again, I just want to lift this up, use us leverages. We have the space, we have the volunteers, we have the heart, and we have the trust. And so again, we’re here today to partner with you. Um, and to help spread the good news that the world is coming up, that there is a solution for many of us to get back and the part of the world. Thank you. Vice President Kamala Harris. Thank you. Hey, Pen And I really appreciate you mentioning the the experience that far too many of our Asian brothers and sisters have been having. Um, you know, we did from the beginning of this conversation, Dr Tucks in has a campaign saying make it plain that means also, in my opinion, keeping it real and speaking truth. And I appreciate you making that point. And I think we all know as, um uh, a collective as a coalition, as a community and as a country, we all need to speak out against the hate where we are seeing it. And we need to remind our fellow human beings that they are not alone. And we will stand together, um, wherever and whenever we see that kind of hate being expressed. So thank you. Hey, Pin, for bringing that up. Thank you so much. And I do want to point out that I know that, uh, the covid 19 has had a disproportionate impact on communities of color. A lot of times, the Asian community, like instead of l A May 2020 had the highest death rate of any group in New York recently. Um, South Asians and Chinese have the highest positive covid 19 infections. I’m just giving you a couple of examples. Um, and yet, uh, we are not included in many of the talking points. And I think that leads also to Asian Americans not being able to pay attention because we’re not We’re not being talked about on the news on the talking points on the PowerPoints. And so I would like to really just advocate, uh, the inclusion of Asian Americans in these disproportionate impact of covid 19 onlive’s, um, as well as, of course, the faith organizations again, another group that often times get left out in the public discourse. Thank you. Because we are valuable to this country. Thank you. And, um, Dr Murthy knows because he’s been a leader in our administration on this, um, together with Dr Nunez Smith. Uh, it is very important to the president that we speak truth and address racial inequities across the board. But on this topic in particular in our health care system. And again, these disparities existed long before when we look at the rates of the infection and death in the Asian community and African American community, Latinos are native community. The numbers are really unacceptable. Um, and tragic and in terms of the impact on these communities, of course. Profound. And so this is something we have been addressing that we have a racial equity task force that is very much a part of our whole approach to this. And in addition, you will often hear the president and all of us talk about the importance of equitable distribution of resources and support. And so to everyone here and again, I’m going to look at the whole group to everyone here. Um, I thank you. I thank you. I thank you, um, for your work, for your time, for your leadership, for what you are doing to boost the confidence of the people who need to know again that they’re not alone. Um, for reminding folks that that, you know, it is within each person’s power to actually make the choice and make the decision to get vaccinated and in so doing, to save their life. Right, This it’s within each individual’s power. And I think there’s been so much about this pandemic that has isolated people, literally isolated them, but also isolated folks emotionally making people feel alone. And as we all know, when, when folks feel alone, it can. It can strip them of their sense of their power. And so part of this whole collective and this approach this community core is that we know there is power that we give the individual when they see that they are not alone and that we are all in this together as a community. Um, and that is very much at the essence of this whole approach. And what we are doing today and what you is founding members are doing it is about reminding our fellow person of their power and that we see them that they matter, and and then we’re gonna help each other out. So you know, there’s a reason that covid 19 community core is at the core of our public education campaign, and and the work each of you is doing is going to make a huge difference. You’re saving lives. And, um, I’ll tell you, just as a housekeeping note, there’s gonna be a social media toolkit in your inbox now to help you continue your work, and we will be in touch with you with more resources in the day as days ahead be in touch with each other everyone can see. I’m sure you see people you know. Let’s all be in touch with each other. And we can do this. We can do this. So thank you And Dr Murthy. Thank you. Always for your leadership. Thank you all, everyone. And be well. Be well. Be well. Be well. Thank you.