President Barack Obama said in an interview he is planning to take a vaccine for Covid-19 when one becomes available, and is open to the idea of putting that event on television.

“People like Anthony Fauci, who I know, and I’ve worked with, I trust completely,” he said in an interview with SiriusXM’s Joe Madison, which was made public on Wednesday but scheduled to air on Thursday. “So, if Anthony Fauci tells me this vaccine is safe, and can vaccinate, you know, immunize you from getting Covid, absolutely, I’m going to take it.”

The former president was responding to a question from Madison about people who might be skeptical of a vaccine. Madison noted there had been “a lot of discussion on my show about — particularly about whether African Americans, because you know our history with medical experimentation — [whether] you take take the vaccine.”

To date, vaccines have been developed by Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca. The Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research is set to meet Dec. 10 to consider authorizing the first vaccine, developed by Pfizer, for distribution. The United Kingdom became the first Western country to do so on Wednesday.

Obama added that he was interested in showing the public when he took the vaccine.

“I understand you know historically — everything dating back all the way to the Tuskegee experiments and so forth — why the African American community would have some skepticism,” Obama said. “But the fact of the matter is, is that vaccines are why we don’t have polio anymore, the reason why we don’t have a whole bunch of kids dying from measles and smallpox and diseases that used to decimate entire populations and communities.”

“I may end up taking it on TV or having it filmed, just so that people know that I trust this science, and what I don’t trust is getting COVID,” he added. “I think at this point, particularly in the African American community, we are — African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans — we have the highest death rates from this thing, and are most exposed and most vulnerable, in part because we have a lot of preexisting conditions.”

Listen above via SiriusXM.

The post Obama Says He's Open to Publicly Taking Covid Vaccine: 'I May End Up Taking It on TV' to Show It's Safe first appeared on Mediaite.

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