Montel Williams wants to see everyone safe during the pandemic.
On Tuesday, Williams appears on “The Dr. Oz Show” to talk about the issues surrounding vaccine hesitancy in the Black community.
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“I was vaccinated about a month ago and really, really happy with the fact that I was vaccinated,” Williams says. “How have I kept myself healthy? Following the mitigation techniques, my friend. I just stay hunkered down. Even though things are opening up, I don’t feel comfortable being around people two feet away because I have no idea what you have, and I have no idea whether or not you even care, whether or not you want to hurt me. So I try to stay at home. I’ve only flown one time in the last year and a half.”
Talking about his conversations with others in the Black community who are hesitant to get vaccinated, Williams says, “I mean, what’s crazy is the fact that over the course of the last four years and really six years in this country, we have had some angst against science, as if science is all of a sudden wrong. Most of the people who say something to me say, well, they studied it too short. They didn’t.”
He continues, “We’re not seeing people who have been vaccinated spending time in hospitals and having severe illness. It clearly is working. We’ve seen that in the groups that are most vaccinated in this country. We’ve seen COVID go down. I mean, what do we have to do to get people to understand that we shouldn’t be fighting a battle against science. We should be fighting a battle against something that is a scourge that could, if left unchecked, wipe out mankind.”
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The former daytime TV host also talked about his concerns with diversity in the field of medicine.
“For the last 15 years, I’ve been talking about a freight train that’s been coming down the track. That freight train is carrying the fact that within the next two years, we’re going to be close to 250,000 nurses short in America. Probably well over 100,000 to 150,000 doctors short,” he says. “This idea of doling out care is something that’s going to happen. Because in the course of the last 10-15 years, we’ve had two generations turn against going to college to become doctors. So we’re going to be short doctors and now we’re going to be short doctors in the minority community.”
