According To The CDC, Black and Hispanic COVID Vaccine Rates Are Lagging
Michael Cantrell
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According to data gathered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, black and Hispanic Americans are statistically underrepresented among the number of individuals receiving COVID vaccinations.
Here’s more on this from Just The News:
As of May 15, black Americans constituted only 8.9% of those who received at least one dose of the vaccine despite being 12.4% of the U.S. population. Hispanic Americans, meanwhile, are 17.2% of the population, but only make up 13.3% of the total with at least one dose.
Interpretations vary as to the reasons for those discrepancies. Some commentators and experts have argued that both demographic groups are simply less likely to have access to a vaccine, whether due to distance from a vaccination site, hectic schedules, or lack of knowledge of the vaccine campaign itself.
Others have pointed to the medical history of the United States as a possible contributing factor, at least for African-Americans. Historically, black Americans have experienced considerable racism at the hands of white medical authorities, with high-profile medical scandals such as the Tuskegee syphilis experiment implicating both medical officials and the U.S. government itself in the abuse of black patients.
New polling that’s been conducted reveals that blacks are significantly more likely not to trust doctors than white people are, partially due to what they call “present-day experiences of racism in the medical industry.”
There have been studies that demonstrated a similar belief among Hispanics.
“Yet vaccine-specific opinion data paint a more complex picture. Multiple polls have shown that white, rural Republicans are among the most vaccine-hesitant of polled demographics in the country,” Just The News reports.
Dr. Andrew Campbell, a professor of surgery who works at the University of California, San Francisco, said that if you look at the numbers, it indicates that there is “more of a question of access” than one of hesitancy.
Basically, he’s saying there aren’t as many places offering the vaccine in black communities as there are in white communities, thus blacks aren’t getting vaccinated.
“You talk to [black Americans] about hesitancy, and you can actually get them to come around and take the vaccine,” he went on to say. “Their concerns about experimental, rushed vaccines— if you can actually get them good information, you can actually get them to come around.”
Interesting.
Maybe they just don’t want to take a vaccine that is still considered to be “experimental?” After all, we have no idea what kind of long term effects this will have on those who take it.
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