By Jim Geraghty
Tuesday, August
10, 2021
You don’t have to look far on social media
to find people contending that the remaining unvaccinated are overwhelmingly
Republicans, and that the reason the COVID-19 pandemic is still a factor in
American life is irresponsible, stubborn Trump voters. Never mind that
the New York
Times did a
good, thorough piece on August 1, laying out that the remaining unvaccinated people are not politically
or culturally monolithic. Four days after this
newsletter pointed out that America’s largest cities had significant
percentages of the unvaccinated — well beyond the percentages that voted for Trump in the past
election — the Times realized this as well and shared that
fact with readers:
Part of
the challenge is that the unvaccinated live in communities dotted throughout
the United States, in both lightly and densely populated counties. Though some
states like Missouri and Arkansas have significantly lagged the nation in
vaccination rates, unvaccinated Americans are, to varying degrees, everywhere:
In Cook County, Ill., which includes Chicago, 51 percent of residents are fully
vaccinated. Los Angeles County is barely higher, at 53 percent. In Wake County,
N.C., part of the liberal, high-tech Research Triangle area, the vaccination rate
is 55 percent.
One less-discussed aspect of the remaining
unvaccinated population is that the 2.5 million unvaccinated people in a place
such as Los Angeles County are at considerably greater risk than those residing
in, say, Smith County, Miss., which has one of the lowest partial-vaccination
rates (27 percent have received at least one shot) of any county in the state with
the lowest partial-vaccination rate in the country. Los Angeles County has
2,344 people per square mile, while Smith County has 26 people per square mile;
city residents are just going to encounter more potentially infected and
contagious people during their day.
Last week, the Kaiser Family
Foundation released a new study that didn’t get a lot of attention, probably
because it didn’t fit the preexisting narrative: “While White adults account for the largest share (57 percent) of
unvaccinated adults, Black and Hispanic people remain less likely than their
White counterparts to have received a vaccine, leaving them at increased risk,
particularly as the variant spreads.” (A bit more than 60 percent of Americans
are classified in the census as white alone; 18.5 percent are Hispanic or Latino, 13.4 percent
are Black, and about 6 percent are Asian.) The study continues:
As observed in prior weeks, Black and Hispanic people have received
smaller shares of vaccinations compared to their shares of cases and compared
to their shares of the total population in most states. The share of vaccinations received by Black people also continues
to be smaller than their share of deaths in most states, although in some
states it is similar to the share of deaths. The share of vaccinations received
by Hispanic people is similar to or higher than their share of deaths in most
reporting states, although in some states it continues to be lower. For
example, in California, 30 percent of vaccinations have gone to Hispanic
people, while they account for 63 percent of cases, 48 percent of deaths, and
40 percent of the total population in the state. Similarly, in the District of
Columbia, Black people have received 43 percent of vaccinations, while they
make up 56 percent of cases, 71 percent of deaths, and 46 percent of the total
population. The size of these differences varies across states. The number of
states where the shares of vaccinations received by Black and Hispanic people
are more proportionate to their shares of the total population and/or their
shares of cases or deaths in the state has grown over time.
As uncomfortable as this may make some
people, if the U.S. vaccination effort in 2021 is considered a failure, it is
so in considerable part because of a failure to convince members of minority
groups to get vaccinated. The KFF study noted that:
As of August
2, less than half of Black and Hispanic people have received at least one
COVID-19 vaccine dose in the vast majority of states reporting data. The
vaccination rate for Black people is less than 50 percent in 38 of 42 reporting
states, including 7 states where less than a third of Black people have
received one or more doses. Similarly, less than half of Hispanic people have
received a COVID-19 vaccine dose in 32 of 40 reporting states, including 9
states where less than a third have received at least one dose.
Right now, the four states that are
getting hit the hardest by the Delta variant are Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas,
and Mississippi. According to KFF’s data, the somewhat good news is that three
of these states are seeing a surge in vaccinations — in some cases, across all
ethnic lines:
Louisiana,
which had the highest daily cases per million, had some of the largest
percentage point vaccination rate increases across racial ethnic groups.
Similarly, Mississippi had the second largest percentage point increase in the
vaccination rate for Black people (3.1 percentage points from 35.6 percent to
38.7 percent), the third largest percentage point increase for White people
(2.0 percentage points from 35.6 percent to 37.7 percent), and the fourth
largest for Asian people (2.4 percentage points from 72.2 percent to 74.7
percent). Florida had the sixth largest increase in vaccination rates for White
and Hispanic people and the ninth largest increase in the vaccination rate for
Black people. Arkansas does not publicly report vaccination data by
race/ethnicity.
The most commonly offered explanation for
vaccine reluctance among blacks is the Tuskegee
Experiment, although some dispute that
explanation, and contend that black distrust of
doctors and the medical community stems from much more recent negative
experiences. From a February KQED article:
Those who
don’t want the vaccine have very modern reasons for not wanting it. They tell
Toler it’s because of religious beliefs, safety concerns or distrust for the
former U.S. president and his relationship to science. Only a handful mention
Tuskegee, she says, and when they do, they’re fuzzy on the details of what
happened during the 40-year study.
The study was exposed and shut down in
1972, nearly 50 years ago. But for those who do cite Tuskegee as a reason to
not get a COVID-19 vaccine, there seems to be an odd reluctance by national
leaders to tell these skeptics the obvious: “The national vaccination effort
against COVID-19 is not the Tuskegee Experiment all over again. This is part of
a global effort to save every life we can, by ensuring that as many people as
possible have antibodies to fight off the virus. Members of every ethnic group
are dying from this virus, including yours. The vaccine works for every ethnic
group, including yours. This is the best way to protect yourself and your loved
ones.”
We should keep in mind that some people
simply don’t want to be persuaded, and that these people come in every color,
from every walk of life. Back in June,
the Washington Football Team brought in “Kizzmekia S. Corbett, an immunologist and leading coronavirus
vaccine researcher, to speak to players and coaches via video conference . . .
to provide general information about the vaccines, answer questions and dispel
any inaccuracies they might have heard.” Corbett is “the scientific lead for
the Coronavirus Vaccines & Immunopathogenesis Team at the National
Institutes of Health), National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,
Vaccine Research Center.” She recently joined
Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health to continue vaccine-development research. She may well be the
single most qualified, knowledgeable, and experienced person on Earth to answer
anyone’s questions about the vaccine.
And yet somehow Washington defensive end
Montez Sweat came away
unimpressed. “I’m not a fan of [the vaccine],” Sweat
said after listening to Corbett. “I probably won’t get vaccinated until I get
more facts and that stuff. I’m not a fan of it at all. I haven’t caught COVID
yet, so I don’t see me treating COVID until I actually get COVID.”
The notion that the remaining unvaccinated
are “anti-science” Trump voters is reassuring to national media voices who
prefer to believe all good things emanate from the Democratic Party and all bad
things emanate from the GOP. Otherwise, they might have to criticize members of
minority groups for holding out on getting vaccinated, and they’re just not
comfortable doing that.
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