According to the NY Times, only 28% of the city’s 18 to 44 year old Blacks have been vaccinated.
And, based on interviews, there a couple of explanations for the low vaccination rate …
The overall theme: distrust of the government, health care system and law enforcement … a sentiment has been aggravated by a couple of self-inflicted government backfires:
Vaccination Priorities
> Early-on, in the sprit of “equity”, Blacks were sorted high on the priority list for vaccinations.
The backfire: “Since when does the government give anything good to Black people first?”
That raised heightened memories of the Tuskegee experiments.
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The J&J Pause
> Also early-on, NYC “directed the 1-shot J&J vaccines to Black and Latino neighborhoods”.
When the J&J vaccine was put on hold, it reaffirmed the perception that “they’re experimenting on us” … that the vaccine was being tested on Blacks.
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Survivor Confidence
> Blacks have been hard hit by Covid … with an infection and death rate about twice that of Whites.
So, many young survivors — who were down the priority list for the first wave of scarce vaccines — heeded the government advice that they were at relatively low risk … or, concluded that they either had already been infected, now had natural immunity and didn’t need the vaccine.
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Perverse Incentives
> Now the government is offering cash payouts to people to people who get vaccinated.
To some, that plays into the perception of recruitment into a science experiment: ”It must be bad if they have to pay people to take it”.
And, city officials threaten to ban unvaccinated folks from public places (e.g. restaurants).
That’s a policy that would obviously, and disproportionately, impacts Blacks.
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Biden & Harris Said
Add to the list that both Biden & Harris, as candidates for office, declared that they wouldn’t trust a vaccine developed by Trump on at “Warp Speed”.
First impressions anchor perceptions… it’s hard to unhear something that you heard!
The Homa Files 
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