I love everyone trying to play epidemiologist or public policy coordinator like they know what they’re talking about; what hubris.
They passionately hate these leaders.
There’s plenty to hate and more.
When did all of those benefits and stimulus for the common person end? It was September wasn't it with some states stopping them months before that yet the states that stopped them before are still having trouble filling jobs.
Please correct me if I am wrong.
Others did not though. Many people have private agreements with their landlords for payment, and some cities have their own policies. Some are still collecting unemployment. Many just have never reentered the workforce. For example, many “Baby Boomers” decide this was retirement time and retired en-masse instead of being spread out.
And then there is the whole “Great Resignation” going on for the rest.
You don't get to call us "essential workers" and treat us like shit. This is the first time in my living memory McDonald's and co raised their starting wages. Line cooks were the most impacted and it was the most dangerous job last year. You want that to be worse, for small businesses to survive?
I can reincorporate "Drekk Design Studio", the line cook can't re-enter his mortal coil. We should have paid everyone every month of the pandemic and enforced these public health measures like Germany (1 in 10 infected vs the US 1 in 3).
We would? How do you know?
This is a bit of a dead end argument. By the same token, nobody guarantees that there is food in the supermarket for people to purchase. Yet, if there wasn't, and 90% of us starved, it'd be a fairly major problem. Small businesses and their employees make of roughly half of "society at large".
Also, what the heck? The Supreme Court has ruled businesses have some constitutional protections repeatedly.
For the first two weeks, the lockdown was indeed completely justified. But it's completely unjustified that it lasted so much longer than that, now that we know what's going on (in particular, there's some places with lockdown rules still in effect today, 2 years later).
And it is important to distinguish those who are against mandates from those who are against the vaccine.
It's very notable that the states where the racial gap is highest are
a) not doing very well on mass vaccination b) Republican
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-glo...
So I think it's fair to ask if these people have been denied the vaccine more than they've rejected it.
Meanwhile, the stats fairly clearly show political affiliation to be a bigger factor:
> According to a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) released on Sept. 28, gaps in vaccination rates across racial and ethnic groups have virtually disappeared—while gaps reflecting political affiliation have widened substantially.
Nevertheless, in New York blacks are under-vaccinated.
I don't think it affects the general trend though.
> NAM found that “racial and ethnic minorities receive lower-quality health care than white people—even when insurance status, income, age, and severity of conditions are comparable.” By “lower-quality health care,” NAM meant the concrete, inferior care that physicians give their black patients. NAM reported that minority persons are less likely than white persons to be given appropriate cardiac care, to receive kidney dialysis or transplants, and to receive the best treatments for stroke, cancer, or AIDS. It concluded by describing an “uncomfortable reality”: “some people in the United States were more likely to die from cancer, heart disease, and diabetes simply because of their race or ethnicity, not just because they lack access to health care.”
But I wouldn't want to doubt your anectodal evidence that black people are "smart" enough to not face institutional racism.
It's even better they all have a smart device or personal computer and internet connection to make the appointment or even know it's available for free. What really makes us a first world country is the knowledge that all our citizens, including ethnic minorities, speak our unofficially official English language with fluency to navigate our fragmented-but-free medical system.
And lastly it's better still that they live in a country with a rich and storied history of medical experimentation on black people that drives down trust in the first free medical intervention in modern memory.
In seriousness, close friends of mine are an hour from the nearest pharmacy. Millions of Americans live in remote areas, and we have zero infrastructure in these areas. Food deserts aren't just lacking food.
Edit: Ages 18-44
It’s very clear that the OP is talking about systemic racism. Your anecdotes are meaningless. We need to look at statistical data. If African Americans are vaccinated less, it doesn’t matter if CVS isn’t explicitly denying them the shots. It’s possible that they may not have as many pharmacies in their neighborhoods. That they can’t get a day off to get the shots (because it’s not a mandate) in many Red States. Maybe there haven’t been enough outreach programs like Blue states trying to convince the community of the importance of getting vaccinated…
Anyway, if it’s justifiable to believe that the medical community is behaving untrustworthily towards black people, wouldn’t that be evidence that they’re unethical in general, and reason enough for anyone, black or not, not to get the vaccine?
As opposed to white people? Why does it matter whether you mistrust the US government because of Tuskegee Syphilis Study, or because of MKULTRA?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study
So does the current drive for vaccination.
It’s weird that you don’t see the connection.
I’d resist extrapolating too much from that. “hasn’t got a vaccine” doesn’t equal “is anti-vax”. There are still issues with accessibility of the vaccine (varying wildly according to location) and those with lower incomes working hourly-paid jobs are concerned about having to take time off to both get the vaccine (two doses) and deal with the side effects.
That’s not to say no black people are anti-vax, there’s a strong distrust of the medical establishment by many (given the history it’s understandable!) but just pointing out that it’s not a 1:1 relationship.
It is easy to blame antivaxxers. Could you however name a few countries where vaccine herd immunity was achieved?
Two parties might be the worse possible number of parties in terms of creating polarization and extremism.
I'm generally not a fan of voter initiative processes, but imagine states passing a voter initiative to make ALL public offices non-partisan?
As with many things, the US response combined all the worst parts of the left's reaction to the pandemic with all the worst aspects of the right's. We had ham-fisted lockdowns (of dubious effectiveness) that destroyed small business and harmed mental health while simultaneously we had a right-wing crackpot antivaccination movement that prevented vaccine herd immunity from being achieved fast enough to really impact the virus.
Our present day two party system is like a two fisted beat down in boxing. First you get a left, then you get a right, then a left, then a right, until you're curled up on the floor and you can't take any more.
Maybe a constitutional amendment to ban political parties would help, or at least ranked choice voting so we no longer "have" to vote for incompetent fools or "our vote doesn't count" against the other incompetent fool.