I think this is misleading.

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.

Are you saying new York is a republican state? Or low vaccinated with 85% having at least one vaccine? Yet only about 15% of the blacks are vaccinated. I've never heard a black person day they have been denied, but I've heard plenty say they don't trust the government and why get it.

Where are vaccines being denied? I haven't seen this as a thing even in the reddest states.

I think you're thinking of a very literal "I'm here for my vaccine" ""No, denied due to skin color" when I'm thinking of "We should spend some money and put some collective effort in to ensure everyone has quick and easy access to the vaccine, especially the poor and the vulnerable" "No, we’ll follow the same general plan as for voting, long lines at a few awkward places where lots of black people live, lots of locations with short waits where white people live".

It is very unlikely that New York has failed to make the vaccine readily available to blacks, as I know it has prioritized blacks for testing and treatment. NY city has deliberately concentrated testing sites in black and minority neighborhoods. City triage regulations for dispersal of medication have explicitly preferred blacks and minorities. I would expect this attention to extend to vaccine availability, and that the powerful black advocacies would complain if it weren't.

Nevertheless, in New York blacks are under-vaccinated.

New York is one of the few states that has them ahead. New York City seems to be lagging behind on coverage generally, but that may just be an artifact of it being a very big city, big enough to be called out individually in a list of mostly states.

I don't think it affects the general trend though.

Nope, still haven't seen this as a thing. There are still drugstores and doctors offices which have vaccines in these poor areas that give the shots for free. Not getting the shot is a deliberate choice and it's not racism that is blocking people from getting it. People of every race are smart and enabled enough to get this shot if they want it.

Interesting that COVID vaccine provision is less racist than the average healthcare provision:

> 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.

Are you saying that CVS has been turning away brown people who want covid shots or are you just parroting rhetoric without really knowing or looking into the true root cause of this issue? Yes. My firsthand anecdotal conversations with black friends and family confirms that they are indeed smart enough and able enough to get the widely available covid shots. For free if that is an issue. Where is this black-person-filled walled-off republican area of the country you are talking about?

Well it's wonderful all these black Americans you think so highly of live in states with good public transit so they can get to the pharmacy without a car, and have labor rights and money in the bank to take an unpaid day or two or three off of work to recover.

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.

What does any of that have to do with being black? Talk about poverty issues if you want, but this 'racism' angle is just stupid.

If that’s the case, tell me why New York City has among the lowest Black vaccination rates in the country at 28% as of October.

Edit: Ages 18-44

> Are you saying that CVS has been turning away brown people who want covid shots or are you just parroting rhetoric without really knowing or looking into the true root cause of this issue?

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…

Without actual data this is just a debate without substance. At least my anecodal evidence is backed by something real. The racism argument seems to come up every time a minority group splits from the path laid out for them.

Again: Your anecdotal argument is totally meaningless.

I don't think I'd describe the black people who don't get vaccinated as "anti-vax". Black people have a well earned historical distrust of the medical community that's pretty much completely unrelated to the zeitgeist of the "anti-vax" movement.

Anti-vax is anti-vax regardless of how justified you may think the reasons are.

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?

>Black people have a well earned historical distrust of the medical community that's pretty much completely unrelated to the zeitgeist of the "anti-vax" movement.

As opposed to white people? Why does it matter whether you mistrust the US government because of Tuskegee Syphilis Study, or because of MKULTRA?

It's really weird how people responding to me keep talking about distrust in the US government, when I was talking about distrust in the medical community.

Presumably you know that significant parts of the historical “well earned distrust” that black people have of the medical community involve the government.

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.

Going down that line of thinking, I think every citizen out there can have legitimate distrust of their government.

I don’t see how they are unrelated at all. It sounds like you are saying they just don’t ‘feel’ like the same thing, but I see no reason for that other than racism.

There is an difference between a community that just happens to have low vaccination rates, and one that is ideologically opposed to vaccinations.

> The anti-vax movement isn't just right-wing. Blacks are the most under-vaccinated demographic.

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.