US ethnic minorities, poor denied fair share of vaccines
Ramin Mazaheri
Press TV, Chicago
The racial disparities in who gets a dose of the desperately-wanted coronavirus vaccine continues to roil the United States.
African-Americans compose 12% of the US population, yet they have only received 5% of the vaccines. Sixty percent of America is White, and they have gotten 60% of the vaccines.
The mainstream media is repeatedly blaming the problem on African-Americans by emphasizing their mistrust of the federal government due to a shocking national history of medical experimentation on Black communities.
However, the small share of Whites and Blacks who say they refuse to ever get vaccinated is the same, 14%. Multiple studies point to a simpler explanation: vaccines are overwhelmingly being sent to White neighborhoods.
In the United States, vaccines are being issued at places like pharmacies, clinics and hospitals, but perpetual under-investment in lower-class and non-White areas means many Black communities simply do not have this medical infrastructure. Similarly, African-American and poor neighborhoods do not have adequate schools, roads, businesses, work opportunities and many other basic requirements for healthy living.
Since almost the start of the pandemic, it has been clear that non-Whites are drastically over-represented in the so-called “essential worker” occupations, and that non-Whites are four times more likely to be hospitalized by corona and three times more likely to die from it.
Latino-Americans are getting only 11% of vaccines despite being 18% of the population.
The failure to equally share corona vaccines with all classes is expected to further exacerbate the nation's longstanding socioeconomic inequalities, which the pandemic continues to reveal.
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