Something That Should Concern Wise and Smart People

[silverscreenselect]

From the New York Times:

One of the defining characteristics of the pandemic’s early stages was its disproportionate toll on Black and Latino Americans. During Covid’s early months in the U.S., the per capita death rate for Black Americans was almost twice as high as the white rate and more than twice as high as the Asian rate. The Latino death rate was in between, substantially lower than the Black rate but still above average. These large racial gaps seemed as if they might persist throughout the pandemic, especially because white and Asian Americans were initially quicker to receive vaccine shots. Black and Latino Americans, by contrast, had less convenient access to the shots and many were skeptical of them.

But these large racial gaps in vaccination have not continued — and as a result, neither have the gaps in Covid death rates. Instead, Covid’s racial gaps have narrowed and, more recently, even flipped. Over the past year, the Covid death rate for white Americans has been 14 percent higher than the rate for Black Americans and 72 percent higher than the Latino rate, according to the latest C.D.C. data.

The successful part of the story is the rapid increase in vaccination among Black and Latino Americans since last year. Today, the vaccination rate for both groups is slightly higher than it is for white Americans, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s surveys. That has happened thanks to intense outreach efforts by medical workers, community organizers and others.

The narrowing of Covid’s gaps does involve some bad news: The share of white Americans who have received a Covid vaccine shot has barely budged since last summer. The main culprit is politics. Only about 60 percent of Republican adults are vaccinated, compared with about 75 percent of independents and more than 90 percent of Democrats, according to Kaiser. And Republicans are both disproportionately white and older. Together, these facts help explain why the white death rate has recently been higher than the Asian, Black or Latino rate.

In heavily conservative, white communities, leaders have not done as good a job explaining the vaccine’s benefits — and Covid’s risks — as leaders in Black and Latino communities. Instead, many conservative media figures, politicians, clergy members and others have amplified false or misleading information about the vaccines. Millions of Americans, in turn, have chosen not to receive a lifesaving shot. Some have paid with their lives.

Anti-vaxxers are having an effect on those wise and smart people who listen to them ... until they can't listen to anything any more.