We know we’ve had a lot of conversations about COVID-19. But the effort to vaccinate everyone will define 2021.
But the effort is getting off to a rocky start. People around the country are confused about exactly where, when and how they can get vaccinated. When they are sure, sometimes the technology supporting the process doesn’t work. And sometimes still, white, affluent people are taking up vaccine appointments meant for those in communities of color, freezing those in need out of the process.
Early vaccination data is incomplete, but it points to the divide. In the first weeks of the rollout, 12 percent of people inoculated in Philadelphia have been Black, in a city whose population is 44 percent Black. In Miami-Dade County, just about 7 percent of the vaccine recipients have been Black, even though Black residents comprise nearly 17 percent of the population and are dying from Covid-19 at a rate that is more than 60 percent higher than that of white people. In data released last weekend forNew York City, white people had received nearly half of the doses, while Black and Latino residents were starkly underrepresented based on their share of the population.
And if you’ve had the vaccine, what can you safely do? Will you put others at risk?
In short, the mechanism by which many people believe will end this chapter of the pandemic is pretty inaccessible right now. Which means that people have questions.
During this new series, “Vaccination Nation,” we talk with a panel of experts to answer questions about the rollout.
Copyright 2021 WAMU 88.5