A Covid-19 Vaccine Could Save Us. But It’s Normal to Have Concerns.
New data on vaccine hesitancy among Black Americans is entirely reasonable
Vaccine hesitancy is unlikely to be the major obstacle for a Covid-19 vaccine. While there’s lots of hand-wringing over surveys finding people are hesitant to get the vaccine, having concerns is normal if not expected — especially right now.
A recent nationwide survey found that 17% of Black American adults say they definitely will get a Covid-19 vaccine if it were determined to be safe by scientists and it was free, and 49% said they would not get it.
Here’s the thing: Surveys about vaccine hesitancy are not necessarily accurate predictors of what people will do when a vaccine actually becomes available. Second, Black Americans’ concerns and skepticism over new vaccines as well as distrust of the U.S. health system as a whole are valid.
There’s a long history of American health care deliberately harming Black people. As scientist Jen Payne wrote for Elemental in August, “African Americans have a unique legacy with the U.S. health care system — which makes [the Covid-19 vaccine] an even more challenging decision.”
Just one of many examples of U.S. health care abuse inflicted on Black people includes the Tuskegee experiment, which was a 40-year study of 600 African American men untreated for syphilis. The goal of the study was to observe untreated syphilis in Black populations. The men in the study were unaware of the experiment, and many did not receive any treatment. By the time the study was shut down, nearly 130 men had died from the complications caused by the disease, and had passed it to their family members.
“As a scientist, I know the importance of clinical studies and the pressing need to demonstrate whether a drug is an effective or ineffective treatment for people against a given pathogen,” writes Payne. “But as an African American woman, I also understand my community’s reluctance to be involved in clinical studies and the historically fueled distrust we have for the American health care system — both public and private.”
As science writer Tara Haelle reported for Elemental in September, it’s important to keep in mind that…
