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Does the Tuskegee experiment explain black vaccination rates?

mattbruenig.com

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Re: Does the Tuskegee experiment explain black vaccination rates?

#51

Post by chrismcb »

civilized wrote: post #9

> This theory checks off certain boxes that make it resonate well within current discourse frameworks, but it doesn’t really make a lot of sense. If the coronavirus vaccines were only being given to black people, then you could see how someone might reason that it is a trick. But they are being given to everyone, including over 100 million white people. Are we meant to think that black people who aren’t getting the v…

I'm not sure what you are saying. But there are black people who are refusing the vaccine because of what the government has done to blacks in the past.

Re: Does the Tuskegee experiment explain black vaccination rates?

#52

Post by crackercrews »

civilized wrote: post #40
anigbrowl wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're overlooking the fact that black people are much more likely to know about it than white people, and that it's not a function of educational level alone.

No, I'm not overlooking that supposed fact, which also isn't a fact. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3221924/#!po=29...

Interesting link! But FYI it does look like general awareness of the experiments is higher in the Black population.

> With approximately 75% of Blacks and 60% of Whites in this study self-reporting awareness of TSS (i.e., they self-reported having heard of the TSS)

What isn't higher is accurate information about what was actually done in the experiments. This is interesting to know. But mere awareness of the experiments may be driving attitudes regardless of whether the specifics that people believe to be true are actually false.

Re: Does the Tuskegee experiment explain black vaccination rates?

#53

Post by kook_throwaway »

Post was pretty weak.

To start, it's not only the US government but also big pharma that have experimented on African(American)s[1][2], including Pfizer[3]. In Africa, Incidents like these have contributed to a distrust against Western medicine and vaccines[4].

Also saying that because the vaccines are being given to everyone they can't disproportionally affect certain demographics doesn't really fly either. Systemic racism is nearly synonymous with things that are on their face applied equally but don't end up being fair in the end. You could for example distribute certain drugs to certain neighborhood (pop up vaccination or other demographically targeted events). Lastly, racial differences in both disease and pharmacological response to drugs aren't uncommon. [5].

>Approximately one-fifth of new drugs approved in the past 6 years demonstrated differences in exposure and/or response across racial/ethnic groups, translating to population-specific prescribing recommendations in a few cases.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_experimentation_in_A...

[2] https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2007/12/102785/scholar-speaks-abou...

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullahi_v._Pfizer,_Inc.

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/opinion/31washington.html

[5] https://ascpt.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/cpt.61

Re: Does the Tuskegee experiment explain black vaccination rates?

#54

Post by narrator »

I'd say it's because the unemployment rate among blacks is high, so they don't have to get it for their jobs at the same rate. They are also poorer, so they don't get it to travel, or go do other rich people stuff. It's probably as simple as that.

Also, from what I've seen, anti-vax videos are popular on WorldstarHipHop.com and other black culture venues. They often have very little censorship compared to YouTube.

Re: Does the Tuskegee experiment explain black vaccination rates?

#56

Post by dudeinjapan »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #37
dudeinjapan wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Access to clinics is not the limiting factor here. One can get a vaccine in 10 minutes by walking into any Walmart, Walgreens, or CVS. Even barbershops are giving them.

In urban areas you're right but I wonder about those who live in rural areas. Having spent part of my youth in a rural area that was majority black, my first instinct would be to set up clinics at churches. Not everyone has a way to get to the county seat during business hours when the county health department is open but one way or another, pretty much everyone found a way to get to church on Sunday.

1 - https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery... Blacks made up 7.8 percent of the rural and 13.1 percent of the urban population.

2 - https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/g... US population is urban: 249,253,271, rural: 59,492,276

Doing some math, ~12% of the black population is rural, and moreover, other ethnic groups represent a larger share of the rural pop. For the sake of this analysis, rural lack of access to vaccines does not explain low vaccination rates among blacks as a whole.

Re: Does the Tuskegee experiment explain black vaccination rates?

#57

Post by jobigoud »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #47
bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know that the government is giving the same vaccines to whites and non-whites? I mean, I'm white, and I'm pretty sure that they are, but I could forgive a black person for not being so sure.

If you're that concerned about getting the "wrong" vaccine, you could just lie about your race when you sign up (of course, that would only deepen the racial divide in vaccination statistics)

Hold up, you have to state your "race" (whatever that means) when you sign up for the vaccine in the US?

Re: Does the Tuskegee experiment explain black vaccination rates?

#58

Post by yodelshady »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #31

Not sure how great of a source this is - but black people at all education levels seem to be about ~8% less likely than the general population to get vaccinated [1]. However, black people at most education levels are poorer than the average population (unfortunately) - and according to this chart - poor people are also much more likely to not be vaccinated [2]. You can't really make any conclusions from the two chart…

Re: poorer - my partner needed the car on the day I had scheduled a jab, so I had to walk/train. The appointment, as a whole, cost an entire morning. I can work around that, but the practical issues are obvious.

A friend's anecdotal evidence was that skepticism was U-shaped as a function of age - there were older black people much more likely to have close experience of mistreatment. For reference I'm not in the US and some still bring up tuskegee, but also more typical things that do apply locally - "oh some skinheads beat you up? What a shame. Might be nasty if you made an issue of it" type stuff. Younger generations have had less mistreatment - not none, but less - and, like everyone else, are divided between pragmatic decision makers and conspiracy theorists.

Of course, if you're from certain regions of Pakistan, there is much more recent evidence of vaccines specifically being misused, and was also discussed recently on HN (as a point of pedantry, the people in question did get real vaccines. Still pretty awful). I don't believe this has had as much impact as certain sections of the media with a fetish for diaspora narratives and a poor grasp of geography would like.

Re: Does the Tuskegee experiment explain black vaccination rates?

#59

Post by meowface »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #43
bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know that the government is giving the same vaccines to whites and non-whites? I mean, I'm white, and I'm pretty sure that they are, but I could forgive a black person for not being so sure.

Conspiracy theories don't even make sense within their own universe any more. At a mass vaccination clinic, there is no "black line" or ""white line", people just randomly get in line, and since a vial has multiple doses in it, it's obvious the same vial serves all races of people in the line. Favorite recent meme I saw "People who believe in conspiracy theories have never been project managers." That is, when you kn…

It's not about how ridiculous the conspiracy theory is when considering the full context. Obviously it's not the case that the US is using the COVID vaccines to experiment on certain races while excluding others.

It's about why someone might believe such a thing and what you can to do to try to convince them otherwise.

"They use the same vials" isn't a great argument to give to a skeptic. Unless you manage to get in the back rooms and observe the full chain of custody of every syringe, you can't know for sure you're getting the same thing as someone else.

If your existing prior is that you are likely being deceived and tricked into receiving something that may harm you, it's rational to think they'll use techniques to make it seem like you aren't receiving any special treatment.

Re: Does the Tuskegee experiment explain black vaccination rates?

#60

Post by pseudo0 »

jobigoud wrote: post #57
Rebelgecko wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're that concerned about getting the "wrong" vaccine, you could just lie about your race when you sign up (of course, that would only deepen the racial divide in vaccination statistics)

Hold up, you have to state your "race" (whatever that means) when you sign up for the vaccine in the US?

It might depend on how you get the vaccine. I went to a mass vaccination clinic and was never asked to identify my race, but a family doctor presumably has that information on file and might report statistics to local health authorities?
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