Per Politico, more evidence that it isn’t the racial minorities who are “vaccine hesitant.” It’s the Trump cult:
Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), the leader of Congress’ GOP Doctors Caucus, said he has focused on understanding and responding to vaccine hesitancy in conservative communities across the country and his Cincinnati district, where 42 percent of residents have received at least a first shot — about 9 percentage points behind the national pace. He has sat in on focus groups with Donald Trump supporters and has cut a public service announcement with fellow Republican physicians in Congress.
“People say, ‘We don’t know what [the vaccine] will do long term,’” he told POLITICO, listing off concerns he’s heard from people resisting vaccination. “There are people in the lower age group who are saying: ‘I’m young and don’t have other comorbidities and I just haven’t felt like it.’ Some people are just afraid of needles. I can tell you that as a doctor — some people pass out when they see one. And I’ve heard everything all the way down to: ‘They’re putting a chip in me.’
But Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said the struggle to ramp up vaccinations looks much different in districts with large low-income and minority populations, like his own in Tucson that until recently had one of the nation’s lowest vaccination rates. The same barriers that prevented his constituents from getting tested when the virus emerged — poor transportation, lack of child care, little familiarity with the health care system — hampered their ability to get vaccinated, despite federal efforts like mass vaccination sites the government prioritized to get as many shots in arms as quickly as possible. His district has made up ground over the past few weeks — 44 percent have now received at least one shot — after the county health department boosted outreach, particularly in Hispanic communities, Grijalva said.
“For people who have traditionally limited-to-no access to health care, the revelation that they have to go to the vaccine does not come easily,” he said.
In fact, the magnitude of the struggle to broadly vaccinate low-income, minority communities that have been disproportionately hurt by the pandemic is obscured by the high levels of vaccine resistance among white conservatives. The stark racial disparities in vaccination would otherwise be far worse.
“Among the remaining unvaccinated people, white people are much more likely to say they are definitely not going to get the vaccine, whereas Black and Hispanic people are more likely to say they haven’t gotten it yet but are hoping to get it soon,” said Liz Hamel, vice president and director of public opinion and survey research at the Kaiser Family Foundation.
[…]
Republicans are roughly six times more likely than Democrats to say they have no interest in being vaccinated, according to recent polls. Democratic districts, meanwhile, are largely vaccinating at a faster clip, as local officials and organizations redouble efforts to reach the holdouts, with a focus on minority groups.
Data on racial disparities throughout the Covid response has been incomplete, including on vaccinations, making comparisons tricky in some cases. Some states have done a better job tracking this data than others, which can skew comparisons between congressional districts.
But data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and outside researchers find racial disparities in the vaccination effort are narrowing, particularly for Hispanics. During the last two weeks, more than one-quarter of first doses went to Hispanics, according to the CDC, almost twice the average over the previous six months.
The Biden administration this week announced new efforts to get Americans vaccinated in the month leading up to Independence Day, rolling out new programs offering free child care, free transportation, expanded pharmacy hours and other measures. What’s at stake, President Joe Biden said in a Wednesday speech, is the possibility of a virus resurgence in low-vaccine areas that sets back the nation’s progress in stamping out Covid.
“I don’t want to see the country that is already too divided become divided in a new way,” he said, “between places where people live free from fear of Covid and places where, when the fall arrives, death and severe illnesses return.”
That ship sailed. The Trump Death Cult is determined to expose itself to a deadly disease in order to own the libs.