In a shocking but not surprising manifestation of the realities of economic state and race and ethnicity in America, it becomes apparent that the current surge in infections and hospitalizations in Los Angeles County is predominantly a Black and Latino problem—the mainstream media, of course, doesn’t want to delve into this matter. Blacks by far bear the brunt of the pathogen’s wrath.
First, race and ethnicity correlate with a proclivity for vaccination in Los Angeles County. While the mainstream media seeks to stoke divisive fires, shaming people and generally vilifying individuals that haven’t opted for vaccination, they often imply that this group of “vaccine-hesitant” people fall into the group of political “right wings,” or “anti-vaxxer” loons. Even subtle attacks have been made on born-again Christians and other assorted conservative caricatures. Of course, the actual truth is very different from the emerging Biden administration narrative. Instead, there is a plethora of rationale for why people avoid or wait to receive a vaccination.
But that’s the kind of tone coming out of Washington nowadays as the champagne socialist set now runs the show. Indeed, they have ruthlessly embraced a national narrative that doesn’t allow us to clearly or accurately pinpoint the true problem. The reality is that there is a sizable population that directly knows someone in their network that has either experienced a major adverse event or even death in association with the mass vaccination program. Out of the 11,000+ deaths reported in VAERS, the CDC declares that just three or so of these mortalities can be directly correlated, causally, to the jab. Yet when clustering the data, a very uncomfortable number of cases occur within 24 to 36 hours of the event, often in perfectly healthy people. People sense something is off, and they don’t like it when the government doesn’t offer more transparency in such circumstances.
This is deeply worrying and mostly false misinformation. In fact I find myself worried (and made angry) by a lot of COVID comment from the US. How can a medical emergency become a left-right political issue as the above makes it? Appalling. And highly immoral.
Blacks by far bear the brunt of the pathogen’s wrath.
Assuming similar age demographics, there are two main factors that determine how much of a problem COVID is:
1. What fraction of subgroup is unvaccinated (problem will be almost exactly proportional to this)
2. What is the speed of COVID spread within the subgroup - as determined by environmentally determined social distancing
3. What is average health, access to healthcare, etc
Points 2. and 3. above correlates more COVID with socio-economic status, since manual non-work-at-home jobs, cramped housing, multi-generational households, multiple-occupancy buildings all make for faster COVID spread. Vaccination (for delta) reduces but in no way stops spread. Basically, COVID attacks those who are poorer, and in the US that correlates with hispanic and black minorities.
Black & Latino subgroups have more COVID infection risk because of 2. Look at the bar graphs below for 1. You can see that Asian subgroups are much better vaccinated everywhere except weirdly for S Dakota (does S Dakota actually have any population??). Hispanic subgroups are below white and black in quite a few places, above in some. If you average it there is not a LOT of difference. Give that overall risk is simply (1 - fraction vaccinated) you can see that vaccination differences are not going to make a big difference overall except that fewer Asians will die than other races.
Putting these factors together we have https://www.cdc.gov/coronaviru…th-by-race-ethnicity.html. Note however that this is deaths throughout the pandemic, and therefore does not take into account current relative rates of vaccination and therefore current risks. That will make Asians the least affected by COVID.
While the mainstream media seeks to stoke divisive fires, shaming people and generally vilifying individuals that haven’t opted for vaccination,
No-one should vilify people who are misinformed, or have biological problems, and therefore make unwise health choices. We do not do this over smokers, or drinkers, or people who eat too much and are obese. It is unfair when the root cause is biological (e.g. genetic poor processing of satiety causes obesity). it is profoundly unhelpful when the root cause is misinformation: any psychologist will tell you that jeering at people does not make them inclined to change.
Mainstream media has been saying that vaccination protects individuals and communities - which is just a fact. It has also been saying that those actors (e.g. the 12 vaccine misinformation super-spreaders) that have contributed to vaccine hesitancy have caused enormous harm both to the health and economy of teh US.
they often imply that this group of “vaccine-hesitant” people fall into the group of political “right wings,” or “anti-vaxxer” loons.
I'm sorry if any media in the US do that. those who are vaccine-hesitant are simply misinformed. I suppose they do include a subgroup of "anti-vaxxers" who actively source this misinformation. Whether these are out of touch with reality, or simply very bad people who value ideology over the US health and economy I don't know. See below for politics - as FM1 pointed out a while ago this is not simple. In the US, uniquely, there is currently a left/right divide on this issue that you do not see in other countries. However the "anti-vaxxers" come from both left and right wing extremes. It is a great shame that the US has become so politically polarised.
Indeed, they have ruthlessly embraced a national narrative that doesn’t allow us to clearly or accurately pinpoint the true problem. The reality is that there is a sizable population that directly knows someone in their network that has either experienced a major adverse event or even death in association with the mass vaccination program.
This is where I feel the OP quote most clearly tips over into anti-vaxxer (and therefore immoral) territory. The vaccine side effects are not common. The VAERS coincidental events are for old people clearly much more frequent, and for young people very significant. That is a fact. This text conflates the two things, and claims people are vaccine hesitant because they are told via social media about such coincidences. That may be true - it is lack of clarity, and suspicion of the correct analyses that distinguishes between association and causation unpicking the data, that cause this hesitancy. And mealy-mouthed misleading anti-vax write-ups like this contribute largely to this problem.
Out of the 11,000+ deaths reported in VAERS, the CDC declares that just three or so of these mortalities can be directly correlated, causally, to the jab. Yet when clustering the data, a very uncomfortable number of cases occur within 24 to 36 hours of the event, often in perfectly healthy people. People sense something is off, and they don’t like it when the government doesn’t offer more transparency in such circumstances.
This is now full-blooded anti-vax. Whether the recorded events are background or vaccination-related is something every scientist is writing papers on. It is a proper and determinable scientific issue - although one that cannot be quickly determined because you need a lot of data to separate out causality from background. The OP quote is anti-vax lies because it is making rehetorical points here rather than looking at and reporting, neutrally, the scientific data. Such write-ups cause people to be vaccine-hesitant and the author of this piece must surely know that.
