True: Racial Disparity in COVID-19 Vaccinations
The Claim
White Americans are getting vaccinated at higher rates than Black and Latino Americans.
News posted on
Emerging story
A CNN article claims that “White people are getting vaccinated at higher rates than Black and Latino Americans.”
Less than one day after being posted on CNN’s Facebook page, this article was shared over 500 times and received more than 3,000 comments. The article was also retweeted over 600 times on Twitter.
Social media users shared their own theories in the comments as to why white people were being vaccinated at higher rates than Black and Latino Americans. One popular theory is that “black and Spanish decided not to take the vaccine just plain and simple."
Many users seemed to struggle with the concept of white people being vaccinated at higher rates, pointing out that there are “more white people than those of color." This caused them to believe this article was “just another attempt at keeping the racial fire burning.” A lot of users accused CNN of race-baiting.
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar’s investigation found this claim to be true. The data does show that white Americans are getting vaccinated at higher rates than Black and Latino Americans. However, the data that CNN used for this article only includes 14 states. This doesn’t show the entire picture, but the data that is available does indeed show that there is some racial inequality in the United States’ vaccine distribution so far.
Colorado was not included in CNN’s data, but there is evidence suggesting that the state follows the same trend of white people being vaccinated at a higher rate.
The CNN article identifies a few ways this can be fixed and grant equal access to the vaccine. Health experts and advocates say the federal government can strengthen partnerships with leaders and churches in Black and Latino communities, administer the vaccine outside of traditional hours so people who work hourly, frontline jobs don't have to take off work, and consider a plan for transporting poor families without vehicles to health facilities to get the vaccine.
According to the Colorado Sun, the state has set a goal of holding pop-up vaccination clinics in half of Colorado’s top 50 census tracts for high-density, low-income minority populations.
