How would you summarize the vaccine hesitance among your folks? In other words, what do you see as the primary drivers?
Among my un-vaccinated (which is a low percentage), the relatively-low risk the virus presents to most who get it and the uncertainty over the brand-new mRNA vaccines are the leading reasons. (Though there is certainly a bit of "don't trust those bozos" mixed in, with various people/parties filling the "bozo" role.)
The narrative of rural, white resistance is a well-traveled trope at this point. The urban, minority resistance remains relatively unexplained in my reading. Your thoughts?
The primary driver of urban minority resistance to vaccination through until today works around the word Trust. Those who are church-goers have a network of folks wider than their family and friends, and a trusted deliverer in the pastor. We tend to have higher vaccination rates for that reason. It's a bit different among the Latino population, because the networks of trusted people are different by background and country of origin, but also include the priest. I think some of the pentecostal preachers, where there is significant Latino population, actually are not helpful in moving folks toward vaccination.
This brings up the context of trust in science. Even as in the Bible Belt the perspectives of science are viewed as suspect because they don't start with trust in God, but invariably say follow the data, the fundamentalist non-white preachers are also sometimes in the same mode. Recently NYC used ads with several non-white preachers who laid their trust both in God and the vaccine in no uncertain terms, to counter the lack of trust.
Another important trusted person in many households is the primary care physician. They almost universally advise for the vaccine. In urban and minority areas, poorer people are using the emergency room or some urgent care center. There is no trusted primary care physician. So when misinformation or fear-mongering positions come through, they are believed.
I would say that Cardi B's twitter post was, for many of the uncertain and "unwashed" unvaccinated non-white younger people, a powerful message of DON'T DO IT.
Control of the messages that people trust is not, in any case, the specific realm of churches or the religious in high percentage. Try TikTok. Why would the TikTok message be trusted? Because there is no central zone of trust. Why would anybody listen to Cardi B as an expert on COVID vaccination? Ask her 175 million followers.
Trust in the government and its promises is also low in urban non-white areas. That's generations deep. And there is great justification for it. And the word of mouth misinformation finds a home in homes where people most at risk are housebound. The crisis for years in urban black and brown neighborhoods has been a health crisis centered in diabetes, heart disease, and various diseases and issues with the lungs. All of those are the perfect deadly landing places for COVID, and yet (and a few of these are my parishioners) the folks say, "I'll just wait it out at home." Like it's a shower or rainstorm. They've been waiting for 18 months, and in fact have not left those homes yet.
Finally, there's a population of generations-deep poor people who have given up. They live day to day. They don't care. Why bother? We ran a community outreach service center for four years in a really tough part of a really tough neighborhood, and that sense of despair hung over us every day - the center was called "Hope and a Prayer." For the last four years, it has not been funded and the doors are locked. And yet that site remains unrented, and alone out there, hanging in the breeze. Despair is not easy to beat back.
There's more, but that's for starters. I'm not impressed when the media coverage turns almost immediately from vaccine hesitancy to vaccine impediments, like lack of available sites or other ways to receive the shots or the availability of time off when you're in a low-paying essential job (that one is somewhat true and problematic) in an urban minority community. We've had vans perched on our side streets 7 days a week for 8 months in a very urban environment, and the unvaccinated - if they're out and about - walk right by.
Dave Benke
