Want Vaccine? Move to a White State
Black and Brown people keep suffering the highest rates of COVID-19 infection and deaths. Yet, it's mostly White people getting the first doses of vaccine.
Publisher’s Riff
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According to The Washington Post’s national vaccination tracker, 10.6 million Americans have received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine, and …
More than 1.6 million people have been fully vaccinated in states reporting. 31.2 million doses have been distributed.
That means 3.2 percent of the entire U.S. population has received their first dose of vaccine and just 0.5 percent has received both doses. Here’s a glimpse of how those doses have been administered across the 50 states …
What’s curious is that vaccine distribution appears to be happening at a faster pace in states that are not facing the highest case and death rates. Clearly, the Top 10 states receiving vaccine doses don’t even match the Top 10 states with the highest cases per 100,000 or the Top 10 states with the highest death rates per 100,000 residents. The only states that either of those lists have in common are Oklahoma and West Virginia. See the NY Times coronavirus case and death rate tracker …
Whitest States Get Vaccinated
But, what the Most Vaccinated States do have in common, demographically, is that they are among the racially Whitest states in the nation. Here’s a current Top 10 list of the Whitest states in the U.S. and their corresponding White population share, according to Census Data studied by World Population Review …
Maine (96.56%)
Vermont (96.15%)
New Hampshire (94.97%)
West Virginia (94.83%)
Wyoming (93.98%)
Idaho (93.07%)
Iowa (92.22%)
Montana (91.53%)
Nebraska (89.77%)
North Dakota (89.37%)
When looking at the Top 10 Most Vaccinated States thus far, 90 percent of those states have a White population share that is no less than 73 percent White (Alaska). Sixty (60) percent of these states have population shares that are more than 80 percent White. In fact, half of the states on the Top 10 Whitest States list are on the Top 10 Most Vaccinated States list. A pattern of vaccination dose distributed by Whiteness occurs.
But … Aren’t Black and Brown People The Hardest Hit by COVID-19?
Correct: Black and Latino populations are the hardest hit, the most infected and experiencing the most morbidity from COVID-19, especially when compared to Whites. Here’s the most updated CDC data on that …
That’s been the case throughout this pandemic.
Vaccine, Masks and Party Affiliation
Not only are the Top 10 Most Vaccinated States, thus far, among the Whitest states, they are also among those states that still don’t have statewide mask orders. Four out of ten, or 40 percent of those states have no statewide mask orders in place (one would be moved to ask then why they’re being rewarded with vaccine over states that need it more): Alaska, South Dakota, Oklahoma and Nebraska.
Eight out of ten, or 80 percent, of these states are also run by Republican governors: West Virgina, Alaska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Vermont, Oklahoma, New Hampshire and Nebraska. Nearly seven out of ten, or 70 percent, of these states are places where their legislatures are controlled by Republicans (the situation in the Alaska state House remains split).
The Black the State, The Fewer Vaccinated
Here are the Top 10 states with the highest Black COVID-19 infection death rates …
With the exception of one state (Louisiana), none of these states are even in the Top 20 Most Vaccinated States. Indeed, states with populations that are 30 percent or more Black - like Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina - are at the very bottom of vaccine distribution. And, looking the Top 10 states with the highest poverty rates …
Mississippi (19.71%)
Louisiana (18.79%)
New Mexico (18.66%)
West Virginia (17.42%)
Kentucky (16.70%)
Arkansas (16.40%)
Alabama (16.18%)
Oklahoma (15.06%)
Tennessee (14.48%)
Georgia (14.25%)
… only two of those states (West Virginia and Oklahoma) are on the Top 10 Most Vaccinated list.
Sure, some might argue that the reasons why vaccine distribution is happening at a higher rate in states with the highest White populations could be purely coincidental. They may also point to these states being less populated and more rural and, therefore, easier to manage for vaccine rollout. Others may point to the very red political composition of these states as another reason. But, during a public health emergency, it would stand that the areas or locations dealing with the most severe rates of infection and death would be the first most urgently serviced with vaccine. In the United States, that’s not considered a logic because, so far, governments have been focused on getting vaccine to the Whitest places.