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Comment by vineyardmike | Hacker News Reader

> and high vaccination rates.

It's high relative to the south or florida but the order says the vaccination rate is 56%.

Seattle has a 78% vaccination rate [1] and SF has a 71% rate [2]. NYC is pretty low rate of vaccination relative to major libral cities. It seems that boston, a comparable east-coast city has a closer, but still higher vaccination rate of 65% (link somewhat out of date) [3]

[1] https://kingcounty.gov/~/media/depts/health/communicable-dis...

[2] https://sf.gov/data/covid-19-vaccinations

[3] https://www.mass.gov/doc/boston-vaccination-data-report-july...

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>Seattle has a 78% vaccination rate [1] and SF has a 71% rate [2]. NYC is pretty low rate of vaccination relative to major libral cities.

New York City is 25% black. Blacks have the lowest vaccination rate among US ethnic groups. (<https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/latest-...>)

Seattle is 7% black.

San Francisco is 6% black, and is one third Asian (double that of NYC), the ethnicity with the highest vaccination rate in the US.

When I got my 2nd shot, I talked to some of the (black) workers there and they also commiserated that their friends and family still distrusted any government vaccination due to real atrocities like the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (perpetrated for 50 years!) and other situations.

One approach might be to suggest that they go to a white part of their town and get vaccinated at a pharmacy there where white people are getting vaccinated.

As bad as what happened at Tuskegee was, black patients were not injected with syphilis or anything like that. Patients with syphilis were not told that they had it and were monitored over the years to see what would happen.

It's not a synonymous event, but trust relies on honesty, and they were being lied to. So the trust isn't there. Also it's a result of the slavery mindset that's endemic to this country since before it's founding.

FWIW, the Seattle rate you've cited is for people 12 or older, while the 56% NYC rate is for everyone in the city. NYC's vaccination rate for those over 12 is closer to 75%.

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