Race should not be a factor

The story published in the May 3 edition of the New Haven Register (“In clamor to reopen, many black people feel overlooked”) highlights racial health disparities across the nation. Emerging statistics about the current pandemic underscore one untenable point made in the piece: “Black people are dying in disproportionate numbers from COVID-19 in the United States.”

Analogous data make the same statement about Connecticut.

The article raises other racial and socioeconomic issues related to “opening the country” after the coronavirus shutdown. In some places, anti-vaxxers have joined forces with those insisting on an accelerated, unrestricted reopening. This is a frightening alliance, given a laser-sharp, international focus to find a COVID-19 vaccine that will hopefully restore some semblance of “normal” to our lives. It seems everyone is clamoring for that one vaccine, despite persistent protests against the use of many others developed over the years to keep us safe. Will these same protesters refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19? Will Connecticut’s anti-vaxxers use the “non-medical exemption” as a loophole, potentially putting everybody else at risk of reinfection?

As a child, I had the measles, the mumps and, even more shocking, polio. I may be dating myself when I share this information, but I was one of the lucky ones. Many of my friends also contracted these diseases before there were vaccines, and they were not so lucky. I literally watched many of my childhood friends be crippled for life or die as a result of these afflictions. These memories and my own experience reinforce my support for vaccines.

Did you know AfricanAmerican adults are less likely than white adults to have received the flu vaccine or the pneumonia vaccine in the past year? Did you know African-American women are 10 percent less likely to have received an HPV vaccine as white women? These statistics, provided by the HHS Office of Minority Health, cause ominous concern.

Statistics about childhood immunizations are as foreboding. According to data from 2016, again from the HHS Office of Minority Health, only 64.1 percent of African Americans fully vaccinated their children aged 19 to 35 months, compared to 72.2 percent of whites. When the tools necessary to keep people safe are available, we need to use them. What’s worse, these numbers are sure to decline during this pandemic, considering the impact of the “stay safe, stay home” order on well-care visits for children so they continue their vaccination schedule.

Hindsight will certainly be 20-20 when COVID-19 data is reviewed, and the complete racial and socioeconomic impacts of this terrible disease are studied. As we look ahead to a vaccine, something most of us hope becomes available soon, I hope the same barriers impacting our community during this crisis do not prevent our friends and neighbors from accessing this critical immunization tool.

One thing that would make everyone’s job much easier is elimination of the nonmedical exemption in Connecticut. Herd immunity will be critical in a post-COVID-19 world, and the current loophole is a glaring obstacle to that goal.