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Buckle up. California’s vaccination plan is taking
another sharp turn.
The state will now devote
40% of available COVID-19 vaccinesto residents of the most disadvantaged areas, officials announced Wednesday night. The major shift in policy is intended to slow the spread of the coronavirus, especially in communities that have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, my colleagues report.
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The latest change comes amid mounting evidence that Latino and Black communities are falling behind white and Asian ones in getting access to the COVID-19 vaccines, even though they have had the highest rates of infection.
Currently, 1.6 million doses have been administered to people who live in the state’s hardest-hit communities. In Southern California, these areas include South L.A., the Eastside, Koreatown, Chinatown, Compton, southeast L.A. County, the eastern San Fernando Valley, Santa Ana and a number of heavily Latino communities along the Interstate 10 corri
Thompson listens as public health officials implore Black people
to move beyond their skepticism and have faith in medical ingenuity. Thompson sees Black doctors, like John Wesley Patton III, enthusiastically publicize the moment they get
vaccinated and stress the importance of inoculation.
The suffering the deadly virus inflicts is “no joke,” the anesthesiologist wrote in a January Instagram caption. “Trust science. Don’t lose hope. Stay together. We’re gonna get through this.”
But even if they come from other Black people like Patton, the words don’t penetrate Thompson’s mental barricade.
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The Sacramento resident is not really fearful of the science behind the vaccine but has a deep mistrust in government she said has failed Black people again and again.