Why is the Bronx’s COVID-19 vaccination rate so low?
Experts said a mistrust of doctors, a lack of access to vaccination sites and online conspiracy theories were contributing factors. Bay Eden Senior Center in the Bronx is a state run vaccination site. Don Pollard/Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo The must-read daily newsletter for NY s political community. Get it in your inbox.
Sign Up Now!
Terence Franklin is 62 years old, unvaccinated and lives in the Bronx, which had some of the hardest-hit neighborhoods in New York City during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic last year. With highly effective COVID-19 vaccines now widely available, health experts are reexamining how to convince people who are reluctant or opposed to the vaccine – especially because the highly contagious delta variant is causing infection rates to soar, overwhelmingly among the unvaccinated. President Joe Biden said recently, “The only pandemic w
For Veal, this experience was all too familiar. He was just 23 in 2005 when he and his family fled New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina made its way toward the city. He expected to be gone several days, at most. What he didn’t expect was that he’d never live in New Orleans again. Months after the storm, Veal returned to survey the damage and found an empty shell where his home used to be.
“My entire life was washed away by the floods and it has never been the same, man,” he says.
Now approaching middle age, Veal has established a life for himself in Houston, first working as a FedEx driver and now as a school teacher, while moonlighting as a musician. Still, he feels far from safe in his new home. In 2017, he watched as the flood waters from Hurricane Harvey began to seep into his home in Houston. “I was just sitting there watching the water rise above my tires. Then it was up to my mailbox,” Veal says. He recalls wading out into the flooded street, searching for someone wi