Comment by chitowneats | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chitowneats | Hacker News Reader

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It's so strange the way that American liberals hand-wave low vax rates in minority communities. Vague references to the "Tuskegee Experiments", a real event that of course has had some effect on the way some minorities view Western medicine and vaccines. Or notions of "access", despite the vaccines being completely free and widely available for many months.

Tuskegee was many decades ago. There are much more recent examples of the pharmaceutical industry and doctors prescribing a product to millions of Americans that was later shown to be harmful, at least for some patients. I'm of course referring to Oxycontin and other supposedly "non-addictive" opioids. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died as a result of these drugs. Countless more lives stunted or ruined.

In my view, events like this explain a great deal of working-class (including white, who heavily lean Republican) skepticism about novel treatments. Just today, Pfizer issued a complete recall of the anti-smoking drug, Chantix, after discovering it can increase cancer risk:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/shopping/2021/09/17/cha...

I hope we all can have more empathy for anyone who is skeptical after witnessing or experiencing harm after a incident like this. I'm not saying all fear or skepticism is valid or warranted. Just that I wish people would not judge the individuals involved for their (presumed) politics, and work towards greater education and understanding.

> It's so strange the way that American liberals hand-wave low vax rates in minority communities.

As you've commented (but then hand waved), the motive behind the distrust. "An orange man told me" vs. "The US government has spent hundreds of years oppressing our people, and the US medical system fails minorities consistently time and time again".

If you ignore my entire point about how the white working class has also been failed by the U.S. medical system in the opioid crisis, sure.

Trump has been vaccinated and recommends vaccination. Trump's administration instituted Operation Warp Speed, which supported and expedited vaccines the entire world has benefited from.

At the time, Democrats were busy sewing distrust about it.

Do you see how the opioid crisis is relatively new, but pillaging minorities has been a thing in america for hundreds of years?

Do you not see how the argument that vaccines are about "pillaging minorities" makes no sense? This is not about experiments that are being conducted on particular populations. This is about a mass vaccination campaign. One in which all Americans are being encouraged to get the jab.

It seems that you have trouble viewing things outside of this racial lens. My original comment was in hopes that you would start to consider this in a different light and understand why there perhaps might be race neutral reasons that people are hesitant. The opioid crisis is much closer to what people are afraid of. They're afraid that the vaccines are meant to help, but that they might hurt, at least if they're in a particular age group, or have a particular pre-existing condition, etc.

It's unfortunate that you're not willing to treat this issue and your political opponents with more empathy, but there's nothing I can do about that. At this point, you're pretty obviously downvote baiting me with outrageous comments, waiting eagerly for me to respond, so this is the last I'm going to engage with you.

> Do you not see how the argument that vaccines are about "pillaging minorities" makes no sense?

The argument is about government distrust. I'll skip the rest of your post.

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