Should people of color get access to the Covid-19 vaccine before others?

“It’s so important that we get this right. We don’t have a history of doing this well.”

A drive-by memorial of coronavirus victims on display in Detroit, Michigan, on September 2.  Aaron J. Thornton/Getty Images

By now, we all know that Covid-19 is not an equal-opportunity killer. Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people are getting the disease more often and suffering more severe outcomes than white Americans. 

The most glaring statistic: 1 in 1,000 Black Americans have already died in this pandemic. In the US, Black residents have been dying at twice the rate of white residents.

There’s nothing about being Black, in and of itself, that makes people more biologically susceptible to Covid-19. Instead, the disproportionate impact is due to an accumulation of factors from centuries of systemic racism. Discriminatory housing policies like redlining have made it harder to maintain social distance. Unequal education and job opportunities have compelled people to take on higher-risk work. Worse health care access has bred more underlying medical conditions.

A society that has foisted all these conditions on minority groups, which now make them more vulnerable to Covid-19, has to ask itself: When a vaccine is discovered, should people of color get priority access? Read the full story on Vox right here.