Compliments of Columbia Business Monthly & Greenville Business magazines
National polls show that anywhere from 51 percent to 64 percent of Americans would be willing to be vaccinated against coronavirus.
But the number is far lower for minorities.
Some 49 percent of African Americans and 37 percent of Hispanics say they won’t take the vaccine, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
About 39 percent of Blacks cited safety concerns in the poll, while 35 percent cited distrust of the health care system.
That distrust goes back decades to the Tuskegee Experiment, a federal study that allowed syphilis in Black men to go untreated so scientists could observe its progression.
And it affects the way many African Americans view the health system today, with low participation clinical trials – just 5 percent to 7 percent nationally – among the consequences, according to SE Life Sciences, a trade group representing life science companies in the Southeast.