Covid-19 discussion

Found it. You’re right, there is a political divide but the class divide is large (and larger than the racial gap). That makes sense because there is a class divide politically; democrats are likelier to be rich than republicans.

NY Times

It is common to hear about two different demographic groups that are hesitant to receive a Covid-19 vaccination: Republican voters and racial minorities, especially Black and Latino Americans.

The two groups seem to have different motivations. For Republicans, the attitude is connected to a general skepticism of government and science. For Black and Hispanic Americans, it appears to stem from the country’s legacy of providing substandard medical treatment, and sometimes doing outright harm, to minorities.

These ideas all have some truth to them. But they also can obscure the fact that many unvaccinated Republicans and minorities have something in common: They are working class. And there is a huge class gap in vaccination behavior.

Here is a look at vaccination behavior by racial groups and political identification, based on polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation:


By The New York Times Source: Kaiser Family Foundation

Here are those same groups subdivided by class, using a four-year college degree as the dividing line between working class and professional:


By The New York Times Source: Kaiser Family Foundation

As you can see, working-class members of every group are less likely to have received a vaccine and more likely to be skeptical. “No matter which of these groups we looked at, we see an education divide,” Mollyann Brodie, who oversees the Kaiser surveys, told me. In some cases, different racial groups with the same education levels — like Black and white college graduates — look remarkably similar.

This poll did not break out Asian-Americans, but other Kaiser surveys have, and it’s consistent: Asian-Americans have a higher median income than Black, Hispanic or white Americans and also a higher vaccination rate.

All of which points to the fact that the class divide is bigger than the racial divide.

ETA: Also sorry if I’m writing in a confusing way, meds + no sleep.

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