Denise Herd, the associate director of OBI, discusses shortcomings in vaccine distribution methods. In particular, she states how a focus on age — whereby older generations are prioritized — risks hurting people of color who are being infected with Covid at younger ages than white people.
This video is part of a longer interview with Denise. Read the full conversation here.
Transcript:
Denise Herd: Minority groups are experiencing Covid at different ages. Among the Latinx population, it's actually the people that are younger who have the highest rates of Covid. Those people that are 35 to 49 years old that are Latinx, they have the highest rates of Covid in that population, followed by those that are 18 to 34.
So we're looking at a lot of young people and that's because of work exposure and so forth.
Black people, Native people, Latinx people generally have shorter lifespans than other Americans. That's a result of systemic racism. You're missing the people in that population that are most at risk of getting Covid and also at most risk of dying.
