Young Black Americans more skeptical of COVID-19 vaccine than elders: survey

A new survey from the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NFID) looking at vaccine skepticism in the Black community suggests that people are sharply divided by age, with older Black people more likely to say they would get the shot.

The survey, published on the agency’s website, found that 30 percent of surveyed Black adults in the U.S. say they will not seek to get vaccinated for COVID-19, with another 20 percent unsure if they will or not.

That number sharply rises when older Black adults are excluded from the sample; 41 percent of respondents ages 18-44 say they will not get vaccinated. Sixty-eight percent of respondents age 60 or older said they would seek to be vaccinated.

The age divide coincides with a similar divide among Black Americans surrounding their views of racial bias in the U.S. health care system, according to the poll. Forty percent of Black adults age 60 or older said that some racial groups are “always” or “often” treated unfairly by the health care system, while 60 percent of adults ages 18 to 29 said the same.

A divide along gender lines was also clear, with 43 percent of Black women in the 45-59 age group saying they would get the vaccine compared to 75 percent of men in the same age group.

When asked why they would avoid being vaccinated, two out of three of those who said they would not seek to be vaccinated cited the speed of the vaccine’s development process as their reason why.

The NFID’s survey was conducted between Dec. 10-21 and collected results from 1,340 Black adults living in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., with a margin of error of 3.8 percentage points.