Are Black Men Committing Genocide?

Not taking the COVID vaccine.

Recently my son told me that it was on a social media site that doctors in New York were killing Black patients who were admitted to the hospital with COVID-19. I pointed out to him that the key to ending the COVID pandemic was prevention not treatment. Many Black people, especially Black men, do not go to the doctor until they are forced to do so by acquiring the illness or pleading by a female relative. Also, people with underlying health problems were more likely to die from COVID. A whopping 22.4% of males and 16.8% of the females who died from COVID had underlying health conditions [Available online at https://www.statista.com/statistics/1127634/covid-19-mortality-by-gender-us/]. That’s almost a quarter of the American male population. We know that Black men have a high incidence of health diseases such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and other cardiac conditions. According to a report on the CDC website, people who were not fully vaccinated accounted had higher incidences of hospitalizations and death related to the COVID in several U.S. jurisdictions [online @ https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037e1.htm].

All my life I have heard the phrase in some shape or form “White people are trying to kill off Black men.” Genocide is the deliberate killing a large segment of a particular population or racial group with the goal of destroying that group. During this COVID-19 pandemic more Black people have died from this infection that white people. People take responsibility for prevention or acquiring Covid by their actions or inactions.

I write inactions because inaction is a decision to do nothing. Waiting until you get COVID to see a doctor is a late action. Many Black men and people will not go to the doctor when they first start experiencing signs of COVID such nasal congestion, cough, sore throat, fever. Many people wait until they have signs of advanced COVID infection such as difficulty breathing, chest congestion, fever over several days, nausea/vomiting/diarrhea, muscle pain, and weakness. When you wait late to go to the doctor, your COVID viral load (measurement of the amount of the virus in your blood stream) is high and more difficult to treat.

Only 30% of Black Americans as compared with 39% of White Americans are fully vaccinated against the Covid-19 virus. [https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037e1.htm]. In the last few months, more Black Americans are getting the vaccine; however, it seems to me to be related to the fact that they know someone who has had the COVID infection or died from it. It is good that more Black people are getting the vaccine but bad because they are reacting to the problem.

There has been a 15% increase in the number of fully vaccinated Black people over the last few months[available @ https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/latest-data-on-covid-19-vaccinations-race-ethnicity/]. Some of that can be attributed to increase availability of the vaccine to the Black population and some of that can be attributed to Black people taking responsibility for their own health.

So the question is “Are we, Black people, inadvertently committing genocide when we refuse to take the vaccine? While the COVId-19 rate for White Americans is 23 per 10,000 people, the rate for Black Americans is almost three times as high 63 per 10,000 people. All the disinformation and misinformation about the vaccine can inflame Black men’s fear of the doctor and lead them to not taking the COVID vaccine. We can have a large segment of communities of Black people who may have die from COVID because of not taking the vaccine and thus committing self-genocide. Think about it.