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America Is Getting Unvaccinated People All Wrong — The Atlantic

Aug. 12, 2021
Diverse group of people portraits with surgical masks

With COVID-19 vaccines readily available to most U.S. residents, it is tempting to assume that unvaccinated people are anti-vaccine. Nothing could be further from the truth, says Rhea Boyd, MD, a pediatrician and co-developer of a national campaign called The Conversation that deploys Black and Latino health care workers to communities to provide information (and dispel misinformation) about the COVID-19 vaccines.

“‘The unvaccinated’ are not a monolith of defectors,” Boyd tells Ed Yong in a recent interview in the Atlantic. What they are is unsure — particularly about the safety and potential side effects — of the COVID-19 vaccines. “A lot of vaccine information isn’t common knowledge. Not everyone has access to Google. This illustrates preexisting fault lines in our health-care system, where resources — including credible information — don’t get to everyone,” Boyd tells Yong. “The information gap is driving the vaccination gap. And language that blames ‘the unvaccinated’ misses that critical point.”

Read the full story in The Atlantic.