Covid-19 Vaccination Is Not Going to Be Equitable, Is It?

America’s unjust status quo threatens the intervention we need most

A nurse administers the polio vaccine to an infant patient at the Well-Baby Clinic in DeKalb County, Georgia, 1977. Photo: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

In 1954, a very risky experiment took place across many different cities in the United States. Families lined up for hours in the summer heat so parents could have their children immunized against polio. At the time, polio was affecting children in the U.S. in waves, mostly in the summer, and mostly around communities with swimming pools, schools, and daycare facilities that offered the virus plenty of chances to jump from one person to another. Notably, if you look at the photos of those vaccine trials, most of the participants were white children, and most of the trials took place in white areas of cities or in the suburbs.

The reality of polio was different

The differences between how those trials — and public health surveillance of polio — treated whites versus Blacks was so intertwined with the racial realities of the time that many epidemiologists actually convinced themselves that polio was a disease that did not affect Black children like it affected white children. The truth was quite the contrary.

Like so many other diseases and medical conditions seen throughout the history of the United States, polio disproportionately…