GO, GAYS! Gay and lesbian adults are vaccinated at a higher rate than heterosexual adults. ABC News reported,
“A new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found 85.4% of gay and lesbian Americans above age 18 had received at least one vaccine dose as of October 2021. By comparison, 76.3% of heterosexuals reported receiving at least an initial dose by the same date.”
The study, which can be found here, also stated that “vaccination coverage was lowest among non-Hispanic Black LGBT persons across all categories of sexual orientation and gender identity.”
The study did make note that “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) populations have higher prevalences of health conditions associated with severe COVID-19 illness compared with non-LGBT populations.” Dr. A.D. McNaghten, a member of the CDC’s COVID-19 Emergency Response Team and corresponding author of the study, told ABC News,
“We know that the prevalence of certain health conditions associated with severe COVID-19 illness, such as cancer, smoking, and obesity, are higher in LGBT populations, and access to health care continues to be an issue for some people in the LGBT community,We wanted to see if vaccination coverage among LGBT persons was the same as non-LGBT persons.”
🩺 Gay and lesbian adults have more confidence that COVID-19 vaccines are safe, sayse@CDCgov.
💉 They are also more likely to be vaccinated.
🏳️🌈 Results indicate that 85.4% received one or more doses of the vaccine, compared to 76.3% of heterosexual respondents. pic.twitter.com/qUF8kdIHVg
— Openly 🏳️🌈 (@Openly) February 4, 2022
Gay and lesbian adults also have more confidence in the safety of the vaccines, which makes sense given that we are more vaccinated than our heterosexual counterparts. This comes as no surprise especially after last summer’s outbreak in Provincetown and the CDC crediting the gay community with their warp speed response.
An August NPR article detailed how “a tip from citizen scientist Michael Donnelly, who started publishing his own coronavirus data reports early in the pandemic,” set things in motion. Demetre Daskalakis, a deputy incident manager for the CDC’s COVID-19 Response said,
“We triggered the investigation as people were getting symptomatic. Pretty amazing — it is warp speed. It wouldn’t have been as rapturous an initiation of an investigation and response as we had.”
The queer community has been through this before and Donnelly acknowledged that,
“The norms of the gay community say: Share your medical history, share your risks with other people so that they can be responsible and take care of themselves as well. That came with years of practice within the community, particularly around HIV and AIDS.”
“Gay or lesbian adults reported higher vaccination coverage overall (85.4%) than did heterosexual adults (76.3%).”
Great new report from @CDCgov: COVID-19 Vaccination Coverage and Vaccine Confidence by Sexual Orientation and Gender Identityhttps://t.co/zVNXVTLxJn
— Jessica Halem, MBA 🌈 (@jessicahalem) February 4, 2022
Nice job gays! Let’s try to get that number of gay and lesbian adults vaccinated as close to 100% as possible.
photo credit//pixabay.com//huntlh
(**This post is solely the opinion of this contributing writer and may not reflect the opinion of other writers, staff, or owners of Instinct Magazine.)
What great news. We’ve been through a pandemic already and know better.