By: Blackman’s Street Today

Last year, the heath care industry employed 18.6 million workers.

The majority of those employed were White, but many were Blacks, Hispanic and Asian.

The startling news is that the pandemic is taking a disproportionate toll on health care workers, especially Black workers and their families, reports the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Black adults are more likely than White adults to know someone who has died from the coronavirus.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 26 percent of Blacks were either infected, hospitalized or died from the corornavirus.

Pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Moderna have recently approved vaccines to treat the coronavirus. Many Blacks, however, said they would not take it.

A study reported that if the treatment were given away, many Black adults would refuse to accept the vaccine.

It is not clear why they would not take the vaccines.

Historically, Blacks are suspicious of medicines and the the medical community and are fearful that they will be harmed rather than helped. Blacks have been subjects in medical experiemnts that have had disastrous health consequences, like the 1932 Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Black male subjects were inoculated with syphilis by United States Public Health Service physicians in order to study the course of the disease. The subjects were told that they were to be given free health care.

The number of people have have died in the U.S. from the coronarvirus reached 248,824 and it continues rise.