We Learned Our Lesson Well.

There are some communities that embrace the vaccine and some that scorn the vaccine, the LGBTQ+ has embraced it. A lesson leaned back in the eighties.

Gay, lesbian adults report higher COVID vaccination rates
Just over 85 percent of lesbian or gay adults in the U.S. have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, compared to 76 percent of heterosexual adults.
The Hill
By Brooke Migdon
February 3, 2022


COVID-19 vaccination rates are higher among gay and lesbian adults in the U.S. compared to heterosexual adults, new research suggests.

According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report published Thursday, just over 85 percent of lesbian or gay adults in the U.S. have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, compared to 76 percent of heterosexual adults.

There were no "significant differences" found in vaccination rates based on gender identity, according to the report, which used data collected from more than 150,000 respondents between August and October.

Gay or lesbian adults were also more likely to have confidence in the safety of vaccines, with 76 percent reporting they were either completely or very confident in vaccine safety, compared with 64 percent of heterosexual respondents. More than 90 percent of gay or lesbian adults said they believed getting vaccinated against COVID-19 was very or somewhat important, as did 87 percent of bisexual adults, according to the report.

I don’t have any scientific data but it seems to me that we have a collected memory of the AIDS epidemic, even through I was still hiding in the closet back then I now know a number lesbians and gays who lived through it.

The CDC in the 2021 report said high vaccination rates among LGBTQ people could be driven by the fact that LGBTQ individuals tend to be politically liberal, live in blue states and live in urban areas. But the CDC noted in its Thursday report that LGBT adults face an increased risk of becoming severely ill from COVID-19 because of a higher prevalence of comorbidities, which could be influencing more LGBT people to get vaccinated.

Back last summer over the Fourth of July a COVID outbreak happened in Provincetown and it was quickly snuffed out because of the vaccination rate and common sense precautions… like wearing masks. They did such a good job that the CDC used them as an example of what works.

Last summer I wrote about the outbreak an article in Slate said,

...it had also offered us gay men a glimpse of an important facet of our history, exemplified most powerfully in the legendary self-advocacy of ACT UP: playing armchair scientist when institutional and social knowledge isn’t there for us, when it breaks down.

Forty years almost to the day after the New York Times first reported on the “rare cancer seen in 41 homosexuals,” here we were again, confused and angry participants in a public health emergency. Many of us began sounding the alarm just after the July Fourth holiday, and by midmonth the Massachusetts Department of Public Health had started collaborating with the CDC to track the new cluster. Around that same time, the CDC began asking for Provincetown positives to come forward with their stories. “I can’t believe we were joking about the ‘Fagbash variant’ a few weeks ago and now we are literally the case study for the variant,” a friend texted me in response to the CDC’s sudden interest, referencing a popular P-Town party. Those of us who reached out, I like to think, pushed our collective understanding of delta a step forward with our reporting.

Indeed, Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist at New York’s Bellevue Hospital Center, said as much to the New York Times. “This is one of the most impressive examples of citizen science I have seen,” she said. “The people involved in the Provincetown outbreak were meticulous in making lists of their contacts and exposures.”

“I learned my lesson well.”

They call it public health for a reason, it is the people who can end this plague. Instead of protesting masks, and vaccinations taking common sense precautions work but everyone must do it.