A question for BAME forum members

If youtube can remove an OFCOM regulated radio station (talkradio) from their platform because they hosted an interview with a Professor that was a Lockdown sceptic, they should be stomping on vaccination sceptics in the bame community spreading disinformation that will cost lives.

I mean, its hard to debunk something so detached from reality! For what its worth, I can assure that there is no conspiracy involving hundreds of thousands of NHS workers to experiment on black/BAME people via the vaccine? Go down to the vaccine centre and see the white people getting it too?

Whilst I don't think the reason that black people have such low uptake is that they all believe its a racial experiment, its also hard to completely dismiss such views as trolling. There are plenty of people out there who do believe things like covid is fake, its caused by 5G, Trump is fighting a war against paedophiles, the NHS is a white colonial institution even though almost 50% of doctors are non-white, all the good stuff. If they aren't real, they definitely could have been.

But this vaccine uptake rate is symptomatic of a larger non-participation in healthcare by the BAME/black community, and it is a very important problem. They are less likely to seek medical help, less likely to give blood, less likely to be organ donors meaning black people wait twice as long as white for organs, etc. They are a lot more likely to seek out alternative medicine too (even though that costs money, and the NHS does not).

You also see this kind of thinking by whole governments of course - like in Tanzania where the government is recommending some kind of drink as a cure and rejected the vaccine that was being offered for free by AZ. If you're a recent immigrant from there, you can maybe see how that might also influence you.

That is a major problem, and is worth highlighting.

Yeah I don't think that that user is troll but damn I can't believe that I would find some people like someone I know irl thinking that this vaccine is somewhat a racial experiment. Like ok I am not desperate for vax/don't want the vax ASAP either but I just can't with these nonsensical conspiracy theories.

I honestly view covid as a large case study in how people will go to truly extraordinary lengths to believe whatever they want to believe. If you want lockdown to end, people will seek out opinions that and eventually believe that covid is a conspiracy, if you are scared of vaccine side effects you will seek out opinions and eventually believe that it alters your DNA or contains a microchip or whatever your nutty conspiracy of choice is.

Humans are just inherently completely irrational, is my conclusion.

I honestly view covid as a large case study in how people will go to truly extraordinary lengths to believe whatever they want to believe. If you want lockdown to end, people will seek out opinions that and eventually believe that covid is a conspiracy, if you are scared of vaccine side effects you will seek out opinions and eventually believe that it alters your DNA or contains a microchip or whatever your nutty conspiracy of choice is.

Humans are just inherently completely irrational, is my conclusion.

But it seems like incorrect ideas are a lot more appealing - could be that science keeps on 'changing it's mind' to accommodate new data whereas fake information sources can keep bashing out the same rubbish consistently - which I guess makes the fake information seem more reliable.

I honestly view covid as a large case study in how people will go to truly extraordinary lengths to believe whatever they want to believe. If you want lockdown to end, people will seek out opinions that and eventually believe that covid is a conspiracy, if you are scared of vaccine side effects you will seek out opinions and eventually believe that it alters your DNA or contains a microchip or whatever your nutty conspiracy of choice is.

Humans are just inherently completely irrational, is my conclusion.

It's no great wonder that religions have thrived and survived for this long...

"History" Channel is all about aliens, ghosts and conspiracy theories.

My Dad believes a medicine given to my grandad in hospital (years ago) made him lose his mind.

Also he believes last year that the government were trying to experiment the vaccine on black people by disguising it as the flu vaccine (he refused his)

I was thinking of making this comparison. Pre-pandemic I was like 'wait, you actually believe that all animals fit onto an ark? Or that Mary didn't die she spontaneously ascended because a pope said so in the 50s? You actually believe that? Really?

Now it seems pretty normal. Just a normal Tuesday.



Haha, this is actually a really insightful comparison. All the signs were there! We just didn't notice it.

She died a few hours later. Naturally, the logic of her relatives were. She was alive before you gave her the injection. Now she’s dead. Therefore the injection killed her.

Doesn't sound much different from the way we register covid deaths. Someone tests positive for covid, has a cough for a few days then fully recovers, and is run over by a truck 3 weeks later. Somehow that still gets registered as a covid death despite covid having nothing to do with it.

It’ll be interesting to wait a year or two until they’ve normalised the data.

I don’t know how to respond to that. I did work experience in a hospital a few years back. There was a terminally ill patient. The doctors have her some kind of jab similar to vitamins.

She died a few hours later. Naturally, the logic of her relatives were. She was alive before you gave her the injection. Now she’s dead. Therefore the injection killed her.

Sometimes I think that people can’t accept that something bad has happened and look for other explanations.

It’s a bit like 9/11. Some people couldn’t get there head around something tragic happening so had to invent alternative theories.

Genuine question about your father thinking that we experimented on black people. I know it’s been done in the past, but is your dad one of these hard line black power, the white man is trying your enemy types? Or just a normal run of the mill person?

Nope, he's pretty normal......

Type 2 diabetes? Older people have the highest rate of diagnosis.

I can't remember..

You actually believe the conspiracy theory that the vaccine is a medical test so that my BAME behind can be gone? ok @nexttime can't believe i'm saying this but debunk this nonsense lol.

You're right, it is too important a thread to be derailed. I always thought there was a fair few BAME FMs on here and was trying to bring up a serious point and get a handle on why they are deliberately putting their own lives at risk. Better to ask somebody in that community.

Consider the possibility that it's satire, intended to troll the people who actually do mean it seriously.

It's gold-plated nonsense from start to finish.

There is no structural racism or white privilege in a vaccine's simultaneous rollout to all ethnicities with no ethnic or racial factor in JCVI's prioritisation criteria - neither for blacks first to use them as guinea pigs nor for whites first so they're protected before blacks are.

Whatever was done in the past has nothing to do with the way these vaccines were developed, tested and now deployed.

The only question remains: why would blacks and S Asians be more likely to believe anti-vaxx propaganda (race-based or otherwise)? After all I've read about it I still don't know.

Thank you, yes I should consider the very distinct possibility that they are trolling. I just wish they wouldn't do it at the expense of BAME people who they are purporting to represent.

I don't know either It's great that some BAME community leaders and role models (even from Love Island, why not?) are coming forward to promote vaccination and hopefully that will help, but it would be good to get to the root problem of why they are more hesitatnt than the white community when the vaccine works the same way for all of us.

I am extremely disappointed to see some of the responses in this thread. I thought the population of TSR was better than this. You are delegitimising the concerns of the BAME population, and instead engaging in victim blaming that they are not taking up the vaccine in higher numbers. BAME have been burned before by the medical experiments by white doctors and have every right to be suspicious. Please see this excellent article in the Financial Times explaining it all: https://www.ft.com/content/a25a2463-9367-4a79-9f7c-012ba728bd3a. Examples of racist medical experiments include white British scientists have deliberately exposed the Biritish Indian Army to mustard gas to see what happens and white US healthcare workers deliberately infecting Black men with syphilis. Given the track record of whites using BAME as guinea pigs for medical experiments, there should be no surprise as to why vaccine uptake is lower, especially seeing how badly BAME people have been failed so far during the COVID response. Consider that even now, development of new drugs and medicines are not developed with diversity in mind and may react differently and negatively with Black and Brown bodies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGelSatcacA

It's not enough to have videos of Black MPs encouraging others to take up the vaccine. That is tantamount to victim blaming. What needs to be done is to have videos of white doctors and scientists explicitly showing acknowledgement, shame and contrition for what their field and their ancestors have done to BAME people in the recent past, with commitments to racial health equity.

How dare some of you dismiss these concerns.

I am extremely disappointed to see some of the responses in this thread. I thought the population of TSR was better than this. You are delegitimising the concerns of the BAME population, and instead engaging in victim blaming that they are not taking up the vaccine in higher numbers. BAME have been burned before by the medical experiments by white doctors and have every right to be suspicious. Please see this excellent article in the Financial Times explaining it all: https://www.ft.com/content/a25a2463-9367-4a79-9f7c-012ba728bd3a. Examples of racist medical experiments include white British scientists have deliberately exposed the Biritish Indian Army to mustard gas to see what happens and white US healthcare workers deliberately infecting Black men with syphilis. Given the track record of whites using BAME as guinea pigs for medical experiments, there should be no surprise as to why vaccine uptake is lower, especially seeing how badly BAME people have been failed so far during the COVID response. Consider that even now, development of new drugs and medicines are not developed with diversity in mind and may react differently and negatively with Black and Brown bodies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGelSatcacA

It's not enough to have videos of Black MPs encouraging others to take up the vaccine. That is tantamount to victim blaming. What needs to be done is to have videos of white doctors and scientists explicitly showing acknowledgement, shame and contrition for what their field and their ancestors have done to BAME people in the recent past, with commitments to racial health equity.

How dare some of you dismiss these concerns.