* There are two big, undisclosed problems with this story…

Cook County has launched a new COVID-19 vaccine campaign, based in part on a survey showing that 46% of African-American residents say they likely would not get the shot or were unsure about getting it.

“The ‘My Shot’ campaign speaks directly to these individuals who need to hear from their neighbors about the safety of these shots and the importance of making the choice to get vaccinated,” Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said Monday during a Facebook Live event.

The campaign drew on responses from about 1,100 Cook County residents surveyed earlier this year. Among other things, it found that, overall, 32% of respondents were hesitant about getting the vaccine. Broken down by race, 46% of Black and 35% of Latino residents “probably would not, definitely would not or were unsure if they would get the vaccine.”

Not trying to pick on the Sun-Times because every Chicago media outlet ran essentially the same piece. But, like I said, there are two problems here if you look at the actual poll commissioned by the county. I decided to wait until I received the results before posting anything about them.

1) The poll was taken January 25 through February 9. Those are relatively ancient numbers because more recent polling shows vaccine hesitancy, including among African-Americans, has been declining for months as more people get their shots. This is from a March 3-8 NPR/PBS Marist poll…

According to a new poll, vaccine hesitancy among African-Americans is now on par with reluctance among white Americans.

That poll is here. The results clearly show that Republican men are by far the most resistant to getting vaxed, with 50 percent saying they would be vaccinated or have been vaccinated and 49 percent saying they would not be vaccinated. That’s compared to 73 percent of Black people who said they will or have been vaccinated and 25 percent who said they wouldn’t. Other recent polls have shown much the same thing.

Recent national Latinx attitudes seem to be more in line with that Cook County poll, however. 63 percent said they will or have been vaxed, while 37 percent said they would not take the shot.

2) Cook County’s media rollout lumped “definitely would not,” “probably would not” and “unsure” into the same result. Those are three very different attitudes. The results for African-Americans on this outdated survey were 19 percent definitely would not, 16 percent probably would not and 13 percent unsure.

* None of this is meant to say that Cook County shouldn’t be launching a campaign to convince people to take their shots. But things can change in life, and sometimes things change fast. So, using polling results that are as much as 51 days old on a rapidly evolving topic makes little sense to me and risks perpetuating a stereotype.