Others standing in line asked coordinators walking the line, "Am I eligible here?" and the coordinators responded, without hesitation, "Yes, you're in the right place! Stay in line." No questions asked.
The vaccination site may well have been "intended" for West Oakland residents and/or underprivileged folks, but if that's right, they could have at least put up a sign saying so, and maybe the coordinator(s) could have said "this vaccine is intended for West Oakland residents only."
I think there's an argument to be made that everyone in line who didn't live in West Oakland should have just assumed that the vaccine wasn't intended for them, but I strongly believe that the ethics of the situation are "If you're offered a vaccine, take it." https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/21/opinion/covid-vaccine-eth... It's not just for you; it's for everyone around you, especially children and others who can't be vaccinated.
In fact, that whole conversation could have been changed trivially to picking up free food at a food bank and would not have looked out of place.
As for "if you're offered a vaccine take it", I don't think that applies to "I can go somewhere to get offered the vaccine." If there was a 4 hour wait, then it's not like they had spares lying around. If you had driven to a rural site where they have to thaw 6 doses for 3 people that would have been a different story.
You're imagining a world where food banks give out magic apples that not only nourish you but also nourish everyone you come into contact with, a world where food is only available for free at food banks, and is not available in stores at any price, and many people are at risk of dying of starvation as a result.
If we lived in that world, and if a food-bank coordinator told me to come in and eat a magic apple, with no guidance (not even a sign) indicating that these magic apples were intended only for the poor, and if I (and others around me!) were at risk of dying of starvation if I didn't eat that apple, uh, yeah, I'm going to go into the food bank (just like they asked me to do) and eat the apple.
In that world, if someone offers you a magic apple, you should eat it, nourishing yourself and everyone around you.
Here in the actual world, if the vaccine is offered to you, take it.
But, besides that, Mt. Zion was set aside for a high-risk community. You didn't have the same risk factors but helped yourself to one of their doses.
I don't see how that's not applicable. I mean, the food was available to anyone. Other people needed it more, but you wanted it.
As a result, it was my turn, after I waited in line for four hours at a "first come, first serve" vaccination site.
Elsewhere you allege that @dasickis and I were "skirting eligibility rules." You know that's not true. Perhaps there should have been eligibility rules, but there simply weren't. There weren't even eligibility guidelines, not even a written sign saying "for West Oakland residents only."
The lack of rules actually means something. Due to the lack of rules, I didn't have the option to give the vaccine I took to an underprivileged person of color in the West Oakland community.
The SF Chronicle article describes the last person in line on Friday, "Roz M., a 37-year-old from Hayward with vivid purple hair."
Do you think I owed it to Roz to offer her the vaccine I took? You may say that neither of us deserved a vaccine, but, due to the lack of rules, in fact, it was me, or Roz.
(And let's not forget that I have a special obligation to my kid, who's not yet old enough to be vaccinated, to vaccinate myself and the adults in our family. I have no such special obligation to Roz.)
It was specifically opened to counter the difficulty of members of that community to get vaccinated at the Coliseum. The "clinic was intended to serve: Black, Latino and Pacific Islander people." Organizers call people from outside the community "interlopers" (I recognize you may live in the community, but those you invited did not.) They say “You hope that word doesn’t spread".
The fact that they did not require online appointments or ID was because the population they were trying to serve often lacks ID or the means to make appointments. Again, this is directly comparable to a food bank. The food is first-come first-serve and there is rarely paperwork/proof of insolvency. Heck, they probably don't even have a sign that say "Free Food for poor people only". Why are you not going to a foodbank?
You then claim if you hadn't taken a vaccine someone else just as unentitled would have. That's a claim you can make about almost any crime or heinous act. If Bernie Madoff hadn't ripped those people off some other smart con would have. If you don't steal that drunk's wallet, someone else is going to.
But, beyond that, you advertised the location. The main reason there was... what? To score social credit by being "the guy who found me my vaccine" in stories for the next five years? To produce a sense of obligation among people you may need favors from? Because you valued you were communicating with over the poor people in Oakland?
Fundamentally, you did something wrong.
You did have an option to give it to someone less privileged - The option is not taking it yourself so that someone who is at higher risk likely gets it, which is what the program was trying to achieve. In a world of limited supply/capacity one person getting a vaccine simply means another doesn’t.
I’m not from the states, but your post does seem to be the stereotype of American culture of “seek individual benefit at the expense of the wider community”, I.e. “I didn’t technically break any rules, so why am I being berated for jumping in front of other people who are more in need?”.
Huh -- how was that option taken away from you? You could have just not queued up there, or left the queue. Or were you chained in line?
You could argue that they shouldn’t have opened it up, or that every healthy person under 65 should have waited until supply was plentiful before trying to get one to not edge out any seniors or other at risk people, but there was no rule breaking or duplicity here.
I’ll also add that after this there were further targeted efforts towards getting shots to these zip codes. Someone in 94607 was eligible at most East bay sites weeks before CA fully opened up eligibility. I think this is what mberring is referring to, but it was a separate program from the vaccination site at the church.
Nonsequitur. They migh have been understaffed, or they might not have handed out paperwork beforehand, increasing the time required per person behind what they forecasted.
I understand why the county probably did some of these things: they want to make the vaccine available to underserved communities without asking for documents that are typically a barrier for members of those same communities. They want to make it easy to get a vaccine, but not talk about it too much so people don't flood in from other areas. But it does leave you in a weird quandry when you want to do your part and line up when the time comes to get vaccinated, and the question of "is it time yet" isn't exactly clear.
In my case I didn't get the shot until the 16th, but I'm so glad I got it at all.
But you said to yourself, fuck their rules, I found a news article that justifies me jumping the line. So you hacked the system and jumped the line and got yourself vaccinated ahead of someone who could have gotten their shot that day.
Imagine you're browsing HackerNews and you see that there's a controversy. So, you instantly associate one side with "the plight of underprivileged Oakland residents" and the other side with "Greedy bourgeoisie colonizer." Because it's completely obvious who is in the wrong, you proceed to type this comment.
This happened in March, when vaccine supplies were still severely constrained and eligibility was still restricted to those who could be affected by the virus; the elderly and those with comorbidities.
Just because this specific site opened up to all in an effort to serve the underprivileged members of the community who couldn't otherwise prove eligibility does not suddenly mean he is the intended audience for the vaccine at the time, nor that he is deserving of the vaccine. People who actually needed the vaccine were the only ones who were deserving of it at the time.
Everyone else can wait a month. It's not the end of the world or anything.
The goal of any competent vaccination program should be to get the most socially active population vaccinated as quickly as possible to lower R0. This means 15-35 and retail workers first. That's not what happened anywhere in the west because of gerontocratic politics.
The 18-35 cohort after vaccination with the Pfizer vaccine are going from being extremely dangerous asymptomatic spreaders to having high levels of sterilizing immunity.
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I don't think there was a way for the public health authorities to create an explicit rule about neighborhood residency without inviting lawsuits. The best they could do is place vaccination centers in more convenient locations for underserved communities, and hope that it could raise the rate of vaccination in the vicinity.
I think there were people assuming that if it wasn't against the explicit rules to commute there to be vaccinated, it must be OK, even though it might (in the event of limited supply) undermine the effort to raise vaccination rates in that specific area.
Zuckerberg Hospital in SF was offering vaccinations to targeted zip codes ahead of schedule, and they were verifying residency.
At the county or state level, they looked at the data and identified that Black and Latino populations were not being vaccinated at the same rate as white populations, and also recognized that the pandemic has disproportionately affected those same populations.
So they committed resources to establish more clinics in areas with high concentrations of the given populations and may have waived certain documentation requirements that are historically more challenging for them to acquire.
The result being that people of means, predominantly white people, took time off of work and travelled long distances to take advantage of the situation. Taking the place of a non-zero number of residents that were the intended recipients.
What's funny is that friends of mine who were okay with that waited for hours and hours (up to 8 for some) to get their vaccine. I got mine 2 weeks later in my car, and was in and out within 30 minutes. The mania seemed so stupid and gross in hindsight, but I think some of my friends at least regretted it.
I’ve seen a lot of pointless internet fights but this is truly next level.
Even if we stipulate that a hard moral stance may be "bizarre", it's still at least rather dubious, isn't it?
So, it's certainly more bizarre to excommunicate someone for merely pointing it out.
And also, basic common sense, the sites are run by adults. If the adults over there don't care, why should you care?
Unless you have specific knowledge of people lied to get to use those sites, nobody need your judgement to "exonerate" themselves.
What makes you think that the people running the sites, once fully informed, would not have cared? If you cheat on your partner, but your partner is not upset (of course, they don't know about it) your logic states that no one should call you an asshole for it.
Without exception, every person I've talked to that has been involved with vaccine distribution has cared only about getting vaccines into arms. In their minds the gov't can make rules, but where the rubber meets the road they were 1000% more interested in maximizing the number of people who were vaccinated than spending precious manpower carefully scrutinizing eligibility.
Heck, even in official communications the gov't repeatedly pointed out that they wouldn't actually be checking documentation on site. Almost like they were inviting people to get vaccinated before they were officially eligible.
People like the pastor of the church where this vaccination site took place, who called people outside of their neighborhood, the intended recipients of the vaccine, "interlopers"?
Because it sure sounds to me like they cared.
It was crystal clear what the intent was and the poster was called out for it. There was a strong negative reaction.
I felt that if I ever decided to get the shot because of my employment as a “farm worker”, there would be one elderly person or real essential worker that had to wait another day. And that didn’t seem fair. So I waited until the general population could get vaccinated in April.
Just because technically someone will give you the shot doesn’t mean you’ve made an ethical decision.
That being said, based on the limited information in this thread, it seems to me that Paul unfortunately started a whole lot of drama over nothing.
My choice was a personal decision that made sense for me, not an absolute moral value that I feel entitled to impose on the world. I don't know these people's situations, or why they felt they needed the shot more urgently than I did, but even if our situations were identical it's not obvious that my decision was more correct. Arguably, they were more correct based on the position from the NY Times article someone else linked ("If you're offered a vaccine, take it"). At worst there's an argument that they were inconsiderate, but it's silly to raise a stink about such a morally grey issue.
If anyone is truly upset about this, why not instead write/call whichever level of government is responsible for having structured the system such that these things happen and are neither illegal nor discouraged?
Source: friend in high up gov in CA
I understand what you’re saying but the neighborhoods in question weren’t prioritized randomly.
The odds of one of them getting and spreading it to many others were much greater for them than you, and that's what needed to be considered.
They gave him one without checking anything. His response? “America has the best vaccine program on the planet. They have so many rules in Zurich that the confusion is holding things back. They’d rather throw away vaccines than break minor rules”.
Vaccination should be easy, bureaucracy free and straightforward; especially now. I can understand age restrictions from Dec-Mar.
This is not like standing in the line at DMV. The entire country needs to be vaccinated and if we put too many rules around this, we all lose and that’s unethical. I urge everyone to be reasonable and flexible. This does not mean you should go and cut lines, push elderly and others aside. The goal for everyone should be efficient distribution of vaccines.
I live in Zurich, the vaccination program is crystal clear. If there are free slots, you can book an appointment. Up to recently, if you were not in a priority group (which are well-defined), you couldn't book. Now it's open to everyone. I haven't heard of vaccines thrown away.
I don't know what your friend found confusing in Zurich, or how he somehow concluded that flying long-distance during the pandemic to get a shot in CA is worth it.
You would not dare to call friends and neighbors, you rather throw them away. Public outrage only over the first
I couldn't find any information about this, is that more than a rumor? Where did you read this? Honestly I find this hard to believe without more evidence.
- Switzerland got their doses later than the US for a variety of reasons, so the US was able to give them away earlier, and lift the age restrictions earlier
- Switzerland made clear groups to assign priorities, with which you friend might not have been happy (presumably because he is in the last group, as I am)
That would explain why in his personal situation he was better off getting the vaccine in the US while on vacation there, but that's not really a case of too many rules or red tape holding the vaccination back in Zurich.
And how is this not like standing in line at the DMV. We have a number of people to process and limited resources to process them. It seems like an excellent analogy. If we had to reissue all licenses, I would like to think we would prioritize truck/bus/ambulance/fire engine drivers over other people. Than probably people who need to go to work. The people who need to go to essential jobs. Then unessential jobs. Then people who were working from home.
I hope that makes sense. Vaccination isn't an individual's selfish activity (like DMV queue) - it is a social contract and responsibility to prevent the spread of virus by lowering the r^2 value and breaking the chain of spread. It's not a perfect analogy of course and we're bikeshedding on the accuracy of the analogy... :-/
It's not like voting - you voting doesn't prevent me from voting.
Obviously, too many rules is bad. And too few rules are. And, just like voting, this site did not require ID because it would have harmed their ability to help an underserved population. It used the honor system. The people we're talking about violated that.
This incident was in March, and what is really sad is that back in March there were places in the US where it really was first-come-first-served. I know many people here in Illinois that got vaccines in Indiana because their official policy was that any open slot was fair game if it was less than 24 hours to go. That policy started in late February or early March.
There is absolutely no reason to be jumping in line, especially if you have the means to travel.
I call BS.
Unless said friend is a US citizen, people who have physically been to the Schengen area have been forbidden to enter the US for quite a while now. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/travelers/from-oth...
You can call BS all you want. Your response sort of violates the HN protocol of assuming the best of people.
Edit: Perhaps because his wife is US Citizen, this would apply but not sure: "As further provided in each proclamation, citizens and lawful permanent residents of the United States, certain family members, and other individuals who meet specified exceptions, who have been in one of the countries listed above in the past 14 days will be allowed to enter the United States". I really don't know.
2 (a) Section 1 of this proclamation [the suspension of entry] shall not apply to: [...] (iii) any noncitizen who is the spouse of a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident;
So yeah, GP is typical of the world nowadays, calling BS without knowing all the details...
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-action...
That part makes no sense. If it “wasn’t for them” they’d have been turned away. You have to provide your drivers license to get vaccinated. Your address is on the license. If it was limited to people living in a certain zip code they could easily turn them away.
What’s wrong with this? Our whole society operates like this, but it’s suddenly wrong for some small fries to “take advantage of the law” ?” Write your laws correctly, and don’t blame people for looking out for themselves using completely legal means.
What they did might have been legal, sure, but it sure as hell was not moral.
False. A reasonable person would know that the shots don't last after they are thawed out. If someone skipped the appointment, the ethical thing to do is put it in the next warm body that's standing by rather than waste the shot. No one owes anyone any "coming clean" over encouraging others not to let those shots go to waste.
It was authorized for emergency use at the end of February. Just because it wasn't available locally doesn't mean it wasn't available.
Did you really not get that, or are you just pretending?
Your post suggests that the result of your post on the YC message board is that people who did not live in those zip codes came to Oakland to take advantage of a program that was not meant for them (and please correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s what I’m seeing here).
I think if you really want to exonerate yourself here, you should probably come clean about what kinds of objections were raised to your original post, because it is very plain to me how the kind of thing you’re describing could be seen by a reasonable person as unethical.