Jackie Cornejo held her father’s hand for the last time on January 31, as he died of complications from COVID-19. Ricardo Cornejo was a ‘true warrior’, her beloved viejito, who taught his daughter to be generous and strong.
When she helped arrange her father’s funeral, she booked an appointment for her mother, Martha, to be vaccinated. When food service workers were eligible for the vaccine, she made an appointment for her brother. Then one for her in-laws, her godmother, a sister and friends. At least nine – so far.
“It was in a way therapeutic to get people in my world vaccinated,” said Cornejo, who is working on a housing policy for the city of Los Angeles if she does not arrange vaccinations. “It was a little stressful, but it was also part of the way I got along. My dad never had a chance. ‘
Cornejo is a vaccine hunter, an unofficial hero of the coronavirus era. Using smartphones and tablets, computers and Macs, these internet wrestlers blow through the barriers that stand between loved ones’ arms and needles, filled with Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson.
These obstacles are legion. The registration process is complicated. Not everyone has internet access. The vaccine supply was volatile, and now the Johnson & Johnson supply is being discontinued due to concerns that it could cause blood clots. Some people do not trust the government. Others do not trust science.
Jackie Cornejo lost her father, Ricardo Cornejo, to COVID-19 on January 31st.
(Thanks to Jackie Cornejo)
In California, residents of Black and Latino became ill and died of COVID-19 at higher rates than other groups, and their vaccination rates were also low.
Which means many families need a vaccine hunter. That is to say, they do not. Because sometimes these self-appointed rescuers – fueled by love, duty, and a feeling that sister knows best – can quickly become the family night.
Or as Cornejo’s mother warned the 37-year-old, who would not stop sending appointments to family members, “You need to calm down a bit. ” You need to calm down a bit.
But if you’re the vaccine hunter, ‘you ride your horse, firearms burning. It’s something you can do in a year when you can not do the things you want to do, ‘said Alison M. Buttenheim, an associate professor and researcher in public health at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.
“One downside is that you cross a line,” she said. “You can have a wonderful, trustworthy relationship if you say, ‘I made you the appointment.’ Here it is. ‘”
Buttenheim knows this firsthand. She studies the behavioral aspects of infectious disease prevention. She founded Dear Pandemic, a social media campaign and website “where bona fide nerdy girls post real information on COVID-19.”
And she’s a vaccine hunter herself.
She thinks it’s nice. Really.
And it’s soothing, she says on a day of relentless Zoom calls to open five browsers on her computer screen, to constantly refresh the various appointment portals, to resolve family members in four states. It is not that they were hesitant; they just had to be printed.
The 51-year-old has made appointments for her sister and parents in Massachusetts and her husband in Philadelphia, where they live with a teenage daughter who will soon be eligible for a shot and thus the directions from Buttenheim. She and her husband also annoyed his parents in California and their 21-year-old daughter at school in Connecticut. All three eventually discussed appointments.
Jennifer Eremeeva, the sister of Buttenheim, gives lectures on cruise ships on Russian history, Mediterranean history, art and culture. She has not worked for more than a year. She has to fill out paperwork proving that she has been vaccinated if she wants to get back to work when the industry starts up again.
Her cruise line documents contain Pfizer and Modern vaccines, but not Johnson & Johnson.
“Alison not only made an appointment for me, but also a Pfizer or Moderna,” Eremeeva said. “It was a gift. She does not have to get me a Christmas present this year. ‘
But when it comes to their parents, who are 78, things get more complicated. The elderly couple spent much of the pandemic with Eremeeva in Massachusetts while waiting to arrive at a retirement home in Pennsylvania. At first they thought they would only be vaccinated when they arrived at their new place. But it was not good enough for a certain daughter.
Here’s how the sisters tell the story:
Buttenheim: ‘I said,’ No, we’m not waiting three weeks. It’s life or death for you. ‘… I finally saw two appointments 15 miles away. It took my sister, my cousin, a laptop and an iPad and my parents who were standing there with their insurance cards. It felt urgent. I could not leave it to them. ”
Eremeeva, 54, who was trying to make dinner for husband, daughter and parents when Buttenheim booked appointments almost 200 kilometers away and barked at the black Lab puppy: ‘I felt very frustrated and pushed around a bit. But she responded to my parents’ need. … I’m very grateful. … [Still,] if you have a multigenerational household, I felt I should fill out an Oreo cookie. And not in a good way. ”
Krysta Villeda moved from Los Angeles to Washington, DC in 2012 to attend graduate school and decided to stay. But it does not bother her to have her entire hometown vaccinated more than 2,000 kilometers away.
First was Villeda’s grandmother, who is 78 and lives in South Gate. After three hours on a website that is constantly collapsing, Villeda finally booked the elderly woman an appointment at the Kedren Community Health Center in South Los Angeles. One of her sons ran her.
“Something that really frustrated me was that no one else in my family took the initiative to make an appointment for her or talk about it,” the 32-year-old said. “I think they just assumed it was going to happen.”
Her uncle asked for next help. Since the pandemic began, Villeda has also helped him file unemployment claims every two weeks. She kept up with the vaccination requirements of the state of Washington on the instructions of her younger sister in Seattle, who was to be shot on Friday, and the guidelines of Orange County to help her step-sister, who was vaccinated at the end of March.
Carlos Villeda, her 54-year-old father, was the toughest customer. The Bellflower resident was reluctant because he was worried about the side effects of the vaccine.
That’s why Villeda is sending him two TikTok videos she made of her own vaccinations as part of her work at Project Pulso, a nonprofit digital media company that delivers content to the Latino community.
“Overall, my recommendation is to plan to stay home the next day if you can, just in case,” she says on TikTok, wearing a flowered mask and a “birthday girl” balloon. her second shot. At the very least, do not plan anything important. But it honestly was not as bad for me as I expected. ‘
Her secret weapon was a daughter-like threat. She has not been home since December 2019. Because of her kidney transplant, she told her father, ‘If you are not vaccinated, you probably won’t see me that much, or’ I’m going to see me from a distance. ‘
On April 1, the day on which those fit 50 years and older opened, Carlos conceded. Villeda took action.
“I was skeptical, but I did it for her,” Carlos said. Then he laughed. “I did not think she would tell me the next day.”
Most of Villeda’s family members wanted to be vaccinated, she said. But she knew that the success rate would be slow and unreliable if she did not step in and help.
“They are not very online and did not know exactly how to log in,” she said via Twitter. “I definitely felt it was my job to do it.”
Carina De Los Santos felt a similar responsibility. While standing in line at Kedren on a windy Monday in April, waiting for her second Moderna shot, she talks about the death of an uncle to COVID-19.
“He went pretty fast,” said Maywood, 43, who works in the accounting department of a food service business. “We did not think it was going to happen. He had no health conditions. It was a shock. His wife had it too. ”
De Los Santos therefore searched on behalf of two aunts who ‘did not have all the computer knowledge’ and a cousin who had problems getting an appointment. It took meal days of meal time and other work breaks before her efforts bore fruit.
“Because they were old and had some health conditions, I felt I had to push them a little bit,” she said. “Then it’s on them.”
Research has shown that even people with the goal of being vaccinated experience problems, said Buttenheim of the University of Pennsylvania. Only about 45% of adults in the United States get flu shots annually. “Much more than that” intends to do so, she said, but just does not get there.
“We are very lazy people,” she said. “We have these big brains. We live in an environment that pushes a lot of information towards us. … An adaptive response is to look for shortcuts. We are looking for the thing that is easy to do or bright and shiny. If the health care you want to do is not easy, look for something else to do. ”
Ana Lara, 46, set vaccine appointments for her mother, father and grandfather at the same time and place in early March. The Oakland resident accompanied them to get their first dose of Moderna. Her sister takes them for their second.
Then Lara’s uncle reached out to their mother in Salinas, “Can you ask the girls if they can get me a vaccine?”
A few weeks ago, Lara contacted a local health center to see if her aunt, who works in a tortilla factory, was eligible for the vaccine. The answer was yes. Lara sends her aunt with the good news and puts the 61-year-old on a waiting list.
“Sí, está bien, mija,Was the answer. But when it’s time to really plan the shot, the aunt is startled. Lara stepped back to give her aunt room to reconsider. Her aunt has been wandering around ever since, and Lara is looking for a hunt again.
She is an administrative assistant for the City of Oakland and works at home. Every time she sees a tweet or a Facebook share that there are appointments available, she takes a breather and watches.
Lara searched her tabletop, her office at home, on her tablet while watching television. It was ‘always in my mind’ to find appointments because she and her sister are always their family’s priority, she said.
Getting them vaccinated, ‘meant we could be with our parents,’ “she said in a Twitter message. ‘It was very difficult in the beginning, my father became depressed and became very ill. I did not visit my grandmother for about ten months. ”
She feels “sometimes burdened,” she said, “but helping my parents has always been a part of being the oldest.”