Vaccination diaries is a series of shipments investigating the deployment of COVID-19 vaccinations.
Since March last year, the 18 clinics I operate in South and Central Los Angeles have been at the forefront of COVID-19. Like many providers, we have had incredible obstacles throughout the pandemic. To name a few: there were the shady businesses that emerged in the midst of the crisis to quickly earn masks and gloves, and the hustle and bustle of moving appointments to telehealth when many of our patients did not have internet access, and the total lack of leadership of the last presidential government. Now that the COVID-19 vaccine is being rolled out, we face another unexpected reality: crowds of angry vaccine hunters.
Our clinics serve more than 100,000 people, most of whom are Latino and Black, and many of them are extremely low income. We are the largest COVID-19 vaccine supplier in South LA, and over the past three weeks we have supplied more than 20,000 vaccines to health workers and the elderly – mostly coloreds – from the area. Despite the fact that California is still in Phase 1B of the distribution of vaccines, in which only health professionals and the elderly are largely qualified to receive them, hundreds of mostly white, unqualified residents of Westside are flooding our clinics.
They line up with grass chairs and laptops before the vaccination clinic is even open. They demand to use our bathrooms, and their presence blocks the elderly and health workers to easily access our vaccine clinics. They hate and intimidate our staff members, who are all Latino and / or Black. They threaten to “call the newspapers” because we do not allow them to cut the line. One man even spat on a security guard who did not want to be cut off in front of an 82-year-old black woman who had an appointment.
Over the past few weeks, we have had to double the number of security personnel to manage the crowd. I suspect that the stories of suppliers throwing away vaccines or dosing to people who are in the right place at the right time are to blame for all these people showing up. But our clinics never release vaccines and do not give them to happy bystanders. We have a pool of locals, mostly elderly, who would bring us in if there were no congestion or residual doses.
It’s not just physical crowds. These young white people also realized how they could outsmart California’s vaccine appointment software. The system, which is clumsy and inefficient, has a gap that allows health care workers and non-minors to make appointments by clicking on “Other” when asked about their age and occupation. They go to the system as soon as the appointments are posted and discuss them – there is currently no way to screen these people automatically. When health workers finally come home all day and try to schedule an appointment, the slots are often full.
The other week, several hundred appointments were made by first identified white, non-health workers for our clinics, which prevented hundreds of qualified health workers and the elderly from accessing appointments. Luckily, we caught on to that before the vaccine clinics started, as we noticed that many appointments that were checked, ‘Other’ were accompanied by birth dates that made it clear that they were not elderly. But we had to spend hours and hours on staff verifying the information of the patients before we canceled their appointments and replaced them with seniors who were on waiting lists. The site needs to be clearly corrected, but we are afraid of the selfishness that has seeped through the cracks in the system. If we put on a very tense healthcare system when we try to provide life-saving resources to those who need it most, it can cost people their health, or worse.
LA is at the center of the pandemic, and Latino and Black people have covered the burden in every conceivable way. It is crucial that we get the vaccine from these communities quickly. Community leaders had to fight to ensure South LA was prioritized after the initial plans were put in place to send vaccines to hospitals and retail locations that would be difficult for people here. Therefore, people with the time and means to travel, even when the vaccine is available to the wider population, should plan to seek out local clinics instead of flocking to other communities in hopes of getting a dose faster. .
Throughout the pandemic, countless people made selfish decisions that ultimately made it worse for everyone – from people who refused to wear masks, to those who consciously traveled while wearing COVID-19, to those who chose to stay indoors to go to eat despite warnings from health officials and pleading with restaurant workers to rather just order pick-up. Unless you are directly offered a vaccine that would otherwise spoil (and such stories, I think, are much rarer than they seem), you just have to be patient. If you book an online appointment when it is not your turn, or if you walk out of a clinic, it will interrupt the effort to combat COVID-19 and keep everyone safe. A vaccine is a public health instrument, not a concert ticket.