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I’m also surprised how many people bragged about jumping ahead in line when elderly people with much higher mortality rates were still waiting for theirs. At le

I’m also surprised how many people bragged about jumping ahead in line when elderly people with much higher mortality rates were still waiting for theirs. At least keep it to yourself.

MarkSweep 5y ago
I was also surprised at some people I know going to great lengths to get the vaccine earlier. Maybe they have some risk factor I don’t know about, but as young stay at home workers, the risk of the virus is not high. I just waited till it was generally available and the local website had appointments available. Added bonus is by waiting the vaccine trials run that much longer so you have more data that it is safe. I’m the type of guy how likes to go to mediocre restaurants to avoid waiting in line for good ones, so maybe I’m just weird.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
CamperBob2 5y ago
Agreed. When eligibility opened up, we drove 100 miles just to avoid potentially taking doses from people at risk in the metro area. Seemed like a good excuse to get out of the house for a road trip, as well as being the right thing to do. We were able to schedule immediate appointments in an adjacent county populated by hardcore Trumpers. Upon arriving at the drive-through vaccination site, there was only one other car in the lot. No danger of cutting the line in that county.
- istorical 5y ago
  We don't have full information about this story though. It may well be the case that the YC founder called out for lying about his qualifications for the vaccine was at a vaccination location where there were zero lines and poor community uptake of the vaccine. Idle doses sitting around doing nothing. At this point, the US has so many extra doses that it is shipping millions overseas. Depending on the location and timing of the founder who lied, he may be ethically doing a moral good by reducing his own potential to transmit the virus amidst a population of people who refuse to get inoculated anyway. My point is only, it's sometimes dangerous to throw stones without asking questions or getting the full picture first. Taking doses when you aren't qualified for them is overall a bad thing I think we can all agree.
  - dougmccune 5y ago
    I live in Oakland. This incident seems to be back in early March. Back then the large vaccination sites were all listed on myturn.ca.gov (ie the Oakland Coliseum). They'd post new batches of appointments and they would be all booked really fast (within minutes or hours). But Curative was also running vaccinations sites in Oakland and Berkeley. They weren't listed on the myturn website, so people didn't know about them. They would post new appointments and they would be available for days, sometimes even available right up until the appointment time. This was during the time when you had to be 65+ or have a health condition. In my social circle there were many ineligible people sending links around for the Curative appointments. There was definitely a mentality of "there are so many open appointments, they're just going to go unused." Whether that was true or not I don't know, but there was definitely a reality that certain vaccine sites that were not integrated into the central database had tons of openings, while people who didn't know how to find the secret links were left to reload myturn.ca.gov constantly hoping to find appointments. It was also public knowledge that nobody ever checked that you qualified with a valid medical condition. So getting a vaccine appointment at that time for a totally healthy 25 year old was as simple as someone texting you a link and clicking a single checkbox to say you had a medical condition. In my small social circle, I know of that happening at least a few times.
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      Hm. I'm not sure where the calculus lies on having a dose go slightly more slowly to populations that are more likely to get covid and/or die from it than quickly to young, affluent populations who are much less likely to die from it or get it. I am sure that those decisions should be made by the state, not the individual 25-year old who decides that they are deserving of the vaccine now. Also, many of those links that were floated around had equity codes embedded that were not supposed to be used by the general public, so would show appointments made available specifically for high-risk populations. My general opinion is that people who skipped ahead in their 20s, especially in the Bay Area, were in the moral wrong.
      - ixacto 5y ago
- blast 5y ago
  Your story doesn't sound that different from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27400221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27400221, tbh, other than the driving 100 miles and the Trumpian bits, which aren't relevant to the ethical question. It seems to me that the important information would be: did anybody who was eligible fail to get vaccinated as a result of the extras dropping in? In your story the answer is no. In the other dude's story, it seems like we don't know. If his story is accurate then the answer is probably not because otherwise the people running the site would have told him "please don't do that because it might take doses away from the eligible". But who knows.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Hamuko 5y ago
I've seen people solicit stuff like electronics if someone could "get them a vaccine". This stuff is driving people nuts.
threatofrain 5y ago
Jump to the front of the line? Do we still have a queue? I was able to get very prompt appointments and I live in a dense and relevant tech area.
- zucker42 5y ago
  The original tweet was from March, when there indeed was a queue.
- loeg 5y ago
  The tweet was from early March.
fruityrudy 5y ago
There’s so many more factors though than just the mortality rate by age group. Will they really wait until all elderly are vaccinated first? This would never work. Just give it to everyone and it goes faster. While we wait for old people to get vaccinated it still circulates among young, who come into contact with old and unvaccinated, hence not helping things.
baby 5y ago
What the heck is going on here, everybody in the bay above 18 is already vaccinated, what lines are you talking about?
- grzm 5y ago
  The event under discussion happened in March.

I’m also surprised how many people bragged about jumping ahead in line when elderly people with much higher mortality rates were still waiting for theirs. At least keep it to yourself.

MarkSweep 5y ago

I was also surprised at some people I know going to great lengths to get the vaccine earlier. Maybe they have some risk factor I don’t know about, but as young stay at home workers, the risk of the virus is not high. I just waited till it was generally available and the local website had appointments available. Added bonus is by waiting the vaccine trials run that much longer so you have more data that it is safe. I’m the type of guy how likes to go to mediocre restaurants to avoid waiting in line for good ones, so maybe I’m just weird.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

CamperBob2 5y ago

Agreed. When eligibility opened up, we drove 100 miles just to avoid potentially taking doses from people at risk in the metro area. Seemed like a good excuse to get out of the house for a road trip, as well as being the right thing to do. We were able to schedule immediate appointments in an adjacent county populated by hardcore Trumpers. Upon arriving at the drive-through vaccination site, there was only one other car in the lot. No danger of cutting the line in that county.

istorical 5y ago
We don't have full information about this story though. It may well be the case that the YC founder called out for lying about his qualifications for the vaccine was at a vaccination location where there were zero lines and poor community uptake of the vaccine. Idle doses sitting around doing nothing. At this point, the US has so many extra doses that it is shipping millions overseas. Depending on the location and timing of the founder who lied, he may be ethically doing a moral good by reducing his own potential to transmit the virus amidst a population of people who refuse to get inoculated anyway. My point is only, it's sometimes dangerous to throw stones without asking questions or getting the full picture first. Taking doses when you aren't qualified for them is overall a bad thing I think we can all agree.
- dougmccune 5y ago
  I live in Oakland. This incident seems to be back in early March. Back then the large vaccination sites were all listed on myturn.ca.gov (ie the Oakland Coliseum). They'd post new batches of appointments and they would be all booked really fast (within minutes or hours). But Curative was also running vaccinations sites in Oakland and Berkeley. They weren't listed on the myturn website, so people didn't know about them. They would post new appointments and they would be available for days, sometimes even available right up until the appointment time. This was during the time when you had to be 65+ or have a health condition. In my social circle there were many ineligible people sending links around for the Curative appointments. There was definitely a mentality of "there are so many open appointments, they're just going to go unused." Whether that was true or not I don't know, but there was definitely a reality that certain vaccine sites that were not integrated into the central database had tons of openings, while people who didn't know how to find the secret links were left to reload myturn.ca.gov constantly hoping to find appointments. It was also public knowledge that nobody ever checked that you qualified with a valid medical condition. So getting a vaccine appointment at that time for a totally healthy 25 year old was as simple as someone texting you a link and clicking a single checkbox to say you had a medical condition. In my small social circle, I know of that happening at least a few times.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    Hm. I'm not sure where the calculus lies on having a dose go slightly more slowly to populations that are more likely to get covid and/or die from it than quickly to young, affluent populations who are much less likely to die from it or get it. I am sure that those decisions should be made by the state, not the individual 25-year old who decides that they are deserving of the vaccine now. Also, many of those links that were floated around had equity codes embedded that were not supposed to be used by the general public, so would show appointments made available specifically for high-risk populations. My general opinion is that people who skipped ahead in their 20s, especially in the Bay Area, were in the moral wrong.
    - ixacto 5y ago
blast 5y ago
Your story doesn't sound that different from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27400221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27400221, tbh, other than the driving 100 miles and the Trumpian bits, which aren't relevant to the ethical question. It seems to me that the important information would be: did anybody who was eligible fail to get vaccinated as a result of the extras dropping in? In your story the answer is no. In the other dude's story, it seems like we don't know. If his story is accurate then the answer is probably not because otherwise the people running the site would have told him "please don't do that because it might take doses away from the eligible". But who knows.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Hamuko 5y ago

I've seen people solicit stuff like electronics if someone could "get them a vaccine". This stuff is driving people nuts.

threatofrain 5y ago

Jump to the front of the line? Do we still have a queue? I was able to get very prompt appointments and I live in a dense and relevant tech area.

zucker42 5y ago
The original tweet was from March, when there indeed was a queue.
loeg 5y ago
The tweet was from early March.

fruityrudy 5y ago

There’s so many more factors though than just the mortality rate by age group. Will they really wait until all elderly are vaccinated first? This would never work. Just give it to everyone and it goes faster. While we wait for old people to get vaccinated it still circulates among young, who come into contact with old and unvaccinated, hence not helping things.

baby 5y ago

What the heck is going on here, everybody in the bay above 18 is already vaccinated, what lines are you talking about?

grzm 5y ago
The event under discussion happened in March.