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So just so everyone has the full context: Oakland opened up its vaccination sites to more people on a shorter timeline than the rest of the state, in certain ZI

• Siira 5y ago
  > to take advantage of a program that was not meant for them 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.
  • mynameisvlad 5y ago
    There is a huge difference between something being legal and something being moral. What they did might have been legal, sure, but it sure as hell was not moral.
  • CRConrad 5y ago
    Attitudes like that is what's wrong with your society.
• Igelau 5y ago
  > the kind of thing you’re describing could be seen by a reasonable person as unethical 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.
  • ping_pong 5y ago
    Incorrect. J&J vaccine are designed to be stored at regular refrigerator temperatures. They are different from the mRNA vaccines which expire shortly after thawing. So J&J shelf life is much much longer than Pfizer and Moderna and are good for areas where recipients returning for a 2nd vaccine shot are less likely.
    • Igelau 5y ago
      Irrelevant. J&J wasn't available at the time of the incident.
      • mynameisvlad 5y ago
        J&J was literally what the church was providing. It has been mentioned multiple times in these comment threads. 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.
• dfabulich 5y ago
  I got vaccinated at one of these West Oakland "first come, first serve" vaccination sites back in March. They were administering J&J vaccines (which do not thaw) with no residency check, and not even a poster saying "please don't line up unless you live in this neighborhood." No statement of intent at all. 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-ethics.html 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.
  • tdeck 5y ago
    I'm not making a judgment on this situation, but as someone who lives in Alameda County (where Oakland is) and tried hard to get a vaccine as early as I ethically could, I can definitely confirm that this rollout was very confusing. The county and my city (Berkeley) kept on saying it wouldn't be available to the general public until the 15th. Then they changed the eligibility on the 10th, but with zero fanfare and without all of the websites being updated. I believe MyTurn wasn't even updated for a while. I was checking periodically and only happened to notice on the 11th. I also heard about these "certain ZIP code" vaccination centers and assumed that they probably weren't "for" me (not my ZIP code), but there wasn't much clarity. 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.
• TaylorAlexander 5y ago
  Agree. Really not tooting my own horn but I qualified very early for the vaccine because I am a “farm worker” and while I really do work at a farm and all employees qualified early, I’m actually a robotics engineer with no necessary contact between me and those that tend the fields. I have an isolated office and I work alone. 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.
  • asquabventured 5y ago
    Shot in the arm as soon as it is offered saves lives by being one less person that will spread the virus to someone vulnerable.
    • TaylorAlexander 5y ago
      I’ve been extremely cautious with covid and I do not need to interact with the public beyond quick and careful grocery store visits. It would be better for a front line worker, who is not able to exercise the same level of avoidance, to get it than for me to have gotten it. I also do not live with any immunocompromised people - we are all healthy and under 40 and they work from home - so again it was better for someone who lives with an older person to have gotten it.
      • oblib 5y ago
        I'll applaud what you did. Early on there was a very clear need for those at risk to be vaccinated and the guidelines for essential farm workers were pretty clearly meant for those getting food to tables who were working in close quarters with others. 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.
        • 5y ago
• systemvoltage 5y ago
  A friend of mine flew out from Zurich to CA to get a shot. 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.
  • hiq 5y ago
    > 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”. 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.
    • rurban 5y ago
      I've heard of about 2 million shots thrown away so far, but only from internal medical sources. You would not dare to call friends and neighbors, you rather throw them away. Public outrage only over the first
      • hiq 5y ago
        > I've heard of about 2 million shots thrown away so far, but only from internal medical sources. 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.
• temp8964 5y ago
  You are mixing two things. Even if the sites were setup for poor neighborhood, it doesn't necessarily mean they are exclusive for people from those neighborhood. 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.
  • HWR_14 5y ago
    "If the adults over there don't care, why should you care?" 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.
    • rootusrootus 5y ago
      > What makes you think that the people running the sites, once fully informed, would not have cared? 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.
      • mynameisvlad 5y ago
        So you have asked these specific people? 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.
• throwthrowbye 5y ago
  For further context, having seen the original post, there were also details on which questions made someone qualified and which answers were “unprovable”. It was crystal clear what the intent was and the poster was called out for it. There was a strong negative reaction.
• Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  I stood in one of those Oakland lines myself and what I saw sickened me, so I left. I had taken a day off (long planned) and decided to check out a line around a mosque, asked an organizer what was going on, and sat myself in the line. I saw people rushing into line. Many of them called their friends or sent status updates on their phones and their friends joined them in line. Almost everyone in that line _was not_ from the neighborhood. As I saw people chit chatting about their work from home life, I started feeling a bit queasy. When the organizers started mentioning that doses might be out, people started getting angry, which made me even more disturbed. When I saw someone kick over a candle on the sidewalk that was on a person's memorial, I just had the last straw. I left. It wasn't my place to get a vaccine, I was not from this zip code. 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.
• baby 5y ago
  So we getting offended at people getting vaccinated now? Smh
  • CRConrad 5y ago
    No, we're getting offended at well-heeled serial start-up founders getting vaccinated at the expense of others and then playing the victim card when it's pointed out that this isn't super nice. Did you really not get that, or are you just pretending?
• tw04 5y ago
  > 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 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.
• cactus2093 5y ago
  There are tens of millions of people in the US who were careless, got covid, and then spread it to others in the past year who have more blood on their hands than anyone who cut a vaccine line. Vaccine line cutting is just such a bizarre thing to take a hard moral stance on. And even now months later when the opposite problem of vaccine hesitancy is a much bigger concern, you’re still calling someone out for not even having done it but for perhaps having inadvertently encouraged others to do it. I’ve seen a lot of pointless internet fights but this is truly next level.
  • captainredbeard 5y ago
    Are people culpable for flu deaths, too? That’s a shaky chain of responsibility.
    • gfodor 5y ago
      In relative terms hey are in a worse position than those who theoretically got a flu vaccine by violating distribution rules, if such a thing existed, was I think the point.
  • CRConrad 5y ago
    > Vaccine line cutting is just such a bizarre thing to take a hard moral stance on. 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.