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They don't ask for proof of poverty at a food bank either. And "Am I eligible here" could be seen about specifically asking about age/preconditions eligibility.

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.

They didn’t skirt some eligibility rules because no one asked questions. The west Oakland site first tried reaching out to local low income community members and after seeing low uptake opened it up to everyone one, the pastor of the church himself was encouraging anyone over 18 to come by.

mbgerring's post further up the chain definitely claims that they exceeded the eligibility rules. Inviting people from outside the prioritized neighborhood to come take shots and there being a 4 hour line implies skirting eligibility rules.

I’m saying that claim is not accurate, there were no eligibility rules at this site later on. They tried restricting to get shots to people in west Oakland reached through the networks of the church and other community organizers, then deliberately opened it up to everyone because they had excess supply. I didn’t get my shot there but live a few blocks away.

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.

There were no formal eligibility rules because they didn't want to discourage people without IDs. The pastor did not open it up. Here is an article where he called people from outside the neighborhood "interlopers" and said he hoped word of the site wouldn't spread on social media: https://archive.is/Z55Oe

That quote was from someone at the office of emergency services, not the pastor. And the workers at the vaccine we’re telling people it was open to everyone 18+. I live here, this is information I got from talking to neighbors. There’s accounts on Reddit saying the same if you dig back in /r/oakland

Yes, it was legally open to everyone 18+. And food bank food is open to everyone too. What's the difference?

The analogy to food banks makes no sense. I normally acquire food by paying for it at a grocery store. If I could have gone to a grocery store (or pharmacy) to get a vaccine, I would have. If I could have paid for a vaccine, I would have.

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.

You could have gone to a grocery store or a pharmacy for the vaccine. Every grocery store with an in house pharmacy and ever major chain of pharmacies offered it. You just didn't want to wait your turn.

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.

Mt. Zion wasn't "set aside for a high-risk community." It should have been, and indeed it was set aside earlier that week, but by Thursday morning they opened the gates and let everyone in. https://archive.is/Z55Oe

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.)

> 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.

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?”.

Fundamentally this comes down to the very American idea that everything legal is moral. What they did may not be illegal, but it certainly is immoral. People who do immoral things do deserve the public shaming they get.

Mt. Zion was set aside for a high risk community. Your own article makes it quite clear.

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.

> 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.

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?

> If there was a 4 hour wait, then it's not like they had spares lying around

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.

Everyone knows that food banks are only for the poor. Vaccination sites usually aren't.

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.

Gotta love the rationalization. In March there was a lot of issues with supply of vaccines and the program was intended to specifically target underprivileged people because COVID is drastically affecting them more than people.

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.

No offence intended by the following question, but if it’s not made clear who the vaccines are intended for, how can it be “hacking the system”? Hacking the system implies you know the intent but you ignore it and used the system in a way it was not designed.

https://archive.is/Z55Oe

As an outsider, I see no real reason to believe that this guy is not just as deserving of a vaccine as anybody else. It's hard to express how judgmental this post is.

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.

He isn't as deserving of a vaccine as everyone else at the time.

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 site is intended to vaccinate the population as quickly as possible. Ignore the rules, get jabs in every willing arm until there is none left. Vaccines in the fridge or thrown in the bin don't lower R0.

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.

If your goal is just lowering R0, sure… but a lot of countries prefer to lower deaths, which is why they start with the older population / those with health conditions.

People with health conditions won't get infected if there is no spread. By all means vaccinate the most vulnerable, but stay at home early retirees aren't exactly superspreaders.

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.

After the 60+ people were vaccinated, Denmark started at opposite ends in parallel: from 59 down, and 16 up.

EDIT: I was mistaken here, corrected by a response below.

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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.

This pretty much summarizes how it was taken advantage of:

https://archive.is/Z55Oe

Glad it was "taken advantage of", racism has no place here. Disgusting that people think this is ok.

They didn't set up a clinic and stick a "Colored folks only" sign out front.

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.

> I don't think there was a way for the public health authorities to create an explicit rule about neighborhood residency without inviting lawsuits.

Zuckerberg Hospital in SF was offering vaccinations to targeted zip codes ahead of schedule, and they were verifying residency.

That's interesting, thanks for the correction. I was extrapolating from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/health/white-people-covid... but that might not have been applicable here.

To be fair, this is a reasonable assumption based on past experience. The government normally has no shortage of rules - it literally governs us. It's not unreasonable for some people to assume that this is a disorganized or inconsistent rollout rather than a form of social engineering meant to narrow the eligibility guidelines.

Means Testing is stupid