In order to get a shot that he did not need, a healthy slender fit work-from-home 32-year-old whom I know volunteered for 8 hours at a vaccine clinic in northern California. “People are supposed to have appointments,” he said, “and prove this by coming with a printout. But nobody checks because we had no way to look up anyone’s name or what appointments had been booked. Everyone who said ‘I don’t have a printer’ got a shot.” Did young-looking people have to bring proof of conditions or status in order to get shots? “No,” he replied. “Restaurant workers qualify, so you might think that a pay stub should be required, but unemployed restaurant workers also qualify and they can’t be expected to have a pay stub since they’re not getting paid.” Anyone who identifies as an unemployed restaurant worker with an appointment, even if showing up with no documentation, will get a shot.
The work-from-home Shutdown Karen featured blaming “Latinos” in Assumption that masks are effective leads to conclusion that people of color are responsible for coronaplague went down the hill from his all-white enclave into Oakland to the vaccine clinic set up to ensure that “communities of color” get shots. He and his wife are in their 50s and reasonably fit. They were seeking afternoon leftover shots and found that the clinic was undersubscribed and happy to inject them. They then asked if their college-age and high-school-age children could come the next day. Appointments were made for these not-at-risk cower-at-home individuals as well. Nobody in the household has any reason to leave the house nor to be concerned about COVID-19 and yet all are now vaccinated.
It seems that the only Californians who can’t get shots are those who wish to follow the state’s elaborate guidelines and procedures.
Here’s my personal nominee for someone who should get a shot. A Samoyed is depending on her! (or was depending on her back in 2004 when I took the photo)
Not my experience in California. Nurses carry cell phones in the parking lot and look you up in the online appointment system. ID is important because a medical record is created that reflects your vaccination, the lot number of the vaccine, your questionnaire responses, etc. If they don’t actually verify employement, etc… so what? The goal is to get as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible. If this we-say-one-thing-but-don’t-enforce-it strategy results in the groups getting vaccinated in approximately the desired priority, isn’t that mission accomplished? The more difficult question is why you, who don’t think the vaccine is necessary or helpful, care one way or another what happens in California?
She says: Why do I care about Californians? I have a lot of friends who have been cowering in California bunkers for more than a year now. And they’ve been pouring out their grief to me and others regarding what they believe is their lack of access to a vaccine.
(Separately, when did I offer a blanket statement that the vaccine is unnecessary and unhelpful? I am skeptical that the vaccines will live up to American Karens’ hopes. I agree with the medical school professors and physicians who say that the experimental (“investigational”) vaccines don’t make sense for healthy slender young people. But the U.S. has plenty of fat old people who might benefit from COVID-19 vaccines!)
Phil simply doesn’t know what he doesn’t know about California. He frequently targets the state with ambiguous generalities. It’s mostly entertainment for me now, and the main reason I read his blog.
There’s this concept going around in the more disreputable parts of the internet called “anarcho-tyranny”. Short version is that modern institutions exert maximal control over the law-abiding while permitting near total anarchy in others. For example: if I were seen dropping a paper napkin onto the ground, the police might write me an expensive ticket, while our homeless population openly dumps literally tons of trash onto the streets and into the creeks. It sounds like this is another example
Victor David Hanson wrote about his personal experiences with this anarcho-tyranny as a California farmer quite a lot. I have found his more recent writings to be overly partisan and political, even if I agree with him.
My own personal bugbear in New York City is that legitimate car owners and drivers are hit with masses of fees and tickets by an army of officials, while the sidewalks and streets are overrun with unregistered electronic scooters, illegally-operated by presumably-illegal immigrants with impunity.
Mememe, ” I have found his more recent writings to be overly partisan and political, even if I agree with him.” Isn’t it is the main advantage of two party system, for one party to expose the other political party government corruption and inefficiencies while being in opposition? It means the system is working if such process happening. If you think it is too partisan, do you imply that you want one party – either in government or in opposition, does not matter? I think we have had too much of it. It is applicable to founding principals and existential and moral treats, but too often it has been an opposite – unchecked domestic policy and fight over basic principals that are holding us together.
Most of the population has some health condition, so it wouldn’t be surprising if these people who said they cut in line really have a qualifying condition. The May 1st deadline is a gimmick, since most of the population is going to be vaccinated by then anyway. If Trump said May 1, the media would have called him a murderer of course.
The Samoyed is long gone.
I know 22 people who have jumped the line. What do they have in common? They are rich, white, liberal, and have contorted reasons why they needed to go to the head of the line. For example, a 44-year-old mother of 3 girls told me that she is a child care provider. Ah-ha is that how it works!
In Massachusetts, as of right now, here is what the government says:
https://www.mass.gov/info-details/covid-19-updates-and-information
Everyone in Phase 1, individuals 75 and older [not me], individuals age 65-74 [not me], individuals with 2+ certain medical conditions [that’s me, but how do I prove it unless I get something from my doctor?] & residents and staff of low income and affordable senior housing [not me] can get the COVID-19 vaccine now.
Since I will need to prove my CoMos, I should go to my Health Care Provider’s website and talk to my primary care physician so that I can provide proof of the CoMos to the people with the syringes, correct?
The answer is:
“Due to high demand and limited vaccine supply, we ask that you do not contact your [Name] Health provider with any COVID-19 vaccine scheduling needs or questions. As vaccine supply becomes available we will actively notify patients who meet the current eligibility requirements.”
So they don’t want to talk to me about vaccination.
A scolding family member upbraided me today and told me that President Biden has decreed that everyone 18+ in the country is eligible to be vaccinated, as of NOW (she yelled at me)! Why doesn’t the MA government website and my provider’s website reflect that? They didn’t get the memo? Turns out she was incorrect. Biden said by MAY 1. More than a month from now.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/11/covid-vaccine-biden-will-direct-states-to-make-all-adults-eligible-by-may-1.html
I guess what you’re supposed to do is just walk in there, say whatever you want, and get the shot. If it’s that simple, why did all these states bother with setting up the elaborate tier system in the first place? How much time and money did it take to produce all of that, when it’s just completely meaningless now that Governor Newsom is faced with a recall in California? It’s like a miracle or something. Not political at all.
@Alex, I live in MA too.
> I guess what you’re supposed to do is just walk in there, say whatever you want, and get the shot.
That’s the trick, put in some 2 makeup conditions and you get your green light (if you want the shot that is).
I know first hand a handful of people in their 30’s, 40’s and 50’s who did this and got their first shot. One who is 48 got her first shot today (she applied online early last using asthma as one of her pre-existing condition but she has none).
I was rejected from my first appointment because I said I was a health care worker but didn’t have a pay stub. I did have a letter from the provider saying I was an employee on company letter head but was never the less rejected. This was about a month ago and everything was very strict. I have another appointment on Wednesday where I will show an ATP pilot certificate. I will report if it works. This is in Los Angeles county.
Update I received my first shot today. I went to a “mega-pod” which was a massive drive through site outside of a sports arena. I flashed the lady (most likely a minimum wage worker) my pilot’s license and she barely looked at it. They were more concerned I had made an appointment before which I did. I had to also show a driver’s license. The whole experience was incredibly efficient and the whole thing took 20 minutes 15 of those minutes were spent in my car under “observation”. This is a great contrast to my earlier attempt where I went to a hospital. That was a very small vaccine clinic where they only were giving 100 shots a day mostly to health care workers. That place was staffed all with licensed nurses as opposed to the mega pod which seemed to be staffed with minimum wage workers.
I encourage gullible people stupid enough to neglect doing even minimal research before getting experinental treatment for a relatively harmless virus to get vaccinated five times, just to make sure. This will help to eliminate at least some low-quality genes from humanity’s gene pool.
Those of us who did research know about antibody-dependent enhancement of disease caused by positive-strand RNA viruses.
Some of us are in high-risk groups.
The vaccines get more “investigational” the more we learn about them. Some of the European Medicines Agency’s leaked documents discuss “truncated and modified mRNA species present in the finished product” having unknown implications for safety and efficacy. The manufacturers and regulators decline to discuss the subject in public.
A huge lot on The Embarcadero in SF has been set aside for drive-in vaccinations. It features big tents and elaborately laid out traffic cones to accommodate queues of cars but at mid-day on a Friday and a Sunday during the past month, I saw very little activity and no cars queued up. Healthy people do not seem very eager to line up for an experimental vaccine that three of my close friends and a fourth neighbor described as a bad case of flu.