Stupid, entitled-ass white people…

Now that the COVID-19 vaccine is being rolled out, our clinic is facing another unexpected reality: mobs of angry vaccine chasers.

Our clinics serve more than 100,000 people, most of whom are Latino and Black, and many of whom are extremely low income. We are the largest COVID-19 vaccine provider in South L.A., and we have provided more than 20,000 vaccines over the past three weeks to health care workers and seniors—mostly people of color—from the area. Despite the fact that California is still in Phase 1B of vaccine distribution, in which largely only health care workers and seniors are qualified to receive it, every day, hundreds of mostly white, unqualified Westside residents are flooding our clinics.

They line up with lawn chairs and laptops before the vaccine clinic is even open. They demand to use our bathrooms, and their presence blocks seniors and health care workers from easily accessing our vaccine clinics. They heckle and intimidate our staff members, all of whom are Latino and/or Black. They threaten to “call the newspapers” because we won’t let them cut the line. One man even spit at a security guard who wouldn’t let him cut in front of an 82-year-old Black woman who had an appointment.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been forced to double the number of security staff to manage the crowds. I suspect that stories of providers throwing vaccines away or doses going 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 trash vaccines or give them out to lucky bystanders. We have a pool of local residents, mostly seniors, whom we would bring in if there were no-shows or leftover doses.

It’s not just physical mobs. These young white people have also figured out how to outsmart California’s vaccine appointment software. The system, which is clunky and inefficient, has a loophole that allows non-health care workers and nonseniors to make appointments by clicking “Other” when asked about their age and profession. They go onto the system as soon as the appointments are posted and book them up—there’s no way right now to automatically screen these people out. When health care workers finally get home from working all day and try to schedule an appointment, the slots are often all full.

The other week, several hundred first-shot appointments were made by self-identified white, non-health care workers for our clinics alone, preventing hundreds of qualified health care workers and seniors from accessing appointments. Luckily we caught it before the vaccine clinic operations began, since we noticed many appointments checked “Other” were accompanied with birthdates that made it clear they were not seniors. But we had to spend hours and hours of staff time calling to verify the patients’ information before canceling their appointments and replacing them with seniors who were on waitlists. The website clearly needs to be fixed, but we’ve been alarmed at the selfishness that has seeped through the cracks in the system.

Read the whole thing from Slate here