Unfair and entitled: is the number of people who describe people who skip the line and get the vaccine before they are eligible.
Many know at least one person who exaggerated her health or had her boss classify her as a front-line worker to skip the line, experts calling the hypercompetitive behavior “vaccine-hungry games.”
Karla Salazar, a child care worker in San Francisco, describes the time some people will take to get the COVID-19 vaccine as “crazy,” including the lie about being an essential worker.
“They say,‘ Oh, I work as a nurse, ’and they take the badges to friends,” she said.
On Monday, millions more Californians with serious underlying illnesses and disabilities became eligible for the vaccine.
San Francisco went one step further, including homeless people, inmates, and others in high-risk congregation settings.
But as the vaccine opens up to more people, so does the opportunity to make more line breaks and cheat on vaccines.
“It’s a competition, and it shouldn’t be,” Dr. George Rutherford, UCSF epidemiologist. “I think people need to keep bigger social goals in mind, which is to stop transmission.”
He says taking an appointment outside of someone living in a high-traffic area makes the pandemic harder to fight.
“We don’t want vaccine-hungry games,” Rutherford said. “There’s a logic in that, and please wait your turn.”
Some agree.
“That’s not fair,” Soon Tani Beccaria Mochizuki of San Francisco said. “People who really need the vaccine deserve it first.”
While others say that vaccinating anyone will help us achieve herd immunity.
“You know what? The more people get vaccinated, that’s the most important thing,” said Shawn Gupta of San Francisco. “Better for all of us, so we just did it.”
The city of San Francisco requires everyone to tick a box and sign their sworn name that they are eligible to receive the vaccine, but there are those who say that relying solely on people’s honesty makes it too easy to fool the system.
Below is more information from the San Francisco COVID Command Center
We have advised all San Francisco vaccination providers with the following guidelines on eligibility verification:
- Use reasonable processes to verify that people applying for the vaccine meet the eligibility criteria, while avoiding overly heavy documentation requirements that create barriers to vaccination.
- Workers in different labor sectors differ in the available documentation that could verify their employment status. Providers may adopt methods that include, among other things, checking work identification badges, pay stubs, or employers ’letters, recognizing that in some circumstances it may be more feasible and more equitable to trust rather than obtain l attestation signed by the vaccine. labor sector.
- Ultimately, it is up to the vaccination body to decide on the appropriate process to verify eligibility, although vaccination sites that serve populations and communities disproportionately affected by COVID19 should ensure that access to vaccines is little barrier.
- This communication will be updated if CDPH publishes additional publications on eligibility verification.