Misuse of the COVID vaccination code is compounding stock problems in California

If there was one constant in roller coaster rollout when California’s COVID-19 vaccination program was launched, it was the scammers. The vaccine hunters, who are out of the question under California rules, exploiting every nook and cranny to shoot themselves, often consuming cans on endangered Angelenos.

And as my colleague Julia Wick reported, they struck again – this time deliberately or ignorantly, by allegedly using secret access codes to unlock appointment blocks that were reserved online for seniors living in hard-hit, mostly black and Latino neighborhoods.

This embarrassing blow to the state’s much touted mission to distribute vaccines “with a justice lens” prompted Governor Gavin Newsom to offer a less than inspiring solution on Tuesday.

“We will move from group codes to individual codes,” he said at a press conference, explaining that the group code of a community organization is responsible for ensuring that outsiders get appointments at a vaccination station in the Ramona Gardens public housing complex in Boyle Heights. “We hope we can fix the bugs.”

And what if these openings for abuse, which were also prevalent at the Cal State Los Angeles and Oakland Coliseum sites, aren’t “bugs”? What if they are unfortunate features of California’s vaccination program design – and for whom?

What if the problem Newsom needs to resolve is not the order in which people can book their appointments online, but the fact that people need to get online in the first place?

Addressing those concerns – increasingly voiced by those working locally in underserved neighborhoods, while Newsom uses techno-babble to get every county on My Turn, the state’s online planning system – means California’s massive digital divide and to remove the needs of those on the wrong side of it.

Note that it was only last year when LA Unified was trying to figure out how to do distance learning that researchers from the University of Southern California found that one in four Los Angeles County households with school-age children did not have broadband internet access or a laptop or a desktop computer.

Unsurprisingly, most of those 250,000 or so households were in south and east Los Angeles – neighborhoods with high numbers of black and Latin American workers who get sick and die of COVID-19 at disproportionately high rates.

These are also the districts where black and Latino seniors hardly have any vaccination appointments.

According to recent data from the LA County’s Department of Health, only about 9% of residents in South LA and southeast Los Angeles County received their first dose. They now have 25% or more in more affluent areas, including Century City, Beverly Crest, Pacific Palisades, and La Cañada Flintridge.

And, like many counties in California, the vaccination rate for white and Asian seniors in Los Angeles is much higher than that of blacks, Latinos, or Native Americans.

Pat Strong-Fargas, a pastor at Mt. The Salem-New Wave Christian Fellowship Church is one of the local people in South LA who has worked to reverse this trend. It’s hard, she said, because seniors are often wary of a vaccine they don’t understand, but also lack or understand the technology required for an appointment.

“Without Wi-Fi, some should have smartphones, but not. Some still have flip phones,” said Strong-Fargas, most known as Pastor Pat. “And then many don’t have pills, and those who do are scared You feel intimidated by the technology. “

She pondered her own experience of trying to book an appointment online.

“Someone said do it after 12. And then someone told me to do it early in the morning and over the weekend,” said Strong-Fargas. “I’ve tried all of this and it didn’t work – and I’m not afraid of technology. So I just imagine people who are afraid.”

Now, when she hears of seniors wanting to get vaccinated, she doesn’t even mention using the My Turn website or calling the county for an appointment, knowing that some have reported being on hold for hours. Instead, she gets their names and passes them on to the LA City Council office, Curren Price, which has begun setting up pop-up vaccination clinics in local parks.

I’ve written before about the Kedren Community Health Center staff using workarounds to ensure that black and Latin American seniors can be vaccinated. A wider range of ward groups, churches, and nonprofits are doing the same, increasingly working with elected officials to compile their own lists of seniors to be vaccinated and to set up their own separate databases for appointments.

Price, for example, has encouraged people in his parish to call his office to make an appointment for the vaccination instead of trying to use the My Turn website. His staff distributed leaflets, went door-to-door, and took seniors to pop-up vaccination centers in private buses if necessary.

“Instead of staying online or waiting for a call back or logging into a computer they might not have, or getting into a vehicle that they don’t need to drive around town, we tried to make it very easy. Price said.

This is just one example of why it will be much more difficult to get real equity in the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines than if the governor makes some changes to the state vaccination program and opens new locations.

Rather, it requires real cultural competence and a willingness to listen and understand the needs of vulnerable people. A major overhaul of the vaccination program in some neighborhoods of some cities may also be necessary.

Because creating secret access codes – even switching to individual codes – does little to eliminate racial differences if the intended recipients do not have internet access and are afraid of technology.

Just like opening drive-through vaccination stations in underserved Black and Latino neighborhoods – another common criticism – this will not help if many residents who need to be vaccinated cannot drive or have no vehicles. It’s just an invitation to more vaccine gentrification.

And that’s the last thing California needs.