She didn’t want to wait.
Medina, a healthy 25-year-old, moved across the country to live with her parents on the East Coast after her work in the film industry dried up. Fearful of returning to work safely, Medina decided to go “diving with vaccine containers” in mid-January.
Although it was a dumpster, this was not. Instead of digging through hospital waste for bottles, Medina deployed a supermarket pharmacy. She wanted to score a leftover vaccine.
She and a friend arrived in the early afternoon, prepared to wait. A line formed behind them. Hours later, when the appointments for the day were done, the pharmacy staff offered eight leftover vaccines. Medina and her friend happily made two of them.
“I felt good about it – and better that it didn’t get lost,” she told CNN.
Medina is what many on the Internet have described as a “vaccine hunter,” or someone who sneaks up on a pharmacy or vaccination site for leftovers.
They see it as a win-win: they get vaccinated and a precious dose of the Covid-19 vaccine doesn’t end up in the trash. But their gains are also a symptom of a lack of coordination in the US vaccination plan – the initial rollout was much slower than expected, delaying President Joe Biden’s plan for “100 million vaccinations in 100 days.”
The lucky – and privileged – few who get vaccinated early assure that what they are doing is not wrong, although it certainly feels unfair to those who don’t have the time or resources to “hunt” for themselves.
Unsurprisingly, the hunters have been criticized for “jumping the line.” But the hunters argue that what they are doing is more ethical than letting the vaccines expire.
“This could be a good way for people who haven’t been able to get around the logistical nightmare of signing up to just show up and get it,” Medina said.
Detecting vaccines is a ‘solution’ for a slow roll-out of vaccines
The current rate of 1 million vaccinations per week is nowhere near enough to achieve herd immunity by the summer of 2021.
Hunting for vaccines is spending hours, possibly days, of your life waiting for a dose of a vaccine that may or may not be available. It is a mess. You need time, money, connections and luck to succeed. But some say it’s worth it.
Brad Johnson, a medical student at Tulane University, wanted to make vaccine detection a little easier.
He said he got the idea after a friend who lived in Israel told him about Facebook groups in the country where residents inform each other about the pharmacies that had extra doses.
“If there is an excess of doses that are about to expire, they ignored the vaccination schedule and offered it to everyone,” he told CNN.
So about three weeks ago, Johnson made such a tool for New Orleans. The group now has nearly 600 members.
Johnson said he has heard that a few members have successfully tracked down leftover vaccines for themselves or their parents.
The Facebook group is Johnson’s attempt to correct what he called a “patchwork of chaos” in the US vaccine distribution plan.
Biden has an ambitious goal of delivering “100 million vaccines in 100 days”. Whether he will succeed remains to be seen as he has not been in office for another month. Some health officials believe his goal is too modest, as Covid-19 cases continue to rise unimpeded.
The ethical conundrum of the vaccination hunt
Because the vaccine is so in demand and so difficult to get – including for people who are eligible to get their vaccine – there is a sense of injustice when otherwise healthy people get it, even if they aren’t technically doses stealing from people who need them, said Melissa Goldstein, an associate professor at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health.
“There is a sense of dishonesty, although we can’t necessarily explain why,” Goldstein, who studies bioethics, told CNN.
And that situation is still different from that of the “entrepreneurial” vaccine seekers, such as Medina and Johnson, who seek the remaining doses.
“Can we say entrepreneurship is absolutely wrong?” Goldstein said. “It’s difficult because we have a capitalist and merit-based system. We encourage people to network, be scrappy, persistent and determined to get what they want.”
It’s also a privilege to have the time and resources to spend hours looking for leftover doses, Goldstein said. If only the people who can afford it can get vaccinated early, the differences in the number of people getting vaccinated will only widen.
Johnson said some members of the Facebook group have even crossed state lines to get vaccinated.
It’s not an ideal solution, he said. But when “motivated people” are willing to get vaccinated, even if it’s not at the time they’ve been designated by their state, Johnson said he thinks they should.
“I’m all for getting vaccines in my arms and not letting them down,” he said.
How to justify early vaccination
Medina’s vaccine search took place over three days. She asked CNN not to disclose her location or the pharmacy where she had received the vaccine so as not to bombard them with so-called ‘vaccine injectors’.
There were others like her who waited most of the afternoon.
Her second dose is scheduled for the end of February.
Medina has no qualms about her decision – she’s doing freelance gigs rather than a full-time job, so she could spend the time it took to have her shot.
“I’m really in a privileged position, socio-economically, that I can wait all day for this vaccine,” she said. “Those vaccination centers need to do better and figure out a way to vaccinate the communities they are for.”
There are some methods, Goldstein said, that could make early vaccinations slightly more equitable.
Johnson is doing his part too. After weeks of trying to reach the Louisiana Department of Health, he said he had finally gotten to them. Now, he said, he is working with state health officials to better coordinate who receives the remaining vaccines in the state.
He hopes they can create an official vaccine waiting list that prioritizes health workers, seniors and essential workers.
But for now, he supports anyone who wants to get a vaccine – as long as they don’t cross the line.