COVID Vaccine Obstacles and Solutions

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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC, good morning again everyone. Each week during the vaccination era, S. Mitra Kalita, founder of URL media and publisher of the news organization, Epicenter-NYC has been joining us as she helps connect harder to reach or harder to convince New Yorkers with vaccines. Joining us to soar through what we know about those, we still need to reach in with some very interesting trends to report and observations that she's been making recently is S. Mitra Kalita, co-founder of URL media, and CEO and publisher of Epicenter-NYC, which was founded on the idea that New York City was the original epicenter of the pandemic.
Mitra, always great to have you. Thank you for joining us again.
S. Mitra Kalita: Thanks, Brian. I just got my T-shirt.
Brian Lehrer: [chuckles] Did you really?
S. Mitra Kalita: I did. I literally just made the donation while I was listening to the call-out that you did.
Brian Lehrer: It's so cool. Thank you. One of the things that I know you're seeing is that some of the incentives that are starting to be put out there seem to be working. There was one from Governor Cuomo, that's too new to know if it's working that he just announced yesterday a $5 million lottery. There's everything from that down to Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. What are you seeing?
S. Mitra Kalita: This is a really interesting point. It started with Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and $10 gift cards and a lot of incentives. Then Ohio blew everyone out of the water. I believe it was last week when they announced a $5 million lottery for people who got vaccinated, meaning you could enter this lottery. Ohio saw a 28% surge after they announced this.
We don't know yet what's going to happen in New York. They're doing this next week. It's similarly $5 million pot, but significantly, I think I read that you have a one in nine chance of getting something, even $20. We've been seeing for the last few months now, whether it's donuts or like I said a $10 gift card. Those incentives really work just to get people in the door of their vaccines.
Brian Lehrer: That's pretty good odds if anybody knows what the normal New York state lottery odds are, not to mention mega millions and things like that. One in nine chance of winning something. What about the pop-up vaccination sites at selected subway stations and the ballparks and yesterday Governor Cuomo announced one for the airports?
S. Mitra Kalita: I think the other lesson and, Brian, we've been saying this for months on your show now. I think we're at the maybe eight-week mark so I can say months now that we've been talking to listeners about this. If you make it easy for people to get vaccinated and go where they are, the desire for the vaccine for many people is not the problem, the convenience is the problem. The subways just both based on reports and I think the city and state have reported this as well has been an overwhelming success. I've just seen friends of mine also say like, "We see lines," to get them at the subway, they're moving quickly but definitely people are taking advantage of this.
I think we're in a pretty good news period around the effectiveness of pop-ups and going to where people are to make this more convenient. I'm actually in a good mood this week on some of these overtures we're seeing.
Brian Lehrer: Listeners, as we approach the top of the hour, I have to do our top of the hour legal ID, it's two minutes to 11:00 AM and this is WNYC FM, HD and AM New York. WNJT FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5, Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are in New York and New Jersey Public Radio as we continue with Mitra Kalita from Epicenter-NYC.
New stats, however, show Latinx people are still particularly underrepresented among the vaccinated and I know you and others are focusing attention on workplace hours versus vaccine availability hours. What's the mismatch you're seeing?
S. Mitra Kalita: There's two key mismatches. Restaurant workers don't just work one restaurant job. Many of the workers have to squeeze in not just the vaccine appointment, but potential side effects or some people have advised taking a day of rest in between two, maybe even three jobs. We've been hearing this from workers for the entire time that we've been working to get shots in their arms.
Now, legally, an employer has to give you off to go get your vaccine, and I believe it's a four-hour period, you might correct me on that just because I'm not 100% sure of the number of hours. You have to give workers the time off. The problem is that we're in a pandemic and the power dynamic with restaurants is not exactly in workers favor right now. We've just come out of a really difficult period, a lot of workers are working two or three jobs, because their hours have been reduced in the one job that they perhaps had before. They're afraid to ask for that time off, or they're just skeptical of, "Am I really going to be in and out of the vaccine site?" That's one issue.
The second I think, is just what we were talking about earlier is how convenient is it to get these mobile units into predominantly Latino neighborhoods and how has that been going. Again, the good news is, at least here in Jackson Heights, Corona and Elmhurst, which is the epicenter that we are named after. I can say that over the last week, I've been getting text messages pretty regularly saying, "There is a mobile unit on 82nd and 37th Avenue," which is a pretty big commercial district, very close to my house.
Elmhurst Hospital has added hours, their walk in clinic is-- They're just trying to get the message out. We actually heard from Elmhurst Hospital directly this week. I think that is the good news.
What I think there's still a disconnect on is that Latinos want to get the shots as soon as possible. In a study that was done of them, I think that this is what you're alluding to. They were the group that most wanted to get the shots, but they were still concerns over access and schedules, and timing.
Brian Lehrer: Yes. I feel like we've been having exactly this conversation about exactly this mismatch for the full two months that you've been coming on the show. How is this not solved by now?
S. Mitra Kalita: Well, we've been wondering, is there incentive to-- Well, I know one thing that has been effective for us is working with restaurant managers directly. I think the city just needs to really make this a focus. The way that it worked for us is, a few months ago, restaurant managers would literally give us either Google spreadsheets or Excel files of their entire workforce. Now, these are the best managers, I got to say. After this whole experience, there's a certain type of restaurant manager who you want to work for and this is the type of person.
They would give us these spreadsheets, and they would say, "Make the appointments for whenever, we'll match workers schedules with when they're booked for shots. We can make sure they get to the appointment. We'll either give them a Lyft ride and Uber credit." Eventually, Epicenter also got Lyft credits and Uber credits, and we were able to extend those to workers. Managers really took it upon themselves to say, "Look we want to open up and we know getting our workers vaccinated is a part of this."
The problem is that, what I'm describing is not common behavior. If the city could somehow incentivize this. One thought we had is, "Do we want restaurants in the same way we've had health ratings of like the ABC? Is there value in saying every worker in this restaurant has been vaccinated?" I was in Harlem last night, I was at a restaurant. We ate outdoors, but went indoors for just a period of it and it looked pretty normal, meaning people were not wearing masks, and everyone was joking around, clustered around the bar.
I just thought, "Well, wouldn't it be great if restaurants like this had something in the window, just letting you know, their workers were vaccinated?" Because that might help both ends of it. People's comfort with going there, as well as a manager's propensity to get you to your shot and encourage workers to make it easy on them.
Brian Lehrer: I'm curious, I don't know if you've written about this. I'm curious if you're frustrated that in this country, certainly in this area, it's a little less in this area, but in this country in general, we're not going to a proof of vaccination system, to get into a lot of places, some places. At the beginning of opening up the ballparks and the indoor stadiums, they had it, now I think they're just separating into vaccinated and unvaccinated sections.
It's not the same incentive to get a vaccine in order to get access to the things that you want to do and the places that you want to go. Is this a source of frustration for you, because not every country is approaching it in the same relatively loose way?
S. Mitra Kalita: I've wondered about this, and I keep coming back to the reticences over privacy laws. I can't say that I'm frustrated for sure that we're not favoring access to vaccines and we're not favoring almost like the good life for the vaccinated. Whether that is admission to ballparks and other things as you're saying, meaning that's the population that you want to let in as opposed to the unvaccinated.
The other part of me is very aware of the reticence to get vaccinated being a process, that it's not just an either or political camp, like I'm either in it or not. We've been hearing from people, especially over the last few weeks, who are in their 60s and 70s, they've been qualified for quite some time. They're just coming around to it, because our kids have now gotten vaccinated. They want to come see us, this is the condition, so we're just going to do it. Now, that's a waiting period but guess what, those people are getting shots in their arms. We have to acknowledge that there's a process for some of our neighbors in getting to that place, and it's just going to take a few more weeks.
There's a compassionate part of me, that's like, "Let's let that play out." I think you know this, Brian, because I have family overseas. On the other hand, I am so worried about variants and what's happening in India right now, we know has not stayed in India, you're seeing nearby Nepal and Bangladesh. The back and forth you're describing, that really does fear me with a large unvaccinated population in the US and the threat of those variants. I'm not giving you perhaps the yes or no answer you want. It's very complicated.
Brian Lehrer: Yes. This is actually one of the reasons that I think the work you've been doing, and the approach you've been taking has been so wonderful, because you're not just lecturing people you're trying to meet people where they are. Somebody just wrote in, here's an example of meeting people where they are. Somebody just wrote in-
S. Mitra Kalita: Thank you.
Brian Lehrer: -we use the grandkids as a bargaining chip and the-
S. Mitra Kalita: Totally.
Brian Lehrer: -vaccine for one of the grandparents. That's one story. The New York Times, broke down categories of vaccine hesitant people the other day into four groups, watchful, cost anxious, system distrustors, and COVID skeptics with different approaches to addressing each group's concerns. Does that speak to you?
S. Mitra Kalita: It does. It speaks to me the only area that I would take some exception is what I just said, that there are ways to overcome each of those groups. There has to be some forgiveness. The headline on that piece was the people holding us back from herd immunity or some something along those lines. Especially with the system distrustors, which I think are a lot of the folks who we've been helping at Epicenter, these are literally thousands of people. Guess what, if you're a restaurant worker with three jobs, you have a right to distrust systems.
I feel like the blame game won't necessarily get us there. I do think that the categories and how you can approach them is something that I'm looking at with renewed study, and our volunteers certainly are as well. We've been talking about, "Do we need different scripts for different groups?" Which is not something we've really done before. We had one script and I think you all have heard me say this. The thing I say most often is, "I'm not a doctor, call your doctor." Now for each of those categories, I think we are trying to meet them where they are, but on the other hand, being aware of how they got to where they are, has been such an important part of our success as well.
Brian Lehrer: Not a doctor, but a great journalist and community connector, S. Mitra Kalita, who's been coming on with us weekly during the vaccination period with such great information and insight. She is co-founder of URL Media and CEO and publisher of Epicenter-NYC. Mitra, thanks as always.
S. Mitra Kalita: Thank you, Brian.
Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, more to come.

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