their schedules, we could get them vaccinated. But I think there’ s a core that are not going to be convinced. I think we’ re getting to that point.
I also like the idea that you’ re now going to places like meatpacking facilities, and places like that. That’ s a very interesting concept. Because a lot of places that are quote“ off the beaten path” are precisely the places that we should be going, to a nightclub or to a pool hall in the community.
When I was at the MLK outpatient center, we always had, whether it was flu vaccine, and definitely COVID, the lowest rates of compliance. I would say, about the flu, it wasn’ t so much compliance because either you get the flu vaccine, or you have to wear a mask all the time. But you know, it was a problem because we’ d have to reinforce the mask rule a lot. So, I worry now with the boosters because I feel like it’ s just going to perpetuate itself.
But you have to set some bars on expectations. There were a number of people in the county who were disappointed that we didn’ t put as much teeth into the vaccination requirement as they’ d liked. At MLK Community Hospital, I was talking to( MLKCH CEO) Dr. Elaine Bachlor. They have a zero tolerance. If you want to work there, you have to be vaccinated.
If you want to keep working there, you must be vaccinated unless you have a very narrow exception, in terms of how it’ s applied. In the county, it’ s trickier because we have civil service protections. I don’ t know how many new people we reached by having a mandate, but I think we reach more than without having a mandate.
Every time we think we’ re making progress... you see it happening in your own backyard. At the first home game of the Dodgers, I turned on the game and I see, oh my gosh, 50,000 screaming maskless people. A dear friend of mine, who’ s a judge and who should know better, sent me a selfie of him and a pal, both maskless, surrounded by maskless people; like oh, my gosh, what do you think? send my child to school, we’ re going to keep them home in an environment where they’ re not learning anything.” I feel like we’ ve got a lot of work to do.
A centralized approach can be dangerous because every community is different. And a huge example of that is what happens with the rates of infection in South LA. And the testing model that was proposed, which is you go online, you have to make a reservation, you have to show up on time at your reservation, did not work. In a time of crisis, more of a decentralized, unstandardized approach is best, so you can be responsive to the needs of your community.
We kept screaming to the mountaintops that this internet-based approach and making an appointment is not going to work. People need to just show up and when they show up, we got to serve them because low-income communities, especially non-English speaking seniors. They’ re not going to make an appointment. That’ s just not the way it works.
And what an amazing network if we could just keep it going. I know it’ s mostly funded with one time funds, people going door to door. And there’ s all these models in other countries, when I think of Costa Rica, which uses promotoras to do the door-to-door work. I really feel like this whole effort was eye- opening.
It confirmed our hunch that you need those types of organic, home-grown approaches to really reach a community. And the other includes the churches, the faith-based institutions early on. Those kinds of early influencers.
It’ s going to have to be these communities themselves helping themselves. Help is not going to come from the outside. There’ s not going to be a Mighty Mouse flying in.
We just need to also push on whatever relief comes to the residents in the form of rescue funds, for an equity-based model because our communities fell further behind with this pandemic, both in terms of the economic hit, and the consequences of our kids being kept out of school. It kind of went in the other direction, where some parents were like,“ Oh, everything’ s fine, nothing’ s wrong. I don’ t want to
CDU College of Medicine | PG. 34