The post specifically told others how to skip the line, which was lying about their profession to say they were one that was qualified but that then people on site couldn’t prove.
You have no expectation of privacy if you announce (let alone advocate for, or instruct how-to) behaviour against public health policy _during_a_pandemic_.
The contrast with people who have been working hard to match people with appointments couldn't be more stark.
It does indeed have that vibe, and irrespective of what actually happened - it makes him look bad.
If he was indeed talking about inappropriately skipping the line, then this guy is a bad actor. But I should point out that we don't have any idea - the situation could have been very misrepresented - and he could have done nothing wrong.
But given the public information ... this Tweet is going to come of 'Snitches Get Stitches' in a 'lacking in self awareness' kind of way, as opposed to the 'I was slandered and misrepresented publicly, and that can be very damaging, I'm glad this issue is behind us" kind of way.
Why are adults in the US using Twitter/GIF memes instead of finding thoughtful and mature ways of communicating this stuff? I don't like this evolution.
Postscript: the person in question states that this was an open site with no restrictions, and I am pleased to read that. However, it is still unclear if this was because of a special campaign to reach at risk populations (like undocumented people) and I can't help but think there was a naive element of playing the system here.
Regardless, they or YC should have addressed this publically at the time, rather than waiting and staying silent. The YC brand is damaged because we don't know if they acted ethically, or enforced the omerta. Everyone's reputation is taking an acid bath because of unclear communication.
At this point in the US, anyone who wants to get a vaccine can get one. That makes getting it a personal choice.
Then you have this person try to damage Ycombinator because one of their founders spoke internally about the matter. Absolutely tactless. You'd expect future founders to be able to consider potential repercussions for biting the hand that's serving them.
It's like these two people are competing for the worst self-own. From what I can tell (and the communications on this are very confusing), Biggar goes after Prafulfillment without having his facts straight enough to avoid issuing a nearly immediate correction. Then when Biggar gets canned, Prafulfillment gloats in a way that draws attention to their identity, without clarifying what actually happened, leaving Biggar's version as the only account of events. Additional tidbits of information are coming out, mainly in responses to responses to tweets... but this is a ridiculous way to conduct public relations.
> Prafulfillment gloats in a way that draws attention to their identity, without clarifying what actually happened, leaving Biggar's version as the only account of events. Additional tidbits of information are coming out...
The submitted title was "Y Combinator kicks out Paul Biggar over a tweet". That is inaccurate, so in keeping with the HN guidelines ("Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), I've replaced the title with the tweet text. That's the standard thing we do with titles, when people post Twitter links.
Much as I'd love to, it's not my place to say why the original title was inaccurate, so I'll just remind you all that there are two or more sides to every story and not everything on Twitter is true.
In keeping with the rule that we moderate HN less, not more, when YC or a YC startup is involved (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...), I'm not doing anything else to the submission. Normally, of course, we'd downweight this sort of petty drama.
“Much as I'd love to, it's not my place to say why the original title was inaccurate, so I'll just remind you all that there are two or more sides to every story and not everything on Twitter is true.”
And “Normally, of course, we would downweight this sort of petty drama.” And could have avoided unhelpful conflict in the threads below. You sort of threw your opinion out without expressing it outright.
For what it is worth I have no opinion either way and generally agree this sort of post should be downweighted.
I hear you, but both of those sentences are there for a reason. Without the first I'd be getting lots of "how is it inaccurate?" responses, and without the second I'd be getting protests about moderation practices. My intention was to give enough information (I'm not saying it's a lot) to preempt avalanches of predictable objections. I'm sure I could have done it better, though, because this was far from what Scott and I used to call a "splash-free dive".
> Much as I'd love to, it's not my place to say why the original title was inaccurate, so I'll just remind you all that there are two or more sides to every story and not everything on Twitter is true.
You've always been a fantastic moderator, dang. To be honest, it's not your place to say anything on the matter publicly, especially not an insinuating comment such as that. The conditions of separation are private. A company can create pretext and other excuses as to why they separate with someone. The only conclusive answer is that there is no conclusive answer here, and there probably never will be unless OP takes legal action.
I think this won't be the first time that a techie underdog goes up against the YC crowd and is shut down by ridicule, legalese, and other platitudes. It's important to not censor those folks, and also important to not try and publicly denounce them in the way that you have. It will only work against YC. The underdog will always have something more interesting to say than the company. They will bide their time and come together. It's best for the company and its constituents to not comment on the matter at all, or post provocative content that encourages uncivil discourse.
I've seen a lot of YC companies doing this to their employees. I think it's going to backfire in a really ugly way in a few years.
> Much as I'd love to, it's not my place to say why the original title was inaccurate, so I'll just remind you all that there are two or more sides to every story and not everything on Twitter is true.
This reads a bit like "not to be that guy, but...". You won't say why for some reason, but clearly it's not to stay out of it because you're letting innuendo do the job.
Alternative suggestion: "That is inaccurate but it's not my place to elaborate." It would still express the point but avoid reinforcing the circle the wagons/"blue wall of silence"ness of this situation.
I don't see that alternative formulation as so different really?
I'm sure you have a good point, I'm just not sure how to do it better. I needed to give enough of an explanation to satisfy people's curiosity at least a little bit even though I can't satisfy it for real. I also needed to make sure that my comment had enough information in it to answer (let's say) the top 10 obvious objections, or it would have brought a flood of them down on my head.
Honest question, since I’ve seen the situation come up before: Would you be willing to modify the title of any post to be ‘accurate’ based on non-public information, without making that information public?
If so, how does one make that request, and what would the process look like?
There have been a few titles I knew to be extremely misleading or false, but never thought there was a way to rectify it without publicly providing information I wasn’t able to share openly.
It would depend on the specific circumstances, but I can imagine doing that, or perhaps there would be something else we could do that was better; it's hard to say in general, because cases like that are always very specific. We'd want to explain as much to the community as we could without harmful side-effects, but if someone's safety or privacy is at risk, I'm comfortable telling the community so, and I'm confident that the bulk of this community would respect that.
In such situations the thing to do is email hn@ycombinator.com.
That twitter fest is, as is telegraphed by the "LOL" in the title. Also, to be fair, the puerile GIF that the other side responded with, and ought not to have.
> Normally, of course, we'd downweight this sort of petty drama.
Down weight? So you guys internally pick and choose topics to weight down? I thought HN was purely community driven with only comments being moderated.
Of course on the surface you guys say you only downweight petty drama but I truly wonder if that's actually true. The fact that you guys downweight anything without trusting the community makes me question how fair, balanced and unbiased things are on HN.
Additionally the person who this tweet was about posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27400221 and it doesn't seem like drama. It seems like injustice and misinterpretation and stubborn refusal. His only option is to appeal to the public but of course YC has to color it with their bias.
It really looks like he was kicked out over a tweet from his perspective. Getting kicked out of YC may seem petty to YC but it is not petty to the person who was kicked out. Even Dang calling this kind of thing "petty drama" does unparalleled damage to his reputation.
The right way to deal with this is not to touch this post and let paul make blog post or something and see if the community votes it up on HN.
> I thought HN was purely community driven with only comments being moderated
HN is a curated site, always has been, and has never claimed otherwise.
It is an interaction between three subsystems: community, software, and moderators. All three are necessary. If you or anyone would like to know more, here are some links to past explanations to start with. If there are still questions after familiarizing yourself with that material, I'd be happy to answer them.
What?!! There are many, many posts with “inaccurate” titles. Would you like to change the John Carmack post to include his entire tweet as the title? YC moderation here on a YC-related post is not fair. It’s also unfair that this reply is placed above substantive discussion.
> Would you like to change the John Carmack post to include his entire tweet as the title?
No, "John Carmack on JPEG" strikes me as an accurate title for that post, and in any case the entire tweet wouldn't fit HN's 80 char limit. When users think there's an inaccuracy or come up with a better (more accurate and neutral) title, we're usually happy to make a change.
> YC moderation here on a YC-related post is not fair
The behavior he's calling out is obviously abhorrent. But isn't this more due to him airing dirty laundry in public? If this is his last recourse after consulting internally to try and deal with this, then I get it. But there is definitely a trend (maybe not by him) of people running to social media with their complaints before discussing them with those involved. If that is the case i would understand his being sanctioned.
Yeah, it reads that way to me -- this post was a public leak, not just criticising one founder but also implicitly repudiating the culture and governing processes of the forum. If the forum and trust in the forum being a private space are important to the program, I think being asked to leave sounds reasonable.
I'm not saying that the internal processes were satisfactory -- I don't know either way, and I think this position is consistent with both cases. I think the two options available are,
1. Criticise publicly and leave, and
2. Work within the system, and accept outcomes that go against you.
I guess it would be important to know if anyone internally commented how jumping the queue wasn't a cool thing to do. Leadership internally needs to set good examples and question questionable behavior so folks know the boundaries of acceptable behavior.
Shooting the messenger, if the messenger went through all of the proper channels and made every effort to rectify the matter appropriately internally, would then be counterproductive because it magnifies the issue by creating a martyr.
It's difficult to know what actually transpired, but I don't think a reasonable person would air dirty laundry without trying every possible avenue and appealing to leadership to take a position. So either they're unreasonable or YC let them down, it's impossible to say without independent observers in the know stating their impression.
Given that the people in question lack apparently any sort of civic virtue or else they wouldn't be engaging in this behaviour in the first place, where else do you propose one exposes dirty laundry other than in the public?
This is exactly why people in positions of power are afraid of transparency and why there is such a anti-media bias in the tech industry.
At least we have a good example answer to “Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage”. Lie about eligibility to the health system, in order to get an advantage in the vaccine line! In a way, this behavior is kind of consistent with the “disruption” ethos of tech startups.
Why is that confusing? If you condemn the in-group publicly, it's a sign of betrayal, and they kick you out. Monkeys strong together, that's all there is to it.
1. Skipping vaccine line and talking about it is not actually against BookFace/YC ToS, or it would be a stretch to apply ToS.
2. Publicly talking about matters inside the private group is against ToS since it breaches privacy. In a way that paints the group negatively, nonetheless.
Pretty straightforward. It doesn't really matter *to YC* whether anyone skipped a line or not, what matters are private forum matters getting blasted to hundreds (thousands?) of Twitter users.
Edit: before you get angry, I'm presenting this from the most plausible perspective of YC, not my own feelings on the matter (which are irrelevant).
Edit2: what are people seeing that I'm not seeing here? Clearly I'm missing something, because wow I've never gotten piled on like this on HN.
And it’s why YC doesn’t have the reputation it once did. Letting Sam bro up the institution wasn’t the best decision in hindsight as this incident demonstrates.
I'm guessing he broke an internal rule about talking of what's said in the founders forum, while the founder is breaking unrelated outside rules and being a dick, which isn't as fireable.
Why is it not though? Intentionally misleading people is how you get Theranos. Being a dick is how you get a TK@Uber as a leader. Neither of those are examples one should follow of "how to be a leader"
FWIW I don't think that would much affect the decision. In past similar cases, where the startup wasn't defunct, YC has divested.
I've never been part of any such decision, but I do know YC and the people who have to make such decisions, and from what I've seen they'd be reasoning from first principles or at least trying to.
I'm also confused. But it seems like the tweet in question is a false story that could be libel/defamation or something?
He later issues a 'correction' (why not delete the original wrong tweet?) that says that the story about "advocating for lying to skip lines" is false. [1]
I don't have any part of this and I'm confused and don't know what's going on here. But it does not seem like the tweet everyone is focusing on was even true. So the story becomes possibly, that YC kicked someone out for spreading lies about people in their internal community? I don't know.
>But it does not seem like the tweet everyone is focusing on was even true. So the story becomes possibly, that YC kicked someone out for spreading lies about people in their internal community? I don't know.
It's still partially true - the allegation of lying was wrong, but the allegation of instructing others how to lie is still being made. This is clarified by the tweet that you linked.
But he didn't lie. Many clinics are opening up to first-come, first-served because vax rates are dropping and they still have inventory. Feels like drama?
It makes sense because in some states its been basically any adult can walk in and get a shot for months already. I'm surprised there is anywhere in the country left where that is not the case.
Priority groups don’t even make sense. It’s some egalitarian crap for the sake of it and more so for buying votes from older ppl.
Then we are left with: it’s simply against the rules. And as if people in SF care about that.
Why r so many people in SF on these moral crusades anyway. Getting high off enforcing rules and looking down on others.
Everyone should be equal…as long as I get my ridiculous salary and elite network. It’s like imposter syndrome for the privileged…so they need to pretend they are for the common man.
What an excellent demonstration of what values/norms a group really cares about.
Biggar violated the all time favourite in-group rule: Don't talk out of school. Don't talk about fight club. Don't snitch.
The other founders violated a norm against pushing yourself ahead and taking advantage of others that doesn't even seem to hold in many groups, especially upper class/wealthy ones.
Here's an analogy. You can get fired for always being late to work, but not get fired for bad behaviour (even crime) outside of work... say drunk driving.
This doesn't mean that being late to work is worse than drunk driving, or that person A is worse than person B. Not everything is a general judgement on worth or character.
I don't think that analogy applies. Both parties in this story did things in a 'work' context.
If I go on a work forum and describe my bad behaviour, behaviour that is harmful to others, and advocate for others to do it, I'm going to get in trouble, and possibly fired.
If I publicly discuss private work information, I'll definitely get fired.
If I mention the bad behaviour of someone at work publicly, without naming names, I might get a talking to, but probably won't be fired.
How a group reacts to those different things over time defines the norms and culture of the group.
That is not a good analogy because most people's employment is "at will", meaning that they can be fired at any time for any reason other than discrimination against a protected class or retaliation for some protected activity (e.g., being a government whistleblower). If an employer wants to fire an employee who got arrested for drunk driving outside of work, that's usually not a problem.
I'm in Oakland, I drove someone to a clinic. It was a day of pouring rain. We got there end of day. I didn't meet whatever high priority groups were getting vaccinated (though I do have a breathing related health condition). They had extra shots, they said come get a shot, their form didn't have a spot for leftover shots being used, so the women said I'll put you down as X (which I wasn't).
This whole thing of trying to criminalize and be outraged at folks in this space seems way out of whack.
So good on ycombinator!
Same thing with masks, no one allowed to wear N95's but health care folks. I had masks from the fires and my breathing issue. I wore the same mask for a few weeks against the rules. Got flak from folks saying a) masks don't work and b) I should have saved it for health care folks. Not only is that contradictory it's dumb.
Your case is a bit different. If you hadn’t taken the shots, they would have been wasted because half-filled vials are disposed of at the end of the day. So in your case it was either vaccinate someone or vaccinate no one.
It’s not the same as the accusation of someone skipping the line.
I’m also surprised how many people bragged about jumping ahead in line when elderly people with much higher mortality rates were still waiting for theirs. At least keep it to yourself.
Agreed. When eligibility opened up, we drove 100 miles just to avoid potentially taking doses from people at risk in the metro area. Seemed like a good excuse to get out of the house for a road trip, as well as being the right thing to do.
We were able to schedule immediate appointments in an adjacent county populated by hardcore Trumpers. Upon arriving at the drive-through vaccination site, there was only one other car in the lot. No danger of cutting the line in that county.
We don't have full information about this story though. It may well be the case that the YC founder called out for lying about his qualifications for the vaccine was at a vaccination location where there were zero lines and poor community uptake of the vaccine. Idle doses sitting around doing nothing. At this point, the US has so many extra doses that it is shipping millions overseas. Depending on the location and timing of the founder who lied, he may be ethically doing a moral good by reducing his own potential to transmit the virus amidst a population of people who refuse to get inoculated anyway.
My point is only, it's sometimes dangerous to throw stones without asking questions or getting the full picture first. Taking doses when you aren't qualified for them is overall a bad thing I think we can all agree.
Your story doesn't sound that different from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27400221, tbh, other than the driving 100 miles and the Trumpian bits, which aren't relevant to the ethical question.
It seems to me that the important information would be: did anybody who was eligible fail to get vaccinated as a result of the extras dropping in? In your story the answer is no. In the other dude's story, it seems like we don't know. If his story is accurate then the answer is probably not because otherwise the people running the site would have told him "please don't do that because it might take doses away from the eligible". But who knows.
I was also surprised at some people I know going to great lengths to get the vaccine earlier. Maybe they have some risk factor I don’t know about, but as young stay at home workers, the risk of the virus is not high.
I just waited till it was generally available and the local website had appointments available. Added bonus is by waiting the vaccine trials run that much longer so you have more data that it is safe.
I’m the type of guy how likes to go to mediocre restaurants to avoid waiting in line for good ones, so maybe I’m just weird.
There’s so many more factors though than just the mortality rate by age group.
Will they really wait until all elderly are vaccinated first? This would never work.
Just give it to everyone and it goes faster. While we wait for old people to get vaccinated it still circulates among young, who come into contact with old and unvaccinated, hence not helping things.
None of you know any of the internal details but what I can state is that Paul has no idea what he's talking about and later admits to the fact I wasn't lying.
Here's the order of events:
1. I went to a neighborhood clinic in Oakland, CA that's literally next door to my house, I can see the church from my window. Paul lives in NYC which is on the opposite end of the country.
2. I asked them about eligibility and told them I don't clear CA guidelines. They told me it's first come, first served with an ID showing I am 18+.
3. I showed up the next day, waited in line for 4 hours then got jabbed.
4. Posted it in an internal forum for other founders.
5. A few people had issues so raised them which I addressed but YC still took down the post within the day.
6. I appealed but YC still held their decision as final.
Outcome: YC founder came with his aunt, uncle, and mom all over 65 to get jabbed who didn't know about the vaccine site.
---
Paul ends up tweeting about it and making a huge deal around something he has no idea about. He gets a bunch of people on Twitter upset about something they don't know about.
So just so everyone has the full context: Oakland opened up its vaccination sites to more people on a shorter timeline than the rest of the state, in certain ZIP codes with disproportionately poor residents, in order to get vaccines to those disproportionately poor residents. I know this because this is how several of my friends who live in West Oakland got vaccinated ahead of the eligibility opening up in the rest of the state.
Your post suggests that the result of your post on the YC message board is that people who did not live in those zip codes came to Oakland to take advantage of a program that was not meant for them (and please correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s what I’m seeing here).
I think if you really want to exonerate yourself here, you should probably come clean about what kinds of objections were raised to your original post, because it is very plain to me how the kind of thing you’re describing could be seen by a reasonable person as unethical.
I got vaccinated at one of these West Oakland "first come, first serve" vaccination sites back in March. They were administering J&J vaccines (which do not thaw) with no residency check, and not even a poster saying "please don't line up unless you live in this neighborhood." No statement of intent at all.
Others standing in line asked coordinators walking the line, "Am I eligible here?" and the coordinators responded, without hesitation, "Yes, you're in the right place! Stay in line." No questions asked.
The vaccination site may well have been "intended" for West Oakland residents and/or underprivileged folks, but if that's right, they could have at least put up a sign saying so, and maybe the coordinator(s) could have said "this vaccine is intended for West Oakland residents only."
I think there's an argument to be made that everyone in line who didn't live in West Oakland should have just assumed that the vaccine wasn't intended for them, but I strongly believe that the ethics of the situation are "If you're offered a vaccine, take it." https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/21/opinion/covid-vaccine-eth... It's not just for you; it's for everyone around you, especially children and others who can't be vaccinated.
I stood in one of those Oakland lines myself and what I saw sickened me, so I left. I had taken a day off (long planned) and decided to check out a line around a mosque, asked an organizer what was going on, and sat myself in the line. I saw people rushing into line. Many of them called their friends or sent status updates on their phones and their friends joined them in line. Almost everyone in that line _was not_ from the neighborhood. As I saw people chit chatting about their work from home life, I started feeling a bit queasy. When the organizers started mentioning that doses might be out, people started getting angry, which made me even more disturbed. When I saw someone kick over a candle on the sidewalk that was on a person's memorial, I just had the last straw. I left. It wasn't my place to get a vaccine, I was not from this zip code.
What's funny is that friends of mine who were okay with that waited for hours and hours (up to 8 for some) to get their vaccine. I got mine 2 weeks later in my car, and was in and out within 30 minutes. The mania seemed so stupid and gross in hindsight, but I think some of my friends at least regretted it.
There are tens of millions of people in the US who were careless, got covid, and then spread it to others in the past year who have more blood on their hands than anyone who cut a vaccine line. Vaccine line cutting is just such a bizarre thing to take a hard moral stance on. And even now months later when the opposite problem of vaccine hesitancy is a much bigger concern, you’re still calling someone out for not even having done it but for perhaps having inadvertently encouraged others to do it.
I’ve seen a lot of pointless internet fights but this is truly next level.
You are mixing two things. Even if the sites were setup for poor neighborhood, it doesn't necessarily mean they are exclusive for people from those neighborhood.
And also, basic common sense, the sites are run by adults. If the adults over there don't care, why should you care?
Unless you have specific knowledge of people lied to get to use those sites, nobody need your judgement to "exonerate" themselves.
For further context, having seen the original post, there were also details on which questions made someone qualified and which answers were “unprovable”.
It was crystal clear what the intent was and the poster was called out for it. There was a strong negative reaction.
Agree. Really not tooting my own horn but I qualified very early for the vaccine because I am a “farm worker” and while I really do work at a farm and all employees qualified early, I’m actually a robotics engineer with no necessary contact between me and those that tend the fields. I have an isolated office and I work alone.
I felt that if I ever decided to get the shot because of my employment as a “farm worker”, there would be one elderly person or real essential worker that had to wait another day. And that didn’t seem fair. So I waited until the general population could get vaccinated in April.
Just because technically someone will give you the shot doesn’t mean you’ve made an ethical decision.
A friend of mine flew out from Zurich to CA to get a shot.
They gave him one without checking anything. His response? “America has the best vaccine program on the planet. They have so many rules in Zurich that the confusion is holding things back. They’d rather throw away vaccines than break minor rules”.
Vaccination should be easy, bureaucracy free and straightforward; especially now. I can understand age restrictions from Dec-Mar.
This is not like standing in the line at DMV. The entire country needs to be vaccinated and if we put too many rules around this, we all lose and that’s unethical. I urge everyone to be reasonable and flexible. This does not mean you should go and cut lines, push elderly and others aside. The goal for everyone should be efficient distribution of vaccines.
> Your post suggests that the result of your post on the YC message board is that people who did not live in those zip codes came to Oakland to take advantage of a program that was not meant for them
That part makes no sense. If it “wasn’t for them” they’d have been turned away. You have to provide your drivers license to get vaccinated. Your address is on the license. If it was limited to people living in a certain zip code they could easily turn them away.
> to take advantage of a program that was not meant for them
What’s wrong with this? Our whole society operates like this, but it’s suddenly wrong for some small fries to “take advantage of the law”
?” Write your laws correctly, and don’t blame people for looking out for themselves using completely legal means.
> the kind of thing you’re describing could be seen by a reasonable person as unethical
False. A reasonable person would know that the shots don't last after they are thawed out. If someone skipped the appointment, the ethical thing to do is put it in the next warm body that's standing by rather than waste the shot. No one owes anyone any "coming clean" over encouraging others not to let those shots go to waste.
For context, this site was at Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church in West Oakland. It was intentionally located there to target the local underserved communities. At the time, California was in phases 1A and 1B. This was intended for elderly and essential workers.
There was misinformation that it was first-come, first-serve to anyone who wanted it. I looked into it at the time and it was easy to verify that this was not true. The CA State website, the church's fliers, and their help line were all clear.
Your account may very well be biased but it astonishes me how many HN commenters are willing to chime in while knowing next to nothing about what actually took place.
I know next to nothing and as such would typically hesitate to comment. Others appear to know next to nothing and appear very interested in sharing their opinions here, and I don’t quite understand why...
I wish I could donate all of my karma as votes for this comment. I'm really astonished at how the dynamics of internet forums make so many feel like they must immediately pick a side, even when there is such little information and even when getting just a single side of the story.
The worst part about this is that when more information does come to light, it's so rare to see an "oh wow, I really shouldn't have jumped to conclusions" apology. Instead, a lot of the time you see folks dig their heels in more, lest they actually have to admit they were wrong.
When I worked at Apple I got to read a ton of comments on HN when features I worked on were released and so much of it just wasn't true. Even articles, blog posts, and news reports.
Since most of these self-righteous comments below still have no idea what they're talking about. The site was for overflow of vaccines that were going unused & being thrown out. The Oakland Coliseum is one of these mega-sites. So many of you don't understand the on-the-ground realities of the communities you're speaking of where I live. I see my neighbors and when FEMA is running these sites they know their goals. It's not unethical to follow the guidelines and get jabbed. Also the line was most exclusively healthy adults coming in from all around California. Clearly I didn't invite 800 people myself from a deleted post on an internal forum.
Also on the Monday before the FEMA agents were telling me they had less people than vaccines, Tuesday they barely covered the people with vaccines, and Wednesday (when I got it) onwards they had slightly more demand when they asked people to tell their friends.
It's up to governments to enforce rules around their clinics instead of moral crusaders that live across the country with no on-the-ground experience to tweet an internal post to generate outrage.
Here are articles around why there was so few people getting vaccinated in our area and why FEMA requested us ask our friends to show up.
From what other people who saw your original post have said, it sounds like you got significant pushback at the time, and that you knew that you were skirting the eligibility criteria as you understood it.
As I’m sure you are aware, the brunt of COVID infections and deaths in the Bay Area were borne mostly by our Black and Latinx neighbors, especially those who continued to work during the pandemic, serving those of us who were able to work from home in our underwear all year. And I’m also sure you’re aware that the relaxed eligibility criteria that allowed you to get vaccinated early was meant to reach them, not you.
You can dismiss your critics as “moral crusaders.” You cannot dismiss the fact that the people public health officials were trying to reach with the vaccine you took died at a much higher rate from COVID than, for example, the community of Y Combinator alumni.
How you feel about any of that is up to you, but I hope you’re at least willing to be honest about what happened.
When I lived in Denver a few months back, the mass-vaccination site of Coors Field was right behind my condo. I love to skateboard and OneWheel that lot (Coors Field lot C) and just rolled up in my OneWheel and a nurse asked if I was there for a vaccination. I said I wasn’t but that I also hadn’t been vaccinated. She directed me to the line and said “Well, go get yours”. At this time CO hadn’t opened up vaccines for everyone 18+ (they did two weeks later). While I understand the frustrations some people have with the fact their state has waiting lists and eligibility requirements still, I also believe we should be happy people are getting vaxed. No input on the drama here but I’m glad you made the decision to get vaxed and Paul should do his part to make sure he gets vaxed. Internet outrage isn’t a sustainable community builder unless you’re into conspiracies or cancel culture. Calling out others for doing their part (whether ethically or not) is missing the point. Get vaxed. So we can all move forward.
I am split on that. Waiting in line behind all those having prioritized appointments in order to catch surplus doses, fine. Lying to get such an appointment? Not cool. Generally, we shouldn't make such a fuss vaccination on social media, either way.
> 2. I asked them about eligibility and told them I don't clear CA guidelines. They told me it's first come, first served with an ID showing I am 18+.
There are a number of 'special' vaccination sites in the USA which are indeed vaccinating first come, first served people without going through any special qualifications/eligibility check. For instance FEMA was, and still is, running a mass vaccination site in Yakima, WA which was a massive hot spot of infections in WA state.
They quite specifically told the media that they were focused on getting "shots into arms" and not spending a lot of time on each person checking residency documents.
Although by the time it opened it was also possible for most people in the Seattle metro area to get a shot without a very long wait, I do know a few people who drove over there and quite clearly showed their drivers license for ID, and got vaccinated without violating any policy or lying about anything whatsoever.
> There are a number of 'special' vaccination sites in the USA which are indeed vaccinating first come, first served people
Same here in Canada. Some private clinics have been offering FCFS vaccines to eligible age groups for some time now. I assumed the US must be the same and wondered what the outrage is here. I got messages from people encouraging me to do the same.
> There are a number of 'special' vaccination sites in the USA which are indeed vaccinating first come, first served people without going through any special qualifications/eligibility check.
As well as entire states in certain parts of the USA.
For example, Texas, where you only have to be at least 12 years old[0]. In many cities in Texas, they're at more than 50% and running out of arms to stick them in, and definitely very short or no lines. No idea why California has those requirements instead of just opening up more jab spots.
It also doesn't help that this person keeps changing his story all the time. On Twitter he claims that joe Biden announced that all adults are eligible for vaccination in March. This is patently false.
Biggar's accusation is that you "lied to skip the vaccine queue". In your comment implies that you didn't, but it wasn't stated explicitly. For the record, can you affirmatively deny that you haven't "lied to skip the vaccine queue"?
The yc founders commentary is highly unreliable. On Twitter he claimed that joe Biden declared that all adults are eligible for a vaccine in March. Hence he didn't skip the line. This is patently false. He has a different story here. I would take his claims with a huge helping of salt.
All that we know is that he got vaccinated in March ahead of federal guidelines. Did he wait to obtain vaccines left over at the end of the day? Or did he enter a line meant to serve underserved communities. We cannot tell.
Can you post your original message to the forum here too? That way we can know for sure what was said precisely, otherwise it's just he-said / he-said.
I am also super interested in the answer to this particular question. I know a lot of people who waited for surplus/standby shots at the end of the day outside clinics in SF. Anecdotally, a lot of my coworkers got early vaccines that way.
As a non-essential worker with no risk factors, I felt that my contribution to the pandemic was to stay home and wait until my turn. I did, by the way, wait until the vaccine was generally available before scheduling. Before general availability, most of my friends my age (mid-30s) had been vaccinated by stretching the truth. I felt like the idiot, and had a fair amount of resentment.
I wonder about the surplus doses, though. Did a substantial culture of seeking out unused doses result in outcomes that were net positive from a utilitarian point of view? It's unclear to me how much "line cutting" this resulted in.
Clearly, stretching the truth to get a dose ahead of others is selfish at least. Back in March, I assume that there were plenty of people in need that didn't/couldn't get an appointment that needed a shot more than YCombinator founders. This wasn't stretching the truth though, just exploitation of a loophole and small surpluses of a limited resource.
In the end, I think the morality hinges on your question, koolhaas. To what extent did standby shots interfere with mitigating the health crisis. Is that what dasickis was doing? Was dasickis aware of opportunity cost of taking that shot? Did he even care?
Yeah, I’m not gonna get particularly upset about either side doing something wrong at a time when there was a lot of confusion, lot of pressure, and frankly the correct moral decision isn’t all that clear.
But that swings both ways, and it does not speak well that 1 side was penalized so heavily for it, irrespective of whether they were in the right or wrong.
Of course, it’s even more egregious coming on the heels of a Ycombinator founder defending someone who did far far worse.
FWIW: Early on California had a no leftover doses policy. But what do you do when you have more vaccines than eligible people? You lower the eligibility requirements. This probably wasn't official policy but it was required of vaccination site runners to comply with the policy, so as they got towards the end of the day and they still had doses leftover they probably started jabbing anyone who walked in. I don't know what the consequences were from having leftover doses, but they were severe enough that some sites started doing this kind of thing.
Several posters in this reddit discussion [1] about that vaccination site corroborate dasickis' claims.
It's still not clear why they were not sticking to whatever the current phase California was in at the time. I've seen a couple claims on that, both of which are believable.
1. The site was participating in a Federal vaccination program, not a state vaccination program. The state rollout phases only applied to state programs.
2. They didn't get enough people making appointments to use up their vaccine allotment. When that happened (or when people made but didn't keep appointments) sites were allowed to give the leftover vaccine out first come first served to anyone who met the requirements of the FDA emergency authorization for the vaccine they were using.
As it is presented it does not seem controversial. If someone is not misrepresenting themselves, and they are following the rules of the site/clinic then there's no concern here.
So did you or didn’t you instruct people to lie about their profession in order to get vaccinated? I’m not making an accusation here, but I’m genuinely curious if that point is a blatant lie or something you feel is ok to omit in your description of events?
For people like me who read the linked twitter thread before reading the comments (admittedly guilty of getting outraged before hearing both sides): There is an "unvote" button underneath the headline.
It baffles me how people get outraged when other people get vaccinated out of "order" . Here in Mexico there's a lot of ruckus because of people going to Texas to get vaccine. Or when doctors vaccinated themselves and their families.
My thought is... when it comes to vaccines. It doesn't matter who goes first and who goes later. The fact that someone (anyone) is vaccinated helps us all. I still dont have the vaccine and will get it later. But I already feel safer with all the people that have been vaccinated. Theres no way people can do wrong!!
I think, assuming the vaccine is effective, vaccination only one group like what is happening in a small set of countries, will have a negative effect on the goal of eliminating a virus (is this the goal?). Supposedly allowing the virus to thrive and mutate in a subset of humans would make vaccines overall less effective at completely extinguishing a disease. But case by case has a negligit effect on national disparity, but socially it seems unacceptable.
Why would people have issues with you simply posting you...went and got a jab? Is there more to the story? Sorry genuinely curious, not trying to put fuel on the fire
From what they wrote, it looks like they probably said something along the lines of "Hey, here's a location where they don't care if you are in an at risk group, you can just show up and get your vaccine." Considering it was back in March, people probably found it wrong to be advertising that to a bunch of people who are probably healthy and well-off, instead of people who actually needed the vaccine.
I'm not going to make any judgements about it though, considering I don't know anything about how things were in California. In Maryland they had county level registrations that went through tiers of at risk groups, plus state-wide vaccination sites that were open to anyone, so I ended up getting my vaccination a few weeks before I would have if I'd waited for "my turn" with the county vaccination program.
> Why would people have issues with you simply posting you...went and got a jab? Is there more to the story?
From the tweets now deleted, looks like the internal bookface post in question wasn't all that popular and got roundly criticized.
At least it got 0 upvotes and every single response told him he was wrong. Doesn't seem like he learned his lesson, however it's clear almost nobody else approves of this mentality.
(I think the first one was way worse; he was advocating lying.)
This was back in March when vaccine demand outstripped supply & ensuring "fair access" to the vaccine was a big concern. It seems almost quaint now that we have the opposite problem. (FWIW I think Paul's reaction was pretty unreasonable, bordering on hysterical).
You failed a basic ethical test: Can you wait until the needy have had their turn? The answer seems to be that no, you cannot. I recognize that YC views this as a positive trait in founders, but I hope that you recognize that the vast majority of folks view it as a negative.
Not all. NY hasn't yet expanded eligibility to international residents, unlike some states like PA (other than Philadelphia) and TX which are okay vaccinating anyone of the right age regardless of country of residence.
They aren't just excluding international tourists, either - lots of non-tourist international residents are still excluded from vaccination in NY. I'm an American citizen who currently lives outside the US, but I've spent most of my life living in NYC and am preparing to move back there with my wife once she gets her US immigrant visa. We recently visited my fully vaccinated parents, primarily as a family visit and
mental health break, and with tourism kept to a minimum for safety reasons.
When we got our first shots in late April, the rules were "NY residents only", so we each got our two doses in a relatively nearby, rural, and somewhat politically purplish part of PA that had plenty of spare shots and that didn't mind ID documents showing foreign residency. Even now we wouldn't qualify for getting our first dose in NYC, despite having a lot stronger ties to the area than tourists.
I hope NY removes this last restriction some time soon: maybe together with its so-called "full reopening" on July 1, maybe when the Canada-US land border reopens to travelers who aren't fully vaccinated, or maybe when the geographical travel restrictions get dropped for foreigners coming from the EU/UK/China.
I don’t know when this occurred but a few months ago sites started having an oversupply problem and were taking people no questions asked. At that point the elderly and vulnerable had several months lead time and 95% of the people at the vaccination centers were 25-55. I was more outraged at the snitches rage. I personally don’t think there was a moral issue here at all.
> Paul ends up tweeting about it and making a huge deal around something he has no idea about. He gets a bunch of people on Twitter upset about something they don't know about.
I gave him the benefit of doubt, but should have been more skeptical upon seeing pronouns in bio. It's a curiously predictive heuristic. For whatever reason, pronoun people tend to be particularly good at generating internet drama.
This is really frustrating to me, I also got vaccinated at that clinic through the same mechanism - I live in the complex on the street a block away and perpendicular.
I also had people complain at me, and I had to patiently ask them, "would you rather the doses expire"? It's really frustrating but I understand the confusion and also the general feeling of "unfairness", as everyone right-thinking is eager to get vaccinated if possible.
When I was a child I remember going to food banks. I remember the food bank having no eligibility checks whatsoever.
I also remember a few rich people going there just to take advantage of it, and I remember days where we were so far back in line that we got nothing while the rich people walked out happily.
That vaccination site isn't any different. Those vaccines were intended for poor, underdocumented, at risk populations. Your vaccination saved one life (yours), but cost many more. It's not any different from the days I went hungry due to egoists like you.
Nowadays, I'm obviously in a different situation, but I still can't stand people with this "fuck you, got mine" mindset.
Readit News
https://twitter.com/Prafulfillment/status/140093402468041523...
EDIT: Reply on HN by the author: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27400221
He's now denying that he instructed others on how to skip the line, although it's not really that clear of a denial.
You have no expectation of privacy if you announce (let alone advocate for, or instruct how-to) behaviour against public health policy _during_a_pandemic_.
The contrast with people who have been working hard to match people with appointments couldn't be more stark.
If he was indeed talking about inappropriately skipping the line, then this guy is a bad actor. But I should point out that we don't have any idea - the situation could have been very misrepresented - and he could have done nothing wrong.
But given the public information ... this Tweet is going to come of 'Snitches Get Stitches' in a 'lacking in self awareness' kind of way, as opposed to the 'I was slandered and misrepresented publicly, and that can be very damaging, I'm glad this issue is behind us" kind of way.
Why are adults in the US using Twitter/GIF memes instead of finding thoughtful and mature ways of communicating this stuff? I don't like this evolution.
Regardless, they or YC should have addressed this publically at the time, rather than waiting and staying silent. The YC brand is damaged because we don't know if they acted ethically, or enforced the omerta. Everyone's reputation is taking an acid bath because of unclear communication.
Then you have this person try to damage Ycombinator because one of their founders spoke internally about the matter. Absolutely tactless. You'd expect future founders to be able to consider potential repercussions for biting the hand that's serving them.
Tidbits which, AFAICS, slowly tilt the balance back over in favour of Biggar having been more right than wrong: https://twitter.com/SarahBelleLin/status/1370071520953835520
Much as I'd love to, it's not my place to say why the original title was inaccurate, so I'll just remind you all that there are two or more sides to every story and not everything on Twitter is true.
In keeping with the rule that we moderate HN less, not more, when YC or a YC startup is involved (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...), I'm not doing anything else to the submission. Normally, of course, we'd downweight this sort of petty drama.
“Much as I'd love to, it's not my place to say why the original title was inaccurate, so I'll just remind you all that there are two or more sides to every story and not everything on Twitter is true.”
And “Normally, of course, we would downweight this sort of petty drama.” And could have avoided unhelpful conflict in the threads below. You sort of threw your opinion out without expressing it outright.
For what it is worth I have no opinion either way and generally agree this sort of post should be downweighted.
You've always been a fantastic moderator, dang. To be honest, it's not your place to say anything on the matter publicly, especially not an insinuating comment such as that. The conditions of separation are private. A company can create pretext and other excuses as to why they separate with someone. The only conclusive answer is that there is no conclusive answer here, and there probably never will be unless OP takes legal action.
I think this won't be the first time that a techie underdog goes up against the YC crowd and is shut down by ridicule, legalese, and other platitudes. It's important to not censor those folks, and also important to not try and publicly denounce them in the way that you have. It will only work against YC. The underdog will always have something more interesting to say than the company. They will bide their time and come together. It's best for the company and its constituents to not comment on the matter at all, or post provocative content that encourages uncivil discourse.
I've seen a lot of YC companies doing this to their employees. I think it's going to backfire in a really ugly way in a few years.
This reads a bit like "not to be that guy, but...". You won't say why for some reason, but clearly it's not to stay out of it because you're letting innuendo do the job.
Alternative suggestion: "That is inaccurate but it's not my place to elaborate." It would still express the point but avoid reinforcing the circle the wagons/"blue wall of silence"ness of this situation.
I'm sure you have a good point, I'm just not sure how to do it better. I needed to give enough of an explanation to satisfy people's curiosity at least a little bit even though I can't satisfy it for real. I also needed to make sure that my comment had enough information in it to answer (let's say) the top 10 obvious objections, or it would have brought a flood of them down on my head.
If so, how does one make that request, and what would the process look like?
There have been a few titles I knew to be extremely misleading or false, but never thought there was a way to rectify it without publicly providing information I wasn’t able to share openly.
In such situations the thing to do is email hn@ycombinator.com.
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Took me a few minutes to realize it was LOL.
I'm paraphrasing.
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Down weight? So you guys internally pick and choose topics to weight down? I thought HN was purely community driven with only comments being moderated.
Of course on the surface you guys say you only downweight petty drama but I truly wonder if that's actually true. The fact that you guys downweight anything without trusting the community makes me question how fair, balanced and unbiased things are on HN.
Additionally the person who this tweet was about posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27400221 and it doesn't seem like drama. It seems like injustice and misinterpretation and stubborn refusal. His only option is to appeal to the public but of course YC has to color it with their bias.
It really looks like he was kicked out over a tweet from his perspective. Getting kicked out of YC may seem petty to YC but it is not petty to the person who was kicked out. Even Dang calling this kind of thing "petty drama" does unparalleled damage to his reputation.
The right way to deal with this is not to touch this post and let paul make blog post or something and see if the community votes it up on HN.
HN is a curated site, always has been, and has never claimed otherwise.
It is an interaction between three subsystems: community, software, and moderators. All three are necessary. If you or anyone would like to know more, here are some links to past explanations to start with. If there are still questions after familiarizing yourself with that material, I'd be happy to answer them.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
> Of course on the surface you guys say you only downweight petty drama
That is obviously not at all what I said.
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> Would you like to change the John Carmack post to include his entire tweet as the title?
No, "John Carmack on JPEG" strikes me as an accurate title for that post, and in any case the entire tweet wouldn't fit HN's 80 char limit. When users think there's an inaccuracy or come up with a better (more accurate and neutral) title, we're usually happy to make a change.
> YC moderation here on a YC-related post is not fair
The principle, as I explained above, is that we moderate HN less when YC or a YC startup is involved (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). Less, however, does not mean not at all - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... That would be a huge loophole. In this case I did the minimum to correct a false statement in the title and was hands off after that.
> It’s also unfair that this reply is placed above substantive discussion
That would be true if we had placed it there, but users upvoted it there.
I'm not saying that the internal processes were satisfactory -- I don't know either way, and I think this position is consistent with both cases. I think the two options available are,
1. Criticise publicly and leave, and
2. Work within the system, and accept outcomes that go against you.
Shooting the messenger, if the messenger went through all of the proper channels and made every effort to rectify the matter appropriately internally, would then be counterproductive because it magnifies the issue by creating a martyr.
It's difficult to know what actually transpired, but I don't think a reasonable person would air dirty laundry without trying every possible avenue and appealing to leadership to take a position. So either they're unreasonable or YC let them down, it's impossible to say without independent observers in the know stating their impression.
But being banned from YC is a fairly extreme measure - especially for an activity that has a hint of moral impetus.
Both 'skipping vaccine lines' and 'immediately naming and shaming private conversations to the entire world' are kind of selfish and toxic signals.
If I were the King of YC I would have had condescending words with both of them and told them to grow up and then that would be the end of it.
Note however, we don't really know what happened behind the scenes.
I don't know if it was immediate, but I'm pretty sure there was no naming.
This is exactly why people in positions of power are afraid of transparency and why there is such a anti-media bias in the tech industry.
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1. Skipping vaccine line and talking about it is not actually against BookFace/YC ToS, or it would be a stretch to apply ToS.
2. Publicly talking about matters inside the private group is against ToS since it breaches privacy. In a way that paints the group negatively, nonetheless.
Pretty straightforward. It doesn't really matter *to YC* whether anyone skipped a line or not, what matters are private forum matters getting blasted to hundreds (thousands?) of Twitter users.
Edit: before you get angry, I'm presenting this from the most plausible perspective of YC, not my own feelings on the matter (which are irrelevant).
Edit2: what are people seeing that I'm not seeing here? Clearly I'm missing something, because wow I've never gotten piled on like this on HN.
Biggar tweeted about his unhappiness about the behavior of a person in the private group.
He received a public response fromt he person in question with a dismissive meme.
He in turn responded to that.
So, one could argue that the line-jumping-advocate relinquished his privacy in the first place.
So never mind their high-falutin' ideas of Founders being A Better Class Of People; in the end it's just frickin' Fight Club after all.
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I've never been part of any such decision, but I do know YC and the people who have to make such decisions, and from what I've seen they'd be reasoning from first principles or at least trying to.
He later issues a 'correction' (why not delete the original wrong tweet?) that says that the story about "advocating for lying to skip lines" is false. [1]
I don't have any part of this and I'm confused and don't know what's going on here. But it does not seem like the tweet everyone is focusing on was even true. So the story becomes possibly, that YC kicked someone out for spreading lies about people in their internal community? I don't know.
[1] "I was incorrect in saying the 2nd founder lied, and would like to apologize." https://twitter.com/paulbiggar/status/1370144350861135881
It's still partially true - the allegation of lying was wrong, but the allegation of instructing others how to lie is still being made. This is clarified by the tweet that you linked.
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It makes sense because in some states its been basically any adult can walk in and get a shot for months already. I'm surprised there is anywhere in the country left where that is not the case.
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Priority groups don’t even make sense. It’s some egalitarian crap for the sake of it and more so for buying votes from older ppl.
Then we are left with: it’s simply against the rules. And as if people in SF care about that.
Why r so many people in SF on these moral crusades anyway. Getting high off enforcing rules and looking down on others.
Everyone should be equal…as long as I get my ridiculous salary and elite network. It’s like imposter syndrome for the privileged…so they need to pretend they are for the common man.
Good riddance to such crusaders. PG is a boss.
Biggar violated the all time favourite in-group rule: Don't talk out of school. Don't talk about fight club. Don't snitch.
The other founders violated a norm against pushing yourself ahead and taking advantage of others that doesn't even seem to hold in many groups, especially upper class/wealthy ones.
This doesn't mean that being late to work is worse than drunk driving, or that person A is worse than person B. Not everything is a general judgement on worth or character.
If I go on a work forum and describe my bad behaviour, behaviour that is harmful to others, and advocate for others to do it, I'm going to get in trouble, and possibly fired.
If I publicly discuss private work information, I'll definitely get fired.
If I mention the bad behaviour of someone at work publicly, without naming names, I might get a talking to, but probably won't be fired.
How a group reacts to those different things over time defines the norms and culture of the group.
Unless of course, your job is driving.
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This whole thing of trying to criminalize and be outraged at folks in this space seems way out of whack.
So good on ycombinator!
Same thing with masks, no one allowed to wear N95's but health care folks. I had masks from the fires and my breathing issue. I wore the same mask for a few weeks against the rules. Got flak from folks saying a) masks don't work and b) I should have saved it for health care folks. Not only is that contradictory it's dumb.
It’s not the same as the accusation of someone skipping the line.
We were able to schedule immediate appointments in an adjacent county populated by hardcore Trumpers. Upon arriving at the drive-through vaccination site, there was only one other car in the lot. No danger of cutting the line in that county.
My point is only, it's sometimes dangerous to throw stones without asking questions or getting the full picture first. Taking doses when you aren't qualified for them is overall a bad thing I think we can all agree.
It seems to me that the important information would be: did anybody who was eligible fail to get vaccinated as a result of the extras dropping in? In your story the answer is no. In the other dude's story, it seems like we don't know. If his story is accurate then the answer is probably not because otherwise the people running the site would have told him "please don't do that because it might take doses away from the eligible". But who knows.
I just waited till it was generally available and the local website had appointments available. Added bonus is by waiting the vaccine trials run that much longer so you have more data that it is safe.
I’m the type of guy how likes to go to mediocre restaurants to avoid waiting in line for good ones, so maybe I’m just weird.
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Will they really wait until all elderly are vaccinated first? This would never work.
Just give it to everyone and it goes faster. While we wait for old people to get vaccinated it still circulates among young, who come into contact with old and unvaccinated, hence not helping things.
None of you know any of the internal details but what I can state is that Paul has no idea what he's talking about and later admits to the fact I wasn't lying.
Here's the order of events:
1. I went to a neighborhood clinic in Oakland, CA that's literally next door to my house, I can see the church from my window. Paul lives in NYC which is on the opposite end of the country.
2. I asked them about eligibility and told them I don't clear CA guidelines. They told me it's first come, first served with an ID showing I am 18+.
3. I showed up the next day, waited in line for 4 hours then got jabbed.
4. Posted it in an internal forum for other founders.
5. A few people had issues so raised them which I addressed but YC still took down the post within the day.
6. I appealed but YC still held their decision as final.
Outcome: YC founder came with his aunt, uncle, and mom all over 65 to get jabbed who didn't know about the vaccine site.
---
Paul ends up tweeting about it and making a huge deal around something he has no idea about. He gets a bunch of people on Twitter upset about something they don't know about.
Outcome: Internet rage.
Your post suggests that the result of your post on the YC message board is that people who did not live in those zip codes came to Oakland to take advantage of a program that was not meant for them (and please correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s what I’m seeing here).
I think if you really want to exonerate yourself here, you should probably come clean about what kinds of objections were raised to your original post, because it is very plain to me how the kind of thing you’re describing could be seen by a reasonable person as unethical.
Others standing in line asked coordinators walking the line, "Am I eligible here?" and the coordinators responded, without hesitation, "Yes, you're in the right place! Stay in line." No questions asked.
The vaccination site may well have been "intended" for West Oakland residents and/or underprivileged folks, but if that's right, they could have at least put up a sign saying so, and maybe the coordinator(s) could have said "this vaccine is intended for West Oakland residents only."
I think there's an argument to be made that everyone in line who didn't live in West Oakland should have just assumed that the vaccine wasn't intended for them, but I strongly believe that the ethics of the situation are "If you're offered a vaccine, take it." https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/21/opinion/covid-vaccine-eth... It's not just for you; it's for everyone around you, especially children and others who can't be vaccinated.
What's funny is that friends of mine who were okay with that waited for hours and hours (up to 8 for some) to get their vaccine. I got mine 2 weeks later in my car, and was in and out within 30 minutes. The mania seemed so stupid and gross in hindsight, but I think some of my friends at least regretted it.
I’ve seen a lot of pointless internet fights but this is truly next level.
And also, basic common sense, the sites are run by adults. If the adults over there don't care, why should you care?
Unless you have specific knowledge of people lied to get to use those sites, nobody need your judgement to "exonerate" themselves.
It was crystal clear what the intent was and the poster was called out for it. There was a strong negative reaction.
I felt that if I ever decided to get the shot because of my employment as a “farm worker”, there would be one elderly person or real essential worker that had to wait another day. And that didn’t seem fair. So I waited until the general population could get vaccinated in April.
Just because technically someone will give you the shot doesn’t mean you’ve made an ethical decision.
They gave him one without checking anything. His response? “America has the best vaccine program on the planet. They have so many rules in Zurich that the confusion is holding things back. They’d rather throw away vaccines than break minor rules”.
Vaccination should be easy, bureaucracy free and straightforward; especially now. I can understand age restrictions from Dec-Mar.
This is not like standing in the line at DMV. The entire country needs to be vaccinated and if we put too many rules around this, we all lose and that’s unethical. I urge everyone to be reasonable and flexible. This does not mean you should go and cut lines, push elderly and others aside. The goal for everyone should be efficient distribution of vaccines.
That part makes no sense. If it “wasn’t for them” they’d have been turned away. You have to provide your drivers license to get vaccinated. Your address is on the license. If it was limited to people living in a certain zip code they could easily turn them away.
What’s wrong with this? Our whole society operates like this, but it’s suddenly wrong for some small fries to “take advantage of the law” ?” Write your laws correctly, and don’t blame people for looking out for themselves using completely legal means.
False. A reasonable person would know that the shots don't last after they are thawed out. If someone skipped the appointment, the ethical thing to do is put it in the next warm body that's standing by rather than waste the shot. No one owes anyone any "coming clean" over encouraging others not to let those shots go to waste.
There was misinformation that it was first-come, first-serve to anyone who wanted it. I looked into it at the time and it was easy to verify that this was not true. The CA State website, the church's fliers, and their help line were all clear.
Here's an example clearly listing who was eligible: https://twitter.com/SarahBelleLin/status/1370071520953835520...
They intentionally did not check eligibility to avoid putting barriers up for high risk people. It was effectively an honor system.
This site ended up being oversubscribed and most doses went to people outside the targeted area or demographic: https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/A-West-Oakland-chu...
I know next to nothing and as such would typically hesitate to comment. Others appear to know next to nothing and appear very interested in sharing their opinions here, and I don’t quite understand why...
The modern internet in a nutshell. Of course, this is nothing new. We just now have more powerful tools for doing it.
I wish saying "I don't know" or "I'm not sure but I'd like to learn more about that" was more widely valued.
The worst part about this is that when more information does come to light, it's so rare to see an "oh wow, I really shouldn't have jumped to conclusions" apology. Instead, a lot of the time you see folks dig their heels in more, lest they actually have to admit they were wrong.
Also on the Monday before the FEMA agents were telling me they had less people than vaccines, Tuesday they barely covered the people with vaccines, and Wednesday (when I got it) onwards they had slightly more demand when they asked people to tell their friends.
It's up to governments to enforce rules around their clinics instead of moral crusaders that live across the country with no on-the-ground experience to tweet an internal post to generate outrage.
Here are articles around why there was so few people getting vaccinated in our area and why FEMA requested us ask our friends to show up.
"COVID-19 Vaccination Hesitancy in the United States: A Rapid National Assessment " - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7778842/
"Addressing Justified Vaccine Hesitancy in the Black Community " - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8009077/
As I’m sure you are aware, the brunt of COVID infections and deaths in the Bay Area were borne mostly by our Black and Latinx neighbors, especially those who continued to work during the pandemic, serving those of us who were able to work from home in our underwear all year. And I’m also sure you’re aware that the relaxed eligibility criteria that allowed you to get vaccinated early was meant to reach them, not you.
You can dismiss your critics as “moral crusaders.” You cannot dismiss the fact that the people public health officials were trying to reach with the vaccine you took died at a much higher rate from COVID than, for example, the community of Y Combinator alumni.
How you feel about any of that is up to you, but I hope you’re at least willing to be honest about what happened.
Good for you. You got vaccinated, got a few people vaccinated, and the world is safer at large. Ignore the haters~!
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There are a number of 'special' vaccination sites in the USA which are indeed vaccinating first come, first served people without going through any special qualifications/eligibility check. For instance FEMA was, and still is, running a mass vaccination site in Yakima, WA which was a massive hot spot of infections in WA state.
They quite specifically told the media that they were focused on getting "shots into arms" and not spending a lot of time on each person checking residency documents.
https://www.google.com/search?q=yakima+wa+vaccination+site+f...
Although by the time it opened it was also possible for most people in the Seattle metro area to get a shot without a very long wait, I do know a few people who drove over there and quite clearly showed their drivers license for ID, and got vaccinated without violating any policy or lying about anything whatsoever.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/washingtoni...
A good example of how confusing and micro managed the eligibility charade was.
Same here in Canada. Some private clinics have been offering FCFS vaccines to eligible age groups for some time now. I assumed the US must be the same and wondered what the outrage is here. I got messages from people encouraging me to do the same.
As well as entire states in certain parts of the USA.
For example, Texas, where you only have to be at least 12 years old[0]. In many cities in Texas, they're at more than 50% and running out of arms to stick them in, and definitely very short or no lines. No idea why California has those requirements instead of just opening up more jab spots.
0. https://dshs.texas.gov/covidvaccine/
https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20210326/california-fema-...
It also doesn't help that this person keeps changing his story all the time. On Twitter he claims that joe Biden announced that all adults are eligible for vaccination in March. This is patently false.
All that we know is that he got vaccinated in March ahead of federal guidelines. Did he wait to obtain vaccines left over at the end of the day? Or did he enter a line meant to serve underserved communities. We cannot tell.
As a non-essential worker with no risk factors, I felt that my contribution to the pandemic was to stay home and wait until my turn. I did, by the way, wait until the vaccine was generally available before scheduling. Before general availability, most of my friends my age (mid-30s) had been vaccinated by stretching the truth. I felt like the idiot, and had a fair amount of resentment.
I wonder about the surplus doses, though. Did a substantial culture of seeking out unused doses result in outcomes that were net positive from a utilitarian point of view? It's unclear to me how much "line cutting" this resulted in.
Clearly, stretching the truth to get a dose ahead of others is selfish at least. Back in March, I assume that there were plenty of people in need that didn't/couldn't get an appointment that needed a shot more than YCombinator founders. This wasn't stretching the truth though, just exploitation of a loophole and small surpluses of a limited resource.
In the end, I think the morality hinges on your question, koolhaas. To what extent did standby shots interfere with mitigating the health crisis. Is that what dasickis was doing? Was dasickis aware of opportunity cost of taking that shot? Did he even care?
https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/03/13/covid-your-bay-area-g...
There are vax centers for priorized people and then every doc gets a bunch of vaccinations for their own patienst, which don't have to be priorized.
Now, some vax centers are temporarily closed, because they run out of vaccinations, so priorized groups cant get vaccinated anymore.
But if you find some doc somewhere, who still got a few jabs left, you can vaccinated there even if you aren't priorized.
All the fema pop up sites ran out every day and thus shut down and turned people away.
But that swings both ways, and it does not speak well that 1 side was penalized so heavily for it, irrespective of whether they were in the right or wrong.
Of course, it’s even more egregious coming on the heels of a Ycombinator founder defending someone who did far far worse.
Why? That seems to be the key question and I don't see an answer to it anywhere in this discussion.
It's still not clear why they were not sticking to whatever the current phase California was in at the time. I've seen a couple claims on that, both of which are believable.
1. The site was participating in a Federal vaccination program, not a state vaccination program. The state rollout phases only applied to state programs.
2. They didn't get enough people making appointments to use up their vaccine allotment. When that happened (or when people made but didn't keep appointments) sites were allowed to give the leftover vaccine out first come first served to anyone who met the requirements of the FDA emergency authorization for the vaccine they were using.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/oakland/comments/m4bqx9/a_west_oakl...
Make what you want to about it.
https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20210326/california-fema-...
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Did this YC founder and his aunt, uncle and mom also live in the neighbourhood?
Also, I'm curious about those "issues" if you were just intending to help out people in your neighbourhood? What issues were there with your post?
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My thought is... when it comes to vaccines. It doesn't matter who goes first and who goes later. The fact that someone (anyone) is vaccinated helps us all. I still dont have the vaccine and will get it later. But I already feel safer with all the people that have been vaccinated. Theres no way people can do wrong!!
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I'm not going to make any judgements about it though, considering I don't know anything about how things were in California. In Maryland they had county level registrations that went through tiers of at risk groups, plus state-wide vaccination sites that were open to anyone, so I ended up getting my vaccination a few weeks before I would have if I'd waited for "my turn" with the county vaccination program.
From the tweets now deleted, looks like the internal bookface post in question wasn't all that popular and got roundly criticized.
At least it got 0 upvotes and every single response told him he was wrong. Doesn't seem like he learned his lesson, however it's clear almost nobody else approves of this mentality.
(I think the first one was way worse; he was advocating lying.)
Seems like there's definitely more to it?
https://archive.is/6t7AG
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Source: https://covid19vaccine.health.ny.gov/ "All individuals 12 years of age and older that reside in the United States are eligible to receive the vaccine." https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-vaccine-eligibi... used to mention this requirement but still links to the NY State COVID-19 Vaccine Form (seemingly hosted on S3!) https://forms.ny.gov/s3/vaccine that includes an attestation that the vaccine recipient "presently reside[s] in the United States".
They aren't just excluding international tourists, either - lots of non-tourist international residents are still excluded from vaccination in NY. I'm an American citizen who currently lives outside the US, but I've spent most of my life living in NYC and am preparing to move back there with my wife once she gets her US immigrant visa. We recently visited my fully vaccinated parents, primarily as a family visit and mental health break, and with tourism kept to a minimum for safety reasons.
When we got our first shots in late April, the rules were "NY residents only", so we each got our two doses in a relatively nearby, rural, and somewhat politically purplish part of PA that had plenty of spare shots and that didn't mind ID documents showing foreign residency. Even now we wouldn't qualify for getting our first dose in NYC, despite having a lot stronger ties to the area than tourists.
I hope NY removes this last restriction some time soon: maybe together with its so-called "full reopening" on July 1, maybe when the Canada-US land border reopens to travelers who aren't fully vaccinated, or maybe when the geographical travel restrictions get dropped for foreigners coming from the EU/UK/China.
I gave him the benefit of doubt, but should have been more skeptical upon seeing pronouns in bio. It's a curiously predictive heuristic. For whatever reason, pronoun people tend to be particularly good at generating internet drama.
I also had people complain at me, and I had to patiently ask them, "would you rather the doses expire"? It's really frustrating but I understand the confusion and also the general feeling of "unfairness", as everyone right-thinking is eager to get vaccinated if possible.
I also remember a few rich people going there just to take advantage of it, and I remember days where we were so far back in line that we got nothing while the rich people walked out happily.
That vaccination site isn't any different. Those vaccines were intended for poor, underdocumented, at risk populations. Your vaccination saved one life (yours), but cost many more. It's not any different from the days I went hungry due to egoists like you.
Nowadays, I'm obviously in a different situation, but I still can't stand people with this "fuck you, got mine" mindset.