‘Vaccine buddy’ gives others a shot
In Mass., bring in a senior and you can both get vaccinated
BOSTON — Gloria Clark of Malden, Massachusetts, woke up on Thursday with one goal and one goal only: to find herself an unvaccinated person over the age of 75.
She started with an ad on Craigslist, but responses were sluggish, so she started knocking on doors. The 89-year-old two doors down wasn’t interested. An 80-year-old neighbor wasn’t home, and typically napped in the afternoon, but Clark was undaunted.
“I’ll catch her tomorrow morning,” said Clark, 72, a retired high school math teacher. “I’ll find someone. I know I will.”
Last week, Massachusetts began a first-in-the-nation experiment, offering vaccinations to those who accompany people who are 75 and older to mass vaccination sites.
The plan was intended to ease access problems for older people, who have struggled to book online appointments and travel to sports stadiums. Right away, it met with criticism from state legislators and some public health experts, who said it could result in scarce doses going to young, healthy people.
It also gave rise to an unusual online market, as entrepreneurial Massachusetts residents sought to forge caregiving relationships at top speed.
“I have a great driving record and a very clean Toyota Camry,” said one person in an advertisement on Craigslist. “I can pay $100 cash as well. I am a friendly conversationalist and will allow you to choose the music and show me all the pictures of your grandkids!”
A Boston-area graduate
student offered “$200+ for the privilege of transporting a Massachusetts resident to his or her first or second vaccine appointment.”
Other inquiries were made more delicately.
Jean Trounstine, an author and professor who lives in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, said she received a phone call from a friend who asked if she could accompany her to a vaccine appointment. (Trounstine is 74, it turned out, and no.) “I think she’s just going to look around for 75-year-olds,” she said. “That just blew me away.”
Trounstine heard about the companion program on the car radio on Wednesday, and “flipped out,” as she put it, because it struck her as yet another way for people with resources to jump the line.
“I’m waiting to get the vaccine patiently, I’m not pulling any strings,” she said. “It’s just kind of a slap in the face to someone like me, who isn’t going to go hunting around for a 75-year-old.”
At a Thursday news conference, Gov. Charlie Baker acknowledged that some were approaching the program opportunistically, and warned seniors to be cautious about offers of help from strangers.
“Don’t take calls or offers from people you don’t know well or trust, and never share your personal information with anyone,” he said.
Public health experts offered divergent opinions on the companion program.
Massachusetts is trying to crank up vaccination rates after lagging early in the process, when the state focused on front line health
care workers and care facilities and many doses sat in freezers unused.
About 10.4% of the state’s population has received at least one dose.
Andrew Lover, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said the plan would accelerate vaccinations by providing an “extra push” for older people who live alone.
“There’s definitely potential for people to game the system, but my assumption is it’s a reasonably small number,” he said. “The more people we can get vaccinated the better, in the grand scheme of public health, and we are more than happy to accept that small problematic fraction.”
Others worried that the policy allows young, healthy people doses that are in
short supply.
“What I’m worried about is that there are lots of people in their 70s — 74-year-olds — who can’t get a vaccine, but there are 22-year-olds who are perfectly healthy who are going to get them,” said Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.
It wasn’t all criticism, though. Many people in their late 70s last week contemplated their sudden possession of a golden ticket, and discussed among themselves which friend most deserved or needed it.
Margaret Bibbo, 66, had brought in an elderly friend without expecting to be vaccinated herself, and when a doctor offered her a shot as a companion she initially refused.
“I said, ‘I would love it, but I’m not going to jump in front of anybody,’ ” she said. “Her quote was, ‘You’re just as important as anyone else; you took the time to bring this woman here without expecting the injection. We can take care of you.’ It was precious.”
Driving home, she said, she was flooded with gratitude and relief.
“I was blessed yesterday, totally blessed,” she said.
For Clark, it made perfect sense. Her friends in longterm care facilities have all been vaccinated, “but if you’re like me, and live in your own home, you’re stuck.”
At 72, she is healthy enough to drive some of her neighbors to colonoscopies, and public-spirited enough to work the polls at special elections. “Someone’s out there who needs the help,” she said.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — It’s been more than 1,000 days since a gunman with an AR-15 rifle burst into a Florida high school, killed 17 people and wounded 17 others.
Yet, with Valentine’s Day on Sunday marking the three-year milestone, the trial of 22-year-old Nikolas Cruz is in limbo.
One reason is the coronavirus, which has shut court operations down and made in-person jail access difficult for the defense.
Another is the sheer magnitude of the case, with hundreds of witnesses from Feb. 14, 2018, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
The case could have been all over by now. Cruz’s lawyers have repeatedly said he would plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence. But prosecutors won’t budge on seeking the death penalty at trial.
“We are dedicated to ensuring that justice is done and we are working diligently to ensure that the criminal trial begins as soon as possible,” said Broward County State Attorney Harold Pryor, who was elected in November.
The longtime state attorney he replaced, Michael Satz, is staying on to personally prosecute Cruz. Satz has said Cruz’s fate must be decided by a jury, not by Cruz himself through a guilty plea.
Parents of those slain and wounded are divided over the death penalty, said Tony Montalto, whose 14-year-old daughter, Gina, was killed in the shooting and who is president of the victims’ family group Stand With Parkland.
There’s no doubt where Montalto stands.
“The option for a long life was not given to our children and spouses — it was taken that day,” Montalto said. “Society in general should demand that someone who attacked the most vulnerable, our children, at their school, a place of learning, should be held ultimately accountable. Our families have already paid the ultimate price.”
Michael Schulman, the father of shooting victim Scott Beigel — a school cross-country coach and geography teacher hailed for protecting students — wrote a newspaper opinion piece in which he said it would be better for everyone if Cruz could plead guilty and be locked away for life.
“Going for the death penalty will not bring our loved ones back to us. It will not make the physical scars of those wounded go away,” Schulman wrote.
Even in the best of times, death penalty cases typically take years to go to trial. In Broward County, the average time between arrest and trial is about 3 ½ years. Some complex cases have taken up to 10 years to get to trial.
“Even if we didn’t have the pandemic to contend with, getting a death penalty case with this many victims to trial, in Florida, would have taken at least this long,” said David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice in Miami. “The deposition process alone can take years, and then there are the experts and mitigation specialists.”
If Cruz is convicted and sentenced to death, the appeals would probably stretch for decades. It’s also possible the case could get reversed and sent back for another sentencing hearing or trial, forcing victims’ families to confront it all again.
Cruz is represented by the Broward County public defender’s office, which has taken depositions so far from about 300 witnesses. His lawyers declined to comment for this story, but in court papers they have insisted there is no intent to delay the case.
Cruz had a well-documented history of mental problems, including an obsession with violence and death, before the shooting rampage when he was 19.
His defense isn’t focused on his guilt or innocence; it’s more about sparing him from the death penalty, his lawyers have said in court.
One big sticking point is access to Cruz in jail. His lawyers say that mental health experts they need for the trial must interview him in person, which they will not do as long as the coronavirus remains a threat in the nation’s jails.
But officials have raised security concerns about transporting Cruz from jail to meet with defense experts elsewhere.
In recent weeks, there has also been a lengthy battle over prosecutors’ desire to let the jury —whenever the case gets to that point — visit the now-closed school building to see it for themselves. Defense attorneys say that would be too prejudicial and that ample video and other evidence exists.
Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer initially hoped to begin the trial in January 2020. That obviously did not happen. Then everything was shut down when the coronavirus pandemic struck in mid-March.
No trial date has been set. The next hearing is a status conference, conducted remotely like other such proceedings over the past several months, on Feb. 16.
Since the 2018 massacre:
■ The sheriff at the time, Scott Israel, was removed by the governor because of the agency’s performance that day.
■ The school security officer on duty the day of the shootings, former Broward County Deputy Scot Peterson, faces 11 criminal charges, including child neglect and negligence, for not entering the school building to confront Cruz. He has pleaded not guilty and also awaits trial.
A commission set up to study the tragedy recommended that teachers be trained and armed in schools, and the state Legislature in 2019 passed a law to that effect.
Multiple lawsuits have been filed over the shootings and will probably take years to resolve. The coronavirus outbreak has hindered those cases as well, though a judge recently ruled the school system had no duty to warn of the danger posed by Cruz, by then a former student.
In that case, Broward Circuit Judge Patti Englander Henning said the Broward County school district cannot be held liable for failing to predict actions that were beyond its control, the South Florida SunSentinel reported.
“The District had no control over Cruz,” the judge ruled. “They did not have custody over him. He was not a student in the system and had not been for over a year. In fact, he was refused access to the campus once he left school.”
The judge also said the plaintiffs are relying on too many “what if ” questions to build a solid legal claim for damages.
“There is no foundation for the argument that if Cruz had been sent to a different program, and if he had been treated as a higher threat years before the incident, and if he had been criminally charged years earlier so he’d have been convicted and could not buy or own a gun, and if he had never been permitted to attend Marjory Stoneman Douglas, then he would not have been on this campus and would never have committed the crime,” the ruling said.