Battle To Beat Coronavirus Meets California's Anti-Vaxxers

LOS ANGELES, CA — After an anti-vaxxer protest group briefly shut down the nation’s largest coronavirus vaccination site at Dodger Stadium last week, the group vowed to disrupt more California vaccination sites in the coming days.

The escalating tactics for disrupting vaccination efforts prompted the Los Angeles Police Department Chief Michel Moore to warn activists that they will be arrested if they block access to vaccination sites or intimidate workers and patients. It also inflamed familiar tensions between the anti-vaxxer movement — epicentered in California — and state lawmakers, who passed the strictest vaccination law in the nation in 2015.

The movement shows that the vaccine shortage isn’t the only impediment to reaching so-called herd immunity to COVID-19. Skepticism of the vaccine will have to be overcome to reach the kind of numbers needed for herd immunity.

According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, between 70 and 90 percent of the population will need to be vaccinated to reach the threshold where COVID-19 is no longer a widespread threat. That will be a challenge. According to a study by KFF, only about 71 percent of Americans said they plan to get a coronavirus vaccine, and 27 percent said they are dubious about the safety of such vaccines. Among certain segments of the population including Blacks, Hispanics and military families, experts are finding higher rates of vaccine skepticism.

“Anti-vaccine attitudes are as old as vaccines themselves,” Richard M. Carpiano, professor of public policy and sociology at the UC Riverside, told the New York Times. “The other thing that gets tied into this is the wellness movement, this idea that natural is better. There’s a broader kind of mistrust of Big Pharma, and about medical care and medical professions. There is this real market for discontent that these groups can really kind of seize upon.”

Dr. Richard Pan, a pediatrician and State Senator from Sacramento, said it’s a mistake to dismiss the movement as harmless. Anti-vaxxers in California, historically a more affluent group, have increasingly found common ground with anti-government groups that embrace extremism, critics of the movement contend. Pan labeled the movement domestic terrorism, noting that some of the Dodger Stadium protestors participated in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.

“These extremists have not yet been held accountable, so they continue to escalate violence against the body public. We must now summon the political will to demand that domestic terrorists must face consequences for their words and actions. Our democracy and our lives depend on it,” he said in a statement issued after the incident at Dodger Stadium.

“As COVID is now the leading cause of death among Americans and vaccines hold the promise of stopping the pandemic, we should be outraged that unmasked anti-vaccine extremists obstructed entry into America’s largest vaccination site, Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, today as they screamed epithets at the seniors and health care workers waiting in their cars to get the COVID vaccine."

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated event of violence by these extremists. In 2019, incited by their violent rhetoric, an anti-vaxxer assaulted me on a street while live-streaming the attack on Facebook and another threw blood from the public gallery striking several California Senators on the floor, halting the people’s business. Just this month, anti-vaccine extremists threatened California Senators with gun violence during public comment at a budget hearing and some of the stadium protestors have been identified as participating in the assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6.”

The protesters at the Dodger Stadium COVID-19 vaccination site, forced the Los Angeles Fire Department to close the gates Jan. 30 for nearly an hour to protect workers and patients when protesters tried to get inside. About 50 protesters were at the scene, chanting, waving signs and seeking to persuade people with appointments to be vaccinated. They have not been accused of committing violence during the protest.

German Jaquez had been waiting for an hour to get his vaccine when the stadium’s gates were closed.

“This is completely wrong,” said Jaquez, who drove from his home in La Verne. He said some of the protesters were telling people in line that the coronavirus is not real and that the vaccination is dangerous.”

A photo showed one activist carrying a sign that read "Save your soul. Turn back now."
Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis condemned "the actions of the mask-less anti-vaccine protesters. What they did today amounts to intentional sabotage of an effort to keep our community healthy and get ahead of alarming variants making their way into Los Angeles County," Solis tweeted.

Los Angeles City Councilman Kevin de Leon called what occurred at Dodger Stadium Saturday "intimidation, not protests."

"Anyone obstructing vaccinations must be held accountable," de Leon tweeted.
A post on social media described the demonstration as the "Scamdemic Protest/March," the Los Angeles Times reported. It advised participants to "please refrain from wearing Trump/MAGA attire as we want our statement to resonate with the sheeple. No flags but informational signs only," according to The Times.

One activist told the Times, they didn’t intend to shut down the vaccination site, but it was a happy accident that firefighters shut the gates because of the publicity the furor caused.
“I’m like, ‘Oh my God, this is totally going to make the news now. This is going to cause a big stink,’” protest organizer and standup comedian stand-up comedian Jason Lefkowitz told the newspaper.

Lefkowitz has also organized mask protests, bringing mask-less activists to shopping centers in defiance of health orders. However, his biggest success was the Dodger Stadium protest, and he’s ready to go bigger, he told the Times.

“For me personally, I am going to try to focus on some bigger things,” he told the paper. “This all plays into my stand-up background, I have no stage fright and I don’t care what people think of me.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.