The Orange County, CA, Board of Supervisors approved an incentive program last week that would pay contractors $20 for every Covid19 vaccine they administer. OC residents worry the measure amounts to illegal medical coercion.
The measure known euphemistically as a “Vaccine Engagement Program” was pulled from the last Board meeting’s agenda on July 27th after residents became aware and spoke out against the proposal.
Last Tuesday the Board, after expanding funding for the program from $4.5 million to a cumulative total of $8 million, approved the measure unanimously.
Supervisor Doug Chafee even proposed an expansion of the incentive program that would have seen an additional $50 payment go directly to each Orange County resident who agreed to receive a Covid19 vaccine.
“One of the things that is of concern, I find, in my district, is hesitation to get a shot,” Chafee said.
“Sometimes it’s because families missing one day of work is a loss of pay that goes toward their monthly bills. So I want to go a step further than the $20 incentive program and propose that we do $50 a shot to the individuals in addition to the incentive program provided here,” he added.
That proposal was moved to a future date so that it could be studied further.
Dozens of residents spoke out against the vaccine incentive program at the July 27th meeting. The item was deleted from that meeting without explanation. The measure was re-introduced at the August 10th meeting however, and eventually passed unanimously.
Notably, residents were not allowed to sit in the gallery to observe the August 10th meeting as had become custom again in recent meetings, nor where loudspeakers set up outside the meeting so citizens who had gathered could follow along. That had been standard practice for months.
Thirty-five OC residents spoke before the Board on S25B, the designation given to the measure at Tuesday’s meeting. All thirty-five spoke against it.
The program pays contractors $20 for every individual they are able to successfully vaccinate. The program would use mobile vaccine units and “pop-up events” to reach and vaccinate seniors, homeless individuals, jail inmates, homebound individuals and other “hard to reach and high-hesitancy populations.”
The OC BoS has been facing increasing criticism since it announced the implementation of a digital vaccine passport system earlier this year which would require residents to show proof of vaccination against Covid19 on a smartphone application in order to access public areas and businesses.
In the wake of the firestorm that erupted after the system was announced the Board publicly declared it will use the multi-million dollar smartphone app developed for the passport system as a simple digital record keeping system instead. Many residents remain unconvinced.
“Covid is a real virus,” a resident who identified herself only as Jane Doe said when addressing the Board last Tuesday. “The agenda behind Covid is an absolute scam as demonstrated by what you’re doing on 25B. You are sending in paid actors who are getting paid $20 per coercion in these low-income neighborhoods. Coercion is not consent,” she added.
“You have increased the budget from $4.5 million to $8 million without notifying anybody. That is illegal! What you guys continue to do…you’re constantly moving the goal posts. But the bottom line is coercion is not informed consent. And what you are doing is crimes against humanity.”