Manatee residents blast Baugh, DeSantis over Lakewood Ranch vaccine site | Letters to the editor
Baugh’s VIP list was ‘immoral’
Misty Servia’s op-ed in the Sunday edition was spot on summarizing the Lakewood Ranch vaccination fiasco.
It was great Manatee got more vaccines, the governor probably didn’t know recipients would be limited to just 2 zip code areas and there has been a tremendous loss in trust of county government by citizens.
I would add that it certainly didn’t have to happen this way. The state had two pop-up vaccination events in Sarasota County. One in Venice before the LWR event and one in North Port after LWR. In both cases, participants were pulled from the Sarasota County waiting list just as they are for the vaccinations administered weekly.
I would also add that whether or not one likes the label VIP list that the media uses, it doesn’t disguise the fact that five individuals were name selected from the county’s waiting pool. As I understand it, two didn’t even live in the designated zip codes. This is blatant preferential treatment for those who were selected.
While probably not illega,l it is immoral when dealing with a deadly pandemic.
Gregory Lantz
Palmetto
‘Arrogance at its worst’
Nothing in this entire year-long pandemic has been more disheartening, appalling, and disgusting to me than the blatant favoritism shown by Manatee County Commissioner Vanessa Baugh and Gov. Ron DeSantis in deciding to set up a pop-up vaccine distribution site for the wealthy of Lakewood Ranch, including Ms. Baugh herself.
Manatee’s ridiculous lottery system, was clearly inadequate for Ms. Baugh, but fine for other residents of Manatee County. She and Governor DeSantis should have just been open and honest about their intent to set up a priority vaccine list for those who contribute the most to their campaigns, to those in their own neighborhood, or to those with one of the highest net worths in the county. At least then we would have known where we, the other citizens over 65 (many with health issues), the poor, the minorities, and the middle class stood.
There is no reason, excuse, defense, justification, snide remark about Manatee County not wanting the vaccine, or apology, that either can offer to make this right. The vaccines can’t be taken back. Shame on Ms. Baugh and Governor DeSantis!
This is politics and arrogance at its worst. Between this, and the attack on the Capital Building, I am embarrassed and ashamed to be a Republican. Since receiving a COVID vaccine can mean the difference between life and death, I have one final question, “Is this an impeachable offense?”
Linda Mayberry
Bradenton
Vaccine policy adds to residents’ stress
To Manatee County commissioners:
Everyone now knows that you have the ability to select individuals from your COVID-19 Vaccination Standby Pool for those 65 and older residents of Manatee County using various criteria, as you did with ZIP codes for those selected to be vaccinated at Lakewood Ranch. So it is well past the time for you to change your system from a lottery to the selection of those to make an appointment for the vaccine in the same order as people registered – first in – first selected, just as virtually every other jurisdiction in the entire country is doing! All that you have managed to achieve with the lottery is to dramatically increase the anxiety and stress levels of the 150,000 or so of us seniors in your pool.
By using your system as a lottery, we have no idea whether we will be called this week, next week, or have to wait a good many more months for that critical call to make an appointment for the vaccine. Many of us already suffer from high stress and anxiety about the life threatening COVID-19 because of our age and underlying health conditions. Your lottery system adds greatly to these existing anxieties and stress levels and has absolutely no redeeming value. We did not elect you to cause us more harm, for which your actions and decisions to use a lottery selection process for the County’s COVID-19 appointment system are directly responsible! You should be helping us through this crisis, not hurting us even more.
When we registered, each of us was given a seven-digit receipt number, which I strongly suspect corresponds to the order in which we registered. Going forward you should be calling us for appointments in this same order — first to register — first to be offered the next appointment. You should also update your COVID-19 vaccine information website each night with the number of the last person provided an appointment that day. That would give each of us in the pool a much better sense of how quickly the vaccine is being administered to our population and when we might be expected to be called for our appointment.
Please stop causing harm to your oldest and most vulnerable constituents and get on board with the same selection process we would be using if we lived anywhere in this country except Manatee County!
Pete Gross
Holmes Beach
DeSantis’s deception
Gov. Ron DeSantis stated that the 3,000 vaccinations dispensed in two Lakewood Ranch zip codes were extra doses that could have been sent to other counties if Manatee County officials were not happy with the extra doses. The governor thereby admitted that the state has two separate distribution systems for the vaccine: one for the lottery system that the county set up to give everyone in the oldest age group an equal chance of getting the vaccine and another for the governor to favor wealthy white communities, including Lakewood Ranch, Sun City Center and the Villages near Ocala.
Although the governor’s system is patently racist, it actually discriminates against more white people than minorities simply because there are more white people than Black and brown people in Manatee County’s other zip codes. If the 3,000 doses dispensed in Lakewood Ranch had been made available to the county’s lottery system, every Black, white and brown person in the oldest age group would have had a higher probability of having his or her name picked from the pool of registered citizens.
This is not rocket science and the governor must think that Manatee County citizens are really stupid not to understand that his alternate distribution system for VIPs created a “zero sum game” in which Lakewood Ranch won vaccinations at the expense of average citizens who registered in the lottery system. This was a good example of systemic discrimination including systemic racism.
Meanwhile, the governor’s assertion that bringing extra doses to Lakewood Ranch was just intended to target an area with a high concentration of senior citizens is totally disingenuous because there are plenty of old people living all over the county who would gladly drive anywhere in the county to get a shot.
Allan Gehring
University Park
Manatee’s vaccine program is an ‘insult’
The COVID-19 vaccination program in Manatee County is an insult to all the participants trying to be vaccinated.
A lottery system can have no validity if friends of the county commissioners and the governor receive preferential treatment. We know Governor DeSantis and his family received preferential treatment with their vaccinations, but when the governor was criticized for his approval of preferential treatment for a wealthy community, he implied there could be a reduction in Manatee County’s vaccine allotment. The governor and Commissioner Vanessa Baugh appear more interested in the support from wealthy donors than the fair distribution of vaccine in Manatee County.
If Manatee County wants their lottery to have credibility, why not publish the names of the vaccine recipients online for everyone to see? Many of us have been waiting six weeks or more for the vaccine, but have no idea when, or if, we will get an appointment to be vaccinated. The current system allows an individual to enter the pool one day and be selected to receive the vaccine the next. Maybe the commissioners consider the system to be fair, but after this blatant misuse of the selection process, should the participants?
Who is being selected? If the process selection is credible, there needs to be a list of recipient names and the dates those recipients will receive the vaccine. I am surprised, due to its lack of transparency in the inoculation process that Manatee County has not been sued for its mishandling of the program. Maybe Commissioner Baugh was directly responsible for this misuse of her authority, but all the commissioners bear a responsibility for this county’s allocation fiasco.
Warren B. Mosher
Bradenton
Baugh put people in danger
Here I am once again marveling at the crassness of Manatee County Commissioner Vanessa Baugh.
Apologies may be acceptable when you say something you should not have. Apologies are not acceptable when you place people’s lives in possible danger. The woman personally had county documents changed without the full consent of the County Commission. How she accomplished this is very troubling because it indicates that the county data bank is subject to adjustment based on the whim of a single individual.
This is problematic to say the least not just in this instance but also any other information the county maintains on residents. So she just apologizes?
James F. Tierney
Bradenton
‘Robin Hood in reverse’
I have read about what Manatee County Commissioner Vanessa Baugh has said about her role in getting shots for the two area codes in Lakewood Ranch. She and our Gov. Ron DeSantis said that the shots that were given to Lakewood Ranch were over and above the allocated shots for the poor slobs in the so called random pool.
My husband and I, both of us age 75 have been registered since day one. On Feb. 12, we got the call at 11 a.m. that both of us had an appointment for Feb. 18 between 11 a.m. and noon. We were so happy that our patience in this system had paid off.
Then on Feb. 17 at 11:00AM we got a call saying our appointment had been canceled because there was a shortage because of the storms in Texas and elsewhere. What a crock. If there were extra shots as Ms. Baugh and Gov. DeSantis said there were, why weren’t they given to the people who were canceled from ‘the random list.”
Why? It appears that they needed those shots for that “pop up site,”and that’s why my husband and I and how many more people, got canceled That’s like Robin Hood in reverse. Taken from the poor (random list) and given to the rich. From what I read about Ms. Baugh, I am not surprised.
But Gov. DeSantis, I voted for you and I believed in you. Shame on you. You probably just lost my vote.
Ann Marie Osika
Parrish
Tone-deaf Baugh deserves censure
In a contest for tone-deafness, Manatee County Commissioner Vanessa Baugh would be the hands-down winner for her role in securing a pop-up COVID 19 vaccination clinic in Lakewood Ranch. By limiting those eligible to get shots there to two Lakewood Ranch ZIP codes, and personally intervening to ensure four friends – and herself – landed on the list, she has undermined citizen confidence in the county’s supposedly blind lottery system determining who gets appointments when.
By taking the unilateral action of deciding who has priority for the clinic, without consulting fellow commissioners, she exceeded her role as commission chair and should be replaced in the chairperson’s role by a commissioner with sounder ethical judgment. It is our understanding the chair looks out for the county as a whole, not just her personal district. How gracious and fair minded it would have been to divide the vaccines among all the commissioners.
Baugh also deserves an official censure by her fellow commissioners, as well as defeat at the polls at her next election.
It’s understood that a drive-up clinic requires a decent amount of real estate to accommodate two lanes of cars and the various check-in, verification and vaccination stations. But the Public Safety Complex in East Bradenton is capable of handling such traffic and is ideally located to serve the most underserved and vulnerable demographic, low-income, minority citizens with limited transportation resources. Why would East Bradenton or Rubonia not be the first locations Baugh thought of when contacted by Gov. Ron DeSantis to host a pop-up clinic, instead of the affluent LWR neighborhoods?
Tone-deafness, that’s why. This politician posing as a defender of conservative values is just another Good Ol’ Girl looking out for her wealthy donors and their expected campaign checks. Not unlike her heroes, Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump.
Jo Anne Klement
Bradenton
‘Typical’ DeSantis
Last year our commissioners told us to go on-ine to register for the COVID 19 vaccine. We spent hours trying, finally able to get registered. Several weeks went by and we finally got our call that we had a won a vaccine appointment scheduled for Feb. 18 at Bennett Park. We were elated.
Then our governor decided to skip our county lottery and send 3,000 vaccines to his associate, Vanessa Baugh’s favored zip codes. On Feb. 17, we received a robo call canceling our appointment for the following day because they had no vaccines.
We had to work for our vaccine while our wealthier neighbors at Lakewood Ranch just had to live there. This is typical of our governor. We do have another appointment unless the governor has another whim.
Charles Nichols
Bradenton
DeSantis, Baugh carry ‘whiff of decit’
My thanks go out to the Bradenton Herald for printing the story detailing the efforts of Manatee County Commissioner Vanessa Baugh and Gov. Ron DeSantis to exclude wealthy residents of Lakewood Ranch from the Vaccine Standby Pool. Now we all know what we suspected: The so-called random lottery process in Manatee County is a ruse. The reality is, if you have money and have an attractive zip code you will get your vaccination long, long, long before the average senior. Manatee’s choice of who receives a vaccination is not impartial nor has it ever been fair or random.
Make no mistake, this is purely a political and financial move on the part of our commissioner and governor. Giving affluent people preferential access to life-saving vaccinations will undoubtedly result in monetary contributions to the governor and the commissioner down the road.
Governor DeSantis and Commissioner Baugh carry the whiff of deceit and favoritism now like a hound dog carries the stench of something he rolled in.
They are an example of self-serving politics and game playing at its lowest. Hopefully, their little stunt will be exposed on the national level for all to view.
Susan Nachand
Sarasota
Baugh destroys county’s vaccine credibility
The establishment of a COVID vaccination site by Commissioner Vanessa Baugh limited to her wealthy constituents in two zip codes is a slap in the face of all Manatee residents that have been waiting in line in the county lottery pool for a vaccination.
The audacity of this women reaches new levels. She didn’t even feel it necessary to discuss it with the entire commission. It must be great to be a king!
COVID is not a political game, rather it is life and death and should be exempt from typical political favors to constituents. In excess of 125,000 residents are waiting in line for their name to be called in the county lottery. The credibility of the entire lottery is now gone.
I am shocked and embarrassed by the actions of our politicians during this crisis. I guess her constituents get to jump the line for other government services they may need.
My wife has been monitoring every web site and tracking all possible avenues for the past two months trying to get a vaccine. Maybe she should stop and just ask Commissioner Baugh.
John L. Conte
Cortez
This story was originally published February 19, 2021 at 9:17 AM.