Everyone who had an appointment for a vaccine on Saturday ended up receiving one, the LA Fire Department said.
Twitter @daveedkapoor / Reuters
Protesters hold signs near the entrance to the vaccination site at Dodger Stadium.
A group of antivax protesters temporarily closed the COVID-19 vaccination site at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on Saturday, delaying appointments by almost an hour.
About 50 protesters gathered at the entrance to the stadium, holding placards with anti-vaccine and anti-mask rhetoric and shouting at drivers who were lining up for vaccination appointments. No vaccination appointments have been canceled, a Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman told BuzzFeed News.
The LAFD closed the entrance to the stadium as a precaution for about 55 minutes from 2pm, reported the Los Angeles Times. According for the Los Angeles Police Department, the protesters remained peaceful.
Social media posts and a live broadcast of the protest showed participants wielding placards with false anti-vaccine and mask claims, blocking measures and California Governor Gavin Newsom. The protesters tried to get involved with the people waiting in their cars.
Newsom tweeted Saturday that the state “will not be deterred or threatened” by protesters in the supply of the COVID-19 vaccines.
Dodger Stadium is one of the country’s largest vaccination sites, serving a region that is currently fighting a particularly deadly wave of COVID-19. On Saturday, there were 5,669 people hospitalized with coronavirus in Los Angeles County, with more than 1.1 million cases and 16,647 deaths recorded in the county since the pandemic began.
Earlier this month, anti-mask protesters calling COVID-19 a “swindler” harassed customers at a Los Angeles mall and grocery store. It was not immediately clear whether the two protest groups were connected.
The county is vaccinating residents 65 and older, as well as health professionals and nursing staff and residents, but cases of COVID-19 have continued to increase. To date, one in nine LA county residents has had COVID-19, and at least one death from COVID-19 is recorded in the county every 10 minutes.
Los Angeles County has also lifted environmental limits for cremation due to the accumulation of bodies in hospitals, funeral homes and crematoriums as a result of COVID-19.
Los Angeles musician and resident Mikel Jollett tweeted that his mother’s vaccination appointment was postponed due to the protest. Her 69-year-old mother, Bonnie, ended up getting the vaccine as soon as the site was reopened, said Jollett, who leads the rock band Airborne Toxic Event.
We are at the mass vaccination site at Dodger Stadium to give my mother the vaccine. Antivax protesters approached the entrance to the site. The LAPD has already closed the gate. We’ve been sitting here for about half an hour. Nobody is moving.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the protest was announced as “Scamdemic Protest / March” and asked participants to “avoid wearing Trump / MAGA costumes, as we want our statement to resonate with the sheeple. No flags, just informational signs.”
State and local officials denounced the protest, with Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez calling the demonstration “unbelievable”, while others drew parallels with the extreme right-wing extremists responsible for the coup attempt on the United States Capitol earlier this month.
Unbelievable. If you don’t want the vaccine, that’s fine, but there are millions of Angelenos who do. 16,000 of your neighbors have died, so get out of the way. https://t.co/OTKL7ugJzL
Dr. Richard Pan, a pediatrician and senator from the state of California, described the protesters as extremists, using intimidation and violence to promote their false beliefs. Antivaxxers have regularly disrupted the California legislature in recent years, and Pan was attacked by an antivax activist in 2019.
“These extremists have not yet been held accountable, so violence against the public body continues to increase,” Pan said in a statement. “We must now muster the political will to demand that domestic terrorists face the consequences of their words and actions. Our democracy and our lives depend on it. “