Huge Ma first came up with the idea of his much-needed robot for locating vaccination appointments after finding out how difficult it was to book one for his mother.
“Basically, it was necessary to open three tabs, one for each government vaccine portal, and then update all day until you get an appointment,” said the 31-year-old software engineer from New York.
Inspired to see if there was anything he could build himself to help the thousands of New Yorkers struggling to get compromises, he decided to “take a look behind the scenes” in January. Two weeks of programming later, he created TurboVax – a bot that finds appointments available at 53 different New York state and local vaccine locations and shares them across Twitter and on a website. It only cost $ 50 to set up.
Today, the site has over a million page views a day. To date, he estimates, tens of thousands of people have been able to get vaccine nominations using the bot, which has more than 80,000 Twitter followers, and Ma has been inundated with messages of thanks. He also received requests from people who asked him to bring TurboVax to his city or state.
“The response was incredibly overwhelming,” he said. “There has been so much gratitude. Hundreds, thousands of e-mails from people who got appointments through TurboVax, which, honestly, is simply mind-blowing and also humiliating ”.
The value of his creation took Ma by surprise. “I never would have thought that I could have built something that had such a tangible impact on other people’s lives.”
But it also comes with a lot of pressure – especially for something that started as a side project. He manages the service alone in his spare time on his daily work for Airbnb. Meanwhile, the site, built on Google Docs, is suffering from so much demand.
“Technically, it’s kind of a hack. It is not built the way modern websites should be built, ”said Ma, who is a big fan of Knicks, Tottenham and Bridgerton outside of work.
But, he added: “These are the shortcuts we take to put something in the world that we find useful and I think it is an exchange that I would still make”.
TurboVax is one of several citizen-driven services that have emerged to help Americans navigate the vaccination booking process, including NYC Vaccine List in New York and VaccinateCA in California.
In the long run, Ma is still deciding what his next steps will be. “There is a great need for tools like this. But I’m just a developer who did a side project that went viral. “
Amid the chaos and uncertainty of the vaccine launch, TurboVax’s Twitter feed has become a community hub for New Yorkers trying to get consultations and people trying to help each other. He also shares information about waiting times and other news related to the vaccine (as well as some Knicks content). It’s full of thank you messages, personal stories and photos of people getting vaccinated.
“At the vaccination site yesterday, at least 3 of the 7 people in the waiting room with me said they were there because of you. Thank you for helping us get vaccinated! ” wrote a user. Other said: “Enorme represents the best in New York”.
But Ma, who grew up in Queens and lives in Manhattan, also had to send messages of frustration – especially when fewer vaccine markings were available.
The service is free, but Ma encourages users to donate to Welcome to Chinatown, an organization that supports small businesses in the area and fights racism against Asian Americans. So far, he has raised more than $ 53,000.
Incidents of anti-Asian hatred and violence broke out in the city last year, reports the Asian American Bar Association, and in recent weeks we have seen a wave of violent attacks against Asian Americans in New York and the United States.
“Asian Americans have always had to prove that they are American enough and it is a burden that we carry everywhere … the attacks that have really increased in recent months, especially targeting the elderly and Asian companies, are extremely disheartening,” he said. Bad.
He added: “Although I have this platform, as an Asian American, I can do more than expected and highlight a group and an environment that needs to be changed.”
Vaccine distribution is under heavy scrutiny in New York and the United States, as the vaccination rate of white Americans far exceeds that of blacks and Latino Americans.
Ma believes that TurboVax helps to “level the playing field” when it comes to vaccine distribution, making it easier to find out where it is available, but that better government policy and more offline reach is needed.
“Not everyone has the ability to sit in front of a computer and update all day,” he said. “That said, I know that no system is perfect. This technology can help, but it cannot solve other inequalities in the system. “
After almost a month of trying on official websites, Gustavo Ajche, 38, who works as a food delivery man on his electric bike, got an appointment with TurboVax this week and was vaccinated a few days later.
But he still faced significant obstacles. The only appointment was so far from his home that he had to pay $ 50 to get a taxi and said there was a lot of fear and misinformation going on.
“Even when I had my appointment, people were like ‘oh, are you crazy, why are you going to do that? It’s not safe, ‘”said Ajche, who is also the leader of the Los Deliveristas Unidos delivery group. “I know how important it is for me to be vaccinated not only because I am doing the delivery work, but also because I am a volunteer in the Labor Justice Project managing food pantries and I get in touch with many people.”