“VACCINE DAY! Step one of the Moderna magic!! One hour drive to STATEN ISLAND worth every minute! It takes a village.” The New Yorker who posted this message on Instagram on Friday is neither over 65 nor a teacher nor an ambulance driver. She doesn’t work in a homeless shelter or at a fire station or a grocery store. She is not from Staten Island, nor does she live there. She’s Stacey Griffith, star SoulCycle instructor in Tribeca, who reportedly made the case that she was an educator and therefore was eligible for the vaccine. She’s not, per this NYC.gov list of who makes the cut at present.
This predictably ruffled some feathers over the weekend (many experts anticipated the debate over who deserves to be vaccinated), resulting in Griffith deleting the post and trying to explain herself before ultimately apologizing.
Griffith, with more than 64,000 Instagram followers, made for a useful symbol of everything that’s gone wrong with distributing the doses so far. Her Instagram comments section filled up with tales of family members with harsh preexisting conditions who couldn’t get it. And there is reporting that suggests there are many who would be happy to get the vaccine if only they could: In a story from last week, the New York Post reported that of the roughly 20,000 city teachers that requested appointments through its union and the 10,000 that had matched with health care providers, only a quarter had actually received a vaccine.
Despite the reports of vaccine supplies spoiling because there weren’t enough arms to stick them in, and some eligible people declining the shot, the number of New Yorkers who qualify for COVID vaccines has expanded enough that it shouldn’t be a problem finding those who need it most. Like many states, New York has struggled to vaccinate its population in these early months of availability—information on how to get a vaccine doesn’t flow as freely as it could; the sign-up is often arduous, and the supply continues to be erratic for various reasons.
“It doesn’t sound like someone who should have gotten vaccinated to me,” New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, even commented when asked at a Sunday news conference. “I don’t think someone who shows up and says, ‘Hey, I’m a SoulCycle instructor’ should have qualified unless there’s some other factor there. That should have been caught in the application process.”
Now Griffith, who can make $800 a class, as the Daily Beast points out, and who summers in the Hamptons where much of her clients are based during those months too, is at risk of becoming the poster child of a warped phenomenon: white, affluent people are showing up in underserved communities of color, those that have been hit the hardest by the virus, and taking up vaccine spots. Data at this point is still incomplete but learnings from last weekend in New York City, for example, suggest that “white people had received nearly half of the doses, while Black and Latino residents were starkly underrepresented based on their share of the population.” Staten Island isn’t exactly a Black or Latino enclave, but it is filled with working-class neighborhoods, many that have been hit hard by the pandemic.
“I hate controversy,” Griffith told the Daily Beast, which first reported on the story. “It saddens me that people go so dark and mean, I’m really just trying to do the right thing and be safe.”
She tried to explain her thinking to the publication, perhaps leaning too much into the idea espoused by some epidemiologists that the more who are vaccinated quickly, the better to guard against mutating variants: “Having me vaccinated can stop the short spread within groups! I function as a common point for many overlapping people. In my profession of health and wellness as a teacher, it’s my priority daily to keep my community and their respiratory systems operating at full capacity so they can beat this virus if they are infected by it. I can only teach to them if I am healthy myself.”
Griffith added that she “had the same opportunity everyone else has by going online and filling out a questionnaire” and that she didn’t pay anyone anything or pull favors. “All teachers are eligible to apply for the vaccine. My post today was to show my confidence in the system, in our government, and I hope everyone can at least feel more at ease knowing I went through the process!” she said. (SoulCycle has distanced itself from Griffith in the meantime, though she’s still on the schedule.)
By Monday, she had apologized on Instagram.
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