On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the COVID-19 outbreak had become a pandemic. In the wake of this declaration, the federal government and pharmaceutical industry invested heavily in research for a vaccine. On December 11, 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized the use of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for emergency use. Seven days later, on December 18, 2020, the NIH-Moderna vaccine was authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for emergency use. Both drugs required a double dose, with the second shot usually being scheduled between 3 to 6 weeks after the first dose.
Between the start of the pandemic in March of 2020 and August 2021, COVID-19 infected at least 1 in 8 New York City residents, with a total of 1,007,992 cases being reported. The city experienced its first surge of cases in April of 2020, with cases declining in the summer and fall of 2020. But by December of 2020, the number of COVID-19 cases had risen again and the city recorded its highest rates of COVID-19 in January of 2021---just as the vaccine was beginning to become available to health care workers and other communities at risk.
Recognizing that vaccination rates among communities of color in New York City lagged behind vaccination rates among white New Yorkers, city officials opened a mass vaccination site at Yankee Stadium on February 5, 2021. This site served only residents of the Bronx, a community that had been especially hard hit by the pandemic. City officials chose Yankee Stadium as a vaccination site because it had an extremely high visibility among community residents. In the first few weeks after the site opened, Bronx residents could sign up online for an appointment via a website run by Somos Community Care, a health care organization that served low-income communities. They could also make an appointment by phone. But because many Bronx residents lacked high-speed internet and still others found it difficult to make an appointment by phone or online while doing shift work, the city also allowed residents to sign up for an appointment at the stadium itself.
Mayor Bill de Blasio called the site, which offered 15,000 vaccine appointments in its first week, a “game-changer.” Before the opening of the site, de Blasio’s administration had been heavily critiqued when data was released indicating a significant “racial gap” in vaccination rates, with Latinx and African American communities being under-vaccinated.
As was true elsewhere in the country, many of those who were vaccinated at Yankee Stadium received stickers announcing their vaccination status. These two stickers were given to Rose Sevillano, a Bronx resident after she was vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at Yankee Stadium on February 21, 2021. She described the stickers as representing “a search for the COVID 19 vaccine, a sense [of] hope for the future and going to normalcy after almost a year of quarantine.” Sevillano saw her vaccination as not only protecting her but also contributing to the herd immunity of her community in New York City.
Vaccination has always been contested in the United States but throughout the spring and summer of 2021, vaccination became sharply politicized. For many, vaccination stickers made a strong political statement in a deeply polarized nation. But the stickers Sevillano received are also part of a long tradition of Americans documenting their vaccination status with pins and stickers.
