Activists take fake bones to Klain’s home to highlight vaccine demands

A small group of demonstrators dropped a collection of fake bones near the home of White House chief of staff Ron Klain this week as part of a protest of the Biden administration’s coronavirus vaccine program. 

The display came amid of an ongoing effort by longtime AIDS activists demanding in private phone calls with administration officials, including Anthony Fauci, that the White House scale up coronavirus vaccine manufacturing for global use, The New York Times reported. 

“Nobody wants to be here in front of Ron Klain’s house, protesting a president that most of us all voted for,” Gregg Gonsalves, an epidemiologist at Yale, told The New York Times. “But we’ve tried everything else.”

Gonsalves said Biden administration officials “represent the public” but have shown indifference to the activists’ demands. 

“We pay their salaries,” he said. “They’re not listening to the American public, they’re not listening to the global public, they’re not listening to scientific advice. So this is the least we can do.”

In response to the demonstration, a White House official told The Hill that the president and his team have taken “decisive and urgent action to save lives” during the pandemic.

“These are shots that are going into arms now and in the immediate months to come,” the official said. “We’re pushing the world to step and do more immediately as well.”

The activists said the bones, which were placed in a neighboring driveway as not to provoke Secret Service at Klain’s home, were made by a designer in New York.

“What is it — 4 million deaths, 6 million deaths, 10 million deaths — where we can show up on somebody’s lawn and hold them accountable?” Gonsalves said.