I am getting very frustrated with the new Michigan rules and how the local media report them. The local news headlines that vaccinations are opening up this morning to those 55 and older. But wait - beneath the headline, it is only for those 55 and older with pre-existing conditions. Then some sites report – it is also for those who are called “caregivers”. The first report a few days ago had “caregivers” as parents and those caring for elderly relatives at home. This morning, caregivers are only those caring for “children with special needs or health conditions”.
To put the cherry on top, the local sites are not accepting new applications. The local hospital/healthcare system is reporting that they have approximately 150,000 elderly still waiting for their first vaccine, and they’ll be discussing how to accept applications for the new groups. The local pharmacy has been reporting “full up & not accepting” for several days now.
Yep, pissing me off as well. I’m in the group that is eligible as well. I was able to get on a list for Oakland county, but I don’t trust them to be proactive about letting me know when one will be available to me. Generally these types of things tell me after I already recieved the service.
That’s because no two organizations open up in the same way. Some places, like my state health department, open registration to an entire Tier and then take people as they sign up. Some, like the local hospitals, seem to be working their way from oldest to youngest, or from most pre-existing conditions to fewest. Some move caregivers or spouses up in the order, some don’t. Independent pharmacies can limit the vaccine to their current customers, or people in their local areas, or something else - or not.
And I don’t know whether it’s the media’s fault, or whether people just don’t get it, but YOU CAN’T JUST WALK IN AND GET A SHOT. You have to be on a list, then you have to be sent a signup code, then you have to actually sign up for a particular date/time. Unless, of course, not enough people show up, the vaccine is about to spoil, and at 4:00 p.m. they send out an open invitation for anyone age 18 or over.
I’m on six different local vaccination lists. I ended up driving 110 miles to a WalMart four counties away. Since then only one of the six lists has me far enough up the ladder to notify me I’m eligible to try to make an appointment.
Small world. I’m an essential worker on the list for Oakland County, but I just got the vaccine in a different way (standby list) but they said they weren’t coming back to that location so I’m on my own to find the second dose in 4-6 weeks. I’m not sure what the hell to do. Meanwhile Macomb county just says, “Don’t hold your breath.” The distribution of this has just been awful.
Spice_Weasel: You must be climbing the walls! I’m frustrated, but your situation is a regular supernova of frustration.
As bad as the reporting has been maybe you can reach out to one of the “consumer reporters” in the media. The people who left you in the lurch need to be in the glare of relentless publicity.
More bad reporting this morning: Headline is “CDC: Fully vaccinated people can visit unvaccinated people without masks, social distancing.” Then dig down into the article to find the disclaimer “as long as the unvaccinated people and any members of their household are not at high risk for severe Covid-19 disease.” How hard would it have been change that headline to “CDC says fully vaccinated people might be able to…”
When it came to the vaccine rollout, we had a choice to make (and this is a gradient, with many different points along it): prioritize by groups, and slice those groups thinly, making sure to get the first vaccines to people who really need it, but at the cost of complexity. Or open the whole thing up and let people sign up whenever they want to/are able to, which is super simple, but at the cost of distributing the vaccine inefficiently (ie, giving doses to young, healthy people who can work at home when older folks and critical workers are going without.)
As it said, it’s a gradient, so you don’t have to choose either extreme. My take is that we’ve gone too far on the ‘slicing it too thin’ direction, and, combined with different rules in different states and with different entities, what the OP is seeing is a result. It’s hard for people to know when they’re really eligible. For example, Washington just opened up the current phase/tier to educators and childcare-givers. I’m still not fully sure if our nanny is eligible or not - different sources say different things, and there are official state documents that still don’t even mention educators - but we got her signed up anyway.
Perhaps one way to make it work would be to let people sign up for a list, provide relevant demographic data, and then just do all the sorting on the backend, and just send people notifications when they’re eligible. Obviously not what we did - and maybe we couldn’t have gotten those systems up and running fast enough - but we have an opportunity to be better prepared next time.
Chicago has spent ten days building a fancy vaccination operation at the United Center, a big sports arena. Every night the news tells us how it’s going, how good it’s going to be.
Today was first day of vaccinations. Not very busy, not as many doses administered as one would expect, because too many people were showing up but coming from the wrong parts of the city. Yesterday they cancelled lots of appointments because they were from people in the suburbs, not the city.
Today apparently the city people with appointments were too heavily focused in the wrong areas of the city. Mayor Lightfoot explained on TV that equity, which is very important, demanded that distribution of vaccines come from a diverse section of citizenry. She didn’t elaborate but the news put up a graphic that showed what zip codes in Chicago were so far unserviced so shots were slowed down waiting for them to apply.
There has been some reporting that I’ve read, mostly in the Washington Post, that minority populations are underserved, and it isn’t primarily about hesitancy.
A podcast mentioned that the wealthier (and therefore whiter) people were getting more of the available shots. It mentioned that it could be faster internet, more computers, more time to sit and click on the sites, more connections to healthcare systems, etc. But that was explained as the reason some places are prioritizing zip codes.
If that prioritization leads to not filling up the appointments, then obviously they haven’t calibrated it correctly yet.
Your problem is the second half of your sentence. Quit listening to media. Not because they’re evil or biased, but because they will always shorten and simplify.
If the info has an official source, go to the official source. Want to know what CDC says? Go to the CDC website. Want to know what Michigan is doing? Go to the state website. Want to know if it’s going to rain? Go to the NWS website. Want to know if you can take a 6oz bottle of hand sanitizer on an airliner? Go to the TSA website.
The only thing a news media site, the Weather Channel, or some travel advice site can do is screw up the actual info.
To be sure, if Michigan is screwing up the distribution right and left, then accurate understanding of the official policy doesn’t tell you much about what’s going on out in the world.