Get off my dick about not getting a vaccine yet (not anti-VAXX)

Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share (MPSIMS)
#41

We’ve been staying with The Daughter at her home in SCal. She’s in Riverside County. I did everything but stand on my head to schedule Mr VOW and me to get shot. I researched through the County: oops, sorry, County is only vaccinating if you are 85 or older.

Not yet.

I tried the pharmacy chains. Each one had a different way of signing up before you could even search for appointments. Sometimes, that got me stuck in a loop, and we all know how FUN those are!

I said piss on it.

Mr VOW and I had doctor appointments, and our family doctor is in next door San Bernardino County. At the end of the appointment, our doctor asked, “Do you want the COVID vaccine?”

Our clinic had their own supply. We made appointments, got the first shot, and then the clinic CALLED US with an appointment for the second shot.

We are now fully immunized! Wheeeeeee!

Moral to the story: check with your doctor. He or she might have access to the vaccine, and you can bypass all the County scheduling bullshit.

~VOW

#42

There were no appointments available in the entire state on Monday. We checked every county in all the regions of the state, but nothing was available via the pharmacies or the health care providers. On Tuesday I was able to find places fairly early and had a choice of a few locations within an hour of me, before the state site gave me an appointment in Boston.

#43

Excellent observation.

#44

Why are you at family picnics when you haven’t been vaccinated?

#45

That’s definitely unfair. When the process started and I was trying on my own, I would check half a dozen times A DAY and get the same automated response that nothing was available. It was only because my district helped organize a special distribution for educators that I was able to get both of my Pfizer shots at the high school that serves the elementary feeder schools in its area.

#46

I missed this in the OP. Yes, until you’re vaccinated it’s advisable that you don’t go to events, even outside ones, with large groups of people.

#47

By “not trying hard enough,” maybe they mean saying you’re in a different tier so you can get the shot?

I live in Missouri, which has lagged behind every state in the nation with its vaccine rates and rollout and much to my surprise I was the last person in my circle of friends to get vaccinated (I got shot #1 last week). Granted a lot of my friends are in the priority groups before me, but a few of them either leveraged their spouse’s eligibility somehow or flat-out lied to get one, which friggin’ sucks.

Since we’re a mix of very conservative and very liberal as groups go, it wasn’t something we talked about until I commented that I was getting my first shot and everyone stared at me like I’d grown an extra head and said they’d gotten theirs weeks ago. Anyway, keep fighting the good fight. Until then, stay safe, keep checking and follow all the advice you’ve gotten upthread 'cause I’ve got nothing to add but commiseration.

#48

Well, that’s great if you are privileged enough to have a primary physician. If you don’t, and don’t meet (or lie about meeting) the criteria, you can’t get immunized.

“But Governor Newsom says everybody can get a jab on April 15!” Yeah, Gavin Newsom says a lot of shit; what he and the California Department of Health says and what actually occurs are two different universes with only incidental causality. The vaccine rollout in California has been corruption and malfeasance in plain view with fingers pointing every which way and nobody being held accountable for anything. But good thing those Golden State Warriors got immunized in February. Go Dubs!

Fuck!

Stranger

#49

Is it any better if you go through your county health department? I don’t know how it is in California. Here in WA, I was unable to get an appointment through pharmacies or healthcare providers but got right in to a mass vaccination site through my county health department. I know California is a different animal, though.

#50

The Los Angeles County Department of Health is pretty much a laughingstock of this pandemic. Even though California has announced opening vaccination to everyone 16 and over as of 15 April (i.e. Phase 2 in the CA Covid19 Vaccine Schedule) their site still isn’t open to making reservations. In fact, as of today, it still claims that California is at Phase 1b instead of Phase 1c. And while they have vaccination sites around the county they have allegedly been turning away people with reservations because they have been running out of vaccine every day, resulting in people driving up to Bakersfield and Fresno to get vaccinated because Kern and Fresno counties have such low vaccine acceptance rates. I’m looking at taking PTO to drive update and get vaccinated because the state cannot manage the trick of using data to send vaccines where they are in demand, a logistical feat that every grocery and consumer product distributor has managed to do for decades.

Every time I hear on the national news how California is some kind of exemplar for vaccine rollout, I look around and wonder where these people are getting their information. The only people I know who have gotten vaccinated have gone out of state, gotten vaccinated through their employer via some kind of grey market vaccine supply, or lied about their status to get inoculated. Meanwhile, the state cannot manage to keep track of where a large amount of their vaccines are going as if they have fallen off the back of a truck.

Stranger

#51

Ugh. What a coil! I take it 4/19, the national all-in date, looks like an even bigger train wreck? Surely then the press will take notice?

#52

It’s pretty easy to get one out of LA County. Santa Barbara County has been open to all ages for a week and they are reasonably easy to get. Our County and SLO County have done a great job. My sister lives in LA County and drove to Indio for her first one and rescheduled the second one in Hawthorne. I’m really surprised that you’re struggling because friends of mine in LA have managed. Have you tried Kaiser? You don’t need to be a member. CVS works for a lot of people if you try in the morning. Costco is giving them now and you don’t have to be a member either.

#53

I just checked CVS. You can schedule one in Inglewood right now for a Saturday appointment.

#54

One of the things I found fascinating. I started volunteering at vaccination clinics - and as a clinic volunteer got first dibs on extra vaccines. So I got a shot on my second shift (jumping the line, but volunteers are considered health care workers - and its only if there is a no show). Two days later, the state opened up a bit more, and nearly everyone I know who hadn’t qualified before - they are all within ten days of me. My young adults are still behind the curve, but within the past month, pretty much all my own generation are done.

#55

So far I’ve been calling around and trying to find places that are offering vaccines; I took off a day last week and drove down to the mass site down Inglewood on a tip that they were opening up vaccination to all only to find out that they ran out of vaccines early in the morning. I have to be on ‘calls’ (mostly Microsoft Teams, WebEx, or Zoom.gov) throughout the day so I can’t just take a few hours to go hang out at a pharmacy, vac site, or drive out to the fucking desert hoping something becomes available, and if I ever have to walk onto another Kaiser campus again I’ll probably end up breaking something expensive.

I may just take a short vacation and go up to SLO to get vaccination and a few days of escape even if I have to distance from everything. I’m just finding it utterly ridiculous that people are having to drive hundreds of miles from LA County to get vaccinated while health officials are too busy pointing fingers at each other to figure shit out and just make this a process that is accessible to everyone. It is as if the process of wide scale vaccination is some kind of brain surgery instead of the basic logistics of inventorying vaccines, setting up a coherent distribution or lottery plan, and using basic metrics to assess where to adjust vaccine availability. Instead, all of the responsibility for this has been pushed down to the country level to health officials that largely don’t know how to deal with this scope of effort and aren’t constituted to support a wide scale vaccination program. I was hoping that President Biden would have FEMA just take over the vaccination effort and have a consistent process throughout the country because as bureaucratic and wasteful as FEMA can be this is essentially its purpose in life, but instead they’re shutting down sites and handing them over to more county control because that is going so fucking well.

Sorry for the rant; I’m just frustrated to have spent so much time convincing other people that the vaccine development process was not ‘rushed’ or short-cutted, looking forward to getting inoculated, and now facing many weeks or months before being able to vaccinated unless I lie or travel well outside of my county of residence while tech companies and sports teams have had early access to vaccination through some mysterious grey market of vaccines that are apparently falling off the back of delivery trucks. I don’t mind waiting my turn, but I’m pissed that the way to get vaccinated is to lie or bend the rules. It does not speak well for our ability to cope with the next pandemic, or indeed, even this one which, despite all of the bullshit about how vaccination will prevent further outbreaks is still actively going.

Stranger

#56

Ok, I get that you’re pissed off and I understand that it’s frustrating. You can make an actual appointment at a CVS if you try in the morning. I don’t know where in LA you are (I grew up in West Los Angeles) but I’d try to help. I’m doing a lot of work in Santa Barbara County and between Facebook and Reddit, I’ve helped a couple hundred or so people get signed up.

If you go to one of the County run sites in SB or SLO, you need to live or work in the County. There is a private urgent care in Santa Barbara that is still giving out the J&J. You can get one tomorrow if you want.

#57

Probably not. It’s being paused while blood clots are being investigated and it is unlikely a clinic would let themselves in for trouble. If they can get their hands on Pfizer or Moderna, maybe, but that puts you into a two dose regime. Although dose 2 has been much easier to get than dose 1-virtually automatic.

#58

I didn’t think that private clinics had to follow the recommendation but I called them and they aren’t giving them out.

So we are back to CVS and Costco. There are a lot of Costcos in the LA area.

#59

[NYT]

We are recommending a pause in the use of this vaccine out of an abundance of caution,” Dr. Peter Marks, the director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, and Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the C.D.C., said in a joint statement. “Right now, these adverse events appear to be extremely rare.”

While officials framed the move as a recommendation to health practitioners, the impact was immediate. By Tuesday evening, all 50 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. announced a pause in administration of the vaccine. Ohio’s governor, Mike DeWine, announced that eight mass vaccination sites across his state would shut down for the week.

#60

I went on the CVS website just now and there are seven CVS pharmacies who have appointments for Moderna for tomorrow that are in the city of LA or very near it. They have more for the next four days. Costco would probably give similar results. So would Kaiser but you just don’t feel like going to Kaiser for just a shot for whatever reason. My 85 year old stepmom, who is a complainer, got her shots at Kaiser and said it went well. There is no need, at this time, for your histrionics. You don’t need to take a day off of work to drive for five hours.

Trolls R Us redux [Now the argument clinic]
Trolls R Us redux [Now the argument clinic]