Anyone who has had a first shot and wants to get a second shot at a better time or place, I discovered that, here in Oregon, at least, CVS seems to be holding some of its appointment slots for second doses. There’s a separate link on their site that days something along the lines of, “if you’ve already gotten your first shot, we can help you complete vaccination.” I was able to get a second dose appointment for my spouse using that link, when just clicking the link for an appointment in general was unsuccessful. This was for Pfizer.
The place my spouse got her first shot from couldn’t schedule her for the follow up until 4 weeks out, even though the recommendation is 3 weeks. We are trying to set up some grandparent visits, so earlier was definitely better. And now the mass vaccination site can have that time back for a first dose.
Here in FL they’ve opened vaccination to age 18 & up. It’ll be interesting to see how long before there’s supply of vaccine in all the counties and rather few remaining takers for it.
Walmart now has the vaccine. I checked, and their website shows that it is available at many stores. I counted around 10 stores in the San Francisco Bay Area.
To my surprise, I found out last night that I could get vaccinated this morning, so I got Moderna #1 at a community center on the other side of town. They got me in and out on time, and could do about a dozen people at once.
I only had to bring my QR code with me, on the printout they e-mailed me after I signed up, and was not charged anything, or asked for insurance.
On Sunday they put on the County web page that there would be an extra clinic in Santa Barbara tomorrow. They did not publicize it at all. I found it by chance because I help run a local Facebook page for vaccination information so I scour all of the sites. They were set to do 1200 Modernas that day and barely anyone made appointments because they didn’t bother to publicize it in any fucking way.
I spent most of today posting about it on Facebook and reddit. I contacted all of the local media but only our local version of the Reader posted an article. I contacted my city council member. I texted friends. I likely single handedly got a couple of hundred people to make appointments but there are still like 300 open slots. It’s disgraceful.
I’m sticking with my description earlier in this thread of this whole process being a mad scramble of a clusterfuck. Ad hoc, on-the-fly, spur of the moment managing - anyway you want too look at it, it has been incredibly messy and often not particularly fair.
Though I will draw a contrast between the overall chaotic dash to find an appointment with the professionalism and efficiency of the injection sites themselves. I honestly have seen very few complaints about those and I have to give props to the individual government entities (like my county health service) that have done yeoman’s work. And the general nature of a pandemic has to buy some extra credit for everyone.
But, yeah - a lot of this process has been anything but smooth.
Totally agree. And to underscore that, Santa Barbara County just opened to all ages which, of course, hasn’t been publicized. So yours truly just made new postings all over social media.
If you see things like that happening again, I bet there is a local Facebook group (or more than one) created by volunteers with the sole purpose of helping people find vaccine appointments. The one I joined a few weeks ago is now up to over 92,000 members. Find a group and post your info, and I bet the appointments will all be snatched up nearly instantaneously.
Damn. I made that post on my Facebook group and on reddit and the appointments went away in fifteen minutes, not that all of it was because of me but a lot of it was. That was a day very well spent.
Well my local health unit apparently made my profession an early go, bumping me a couple categories. I’m now “pre-registrated” with a couple time preferences. From others I know who went through the process, I should be getting it within a week or so. Goddamn I’ll be happy to get that done.
April 24 for the first shot (Pfizer or Moderna, most likely Pfizer). But an extended wait for the second one, as noted in the Canadian vaccination thread. But it’s nice to have the bookings done. Just made them this morning.
I’m going to guess my first dose of Pfizer BioNTech yesterday, at about 12:13PM, Toronto, Ontario. @Wolfpup, the nurse who injected me said that I may get a notice for the second shot, currently scheduled for late July, much sooner if there is an increase in availability of the vaccine.
I’ve heard the same. But I don’t really have a problem with the long interval. The first dose is supposed to give pretty good protection, and there is some tentative evidence that a longer wait time may actually be beneficial. But if they can schedule me for an earlier booster shot, that’s fine too.
So, in my state, in some areas, it’s still really hard to get an appointment. And so many people are scrambling for the few there are that scheduling sites are going down over and over.
I got my first and I’m already scheduled for my second, but I’ve been trying to help others schedule. Now, the pool of people trying to register is going to get even bigger on April 19. I’m going to make a guess that the people I know in that group won’t get an appointment until at least May 19.
Why aren’t we hearing about big tech companies making additional capacity available for these sites that keep crashing? Seems like a no brainer for being a good corporate citizen, and the PR that gets you. The extra capacity won’t be needed for long.
Is it just not feasible?
I was trying to help someone register today, and they didn’t even understand where to look on the page, because the page kept hanging, so the place for the dates and times was just an empty box. I could get it to go further on my phone, but still just got error message after error message until eventually it said all the appointments were taken.
I know you’re being nice but by helping people get scheduled, when they have their own computer and are trying themselves, aren’t you part of the site crashing problem?
No, I’m not doing it at the same time. I told them to check right when the appointments were posted. They texted saying it was just sending them in circles. I described where to look, they said it was blank and sent me a screenshot. I then offered to try for them.
I’ve offered to help people who don’t have the skills or equipment, or who have jobs or other obligations that don’t let them be on their phones whenever they please.
