My wild guess is based partly on the recent NYT interactive story where you could input your basic info like age, profession, location, and preexisting conditions to get an estimate of how many people are ahead of you in line, and partly on keeping an eye on local vaccine rollout stories like this one that show where they are working in the priority list. I don’t know where not-horrible asthma vs. my ability to shelter in place means I am on the list, though. If nothing is clarified by the time I get closer to the front of the line, I will call my doc and ask.
I’m in New Zealand. We have enough vaccinations ordered to inoculate the entire country but it’s not due to get here until the first quarter of 2021. As I’m not in any at risk group I’d assume it might become available to me in the second half of the year.
As far as I can tell the categories in the US are:
1a-healthcare workers and nursing home residents and employees
1b-over 75 and frontline essential worker
1c-over 65 and those with preexisting conditions like diabetes etc
At least in this area, the large hospital groups have been giving to their employees and the pharmacies are doing the nursing homes. When that is done, they will move on to additional categories. It’s hard to judge a timeline, though because this country did not reserve after initial shipments so there may be a block of time when we are waiting for vaccine.
I am considered 1a, but second wave since I am not actually in the hospital, although I do see patients in my office. The local hospital estimated that it would take about 6 weeks for the first round of their own employees and told me to plan on late January. I ended up being able to get it today. While I was there I asked about my staff and was told two more weeks but I got an email a couple of hours later saying that they can schedule now. It may be that demand is lower than expected but the hospital indicated that they were just much more efficient than expected and have already given 10,000 first doses. They also confirmed that they will be opening up to the public as soon as health care workers are done. CVS has also said that they will be giving vaccines to the general public according to the above tiers when they are done with the nursing homes.
Currently they are still in “ don’t share this email” and “must show ID and either a professional certificate or a paystub from a medical provider in order to be vaccinated” mode.
I’m phase 1a group 4.
I am kind of curious how they will enforce tiers within the general public (other than age, which is easy to document). Will we need a doctor’s note that we have whatever our preexisting condition is? Or will Walgreens, for example, be able to look in their system and see that they have filled asthma-related prescriptions for me before and let me get vaccinated in the appropriate tier? (Assuming that most doctor’s offices won’t be administering vaccine because of the storage requirements, anyway.)
I would think a doctor’s note would be required WRT medical conditions since being on a specific med doesn’t mean you have a specific condition as a lot of meds work for more than one thing. Also, I don’t want to be required to get the vaccine at the same store (or chain) where I get my meds filled (and what about people that get them filled online). You probably also don’t want pharmacists deciding you don’t have X because you’ve never had a script for Y filled.
How it will be handled, though, I’m not sure. Any method I can think of would be clunky, slow and potentially full of problems. I could see, if appointments are required, when you make your appointment, they’ll send a message to your doctor to confirm any medical issues you listed (medical problems that get you vaccinated earlier).
My bigger question is, how do they verify that you’re an essential worker? I can’t imagine they’re going to send out employment verification letters for everyone.
Maybe it’ll be on the honor system and then they’ll have to shut it down and come up with a new plan when they find out people aren’t all that honorable.
I’m 61 with slightly high BP but in pretty good shape for my age cohort. We seem to be off to a slow start in Canada (much slower than US at this point). I’m thinking autumn 2021. No calculation or analysis, just more of a gut-feel WAG.
I’d bet that essential workers would get vaccinated at their workplace. News stories talk about mobile vaccination vans to service different communities and industries and facilities.
I suppose that could make sense, it would be better than my imagination of standing in a line with hundreds of other people for hours.
It would also make it very quick and easy to verify employment. Take down everyone’s information and have the employer or employer’s representative sign a statement saying that everyone on the above list is employed at that location, can’t work from home, penalty for lying etc etc etc
I’ll get vaccinated through (not necessarily at) my job. We got priority for testing back when those were a little more scarce and it was arranged through Kaiser. Basically your name just gets put on a list of authorized folks.
Otherwise if my job wasn’t a factor it would go through my HMO which would tally up my age and co-morbidities and run it through some algorithm to spit out some tier and inform me when I was ready to go. They’ve been pretty good about sending out regular update e-mails and my personal physician has been pretty diligent as well. For someone like my mother who is in her mid-70’s and on medicare but doesn’t have a regular doctor I’m not sure how it will work. But she’s definitely going to have to be proactive about requesting it because unlike me nobody is going to do the work for her.
Wouldn’t the prescription system work? Call your doctor, the doctor writes a prescription for the vaccine based on your medical history and calls it in to whoever’s giving the vaccines; if there’s a choice of different people giving them, then just as with a prescription they ask you where you want it called in to.
– I’m apparently 1c on multiple grounds; but age would, as you say, be the simplest to verify, and I’d be 1c on that alone.
That’s going to be timeconsuming to get around to all such businesses, I’d think, as there are a very large number that have only a handful of employees.
It’ not fair, but I bet the big supermarket chains get their staff vaccinated before the little independant corner markets do.
Based on my understanding of the risks, I should be last in line - in my 30s, healthy, and already tested positive for antibodies.
All I know is that to get my staff vaccinated, I had to submit a list of staff to the local hospital to get them on the list and they have to show up with either a license showing that they are a licensed health professional or their last paystub showing that they are active employees with the practice. I assume it can work the same way for essential employees-submit a list of name and DOB of everyone working for you and they show up with picture ID and recent paystub and get checked against the official list.
I probably already got the vaccination, because I’m in the Pfizer trial, and had a minor reaction, (so I don’t think it was the placebo). Still, I want to be sure, and Pfizer says we can ask to be unblinded when we become otherwise eligible, so I think I’m going to do that. For me that will be next month (January), because I work in education. Los Angeles is in crisis mode, so I just don’t want to take any chances.
The prescription system is still going to be a giant PITA for doctors. The volume alone is going to be insane, plus I imagine many folks who are at increased risk won’t be crazy about going to a doctor’s office just to pick up a piece of paper. And if doctors are able to call in (or electronically transmit) prescriptions to pharmacies or other vaccination sites, it’s going to be a giant logistical nightmare to figure out who will end up being vaccinated where, or in the alternative, ensuring the transfer of millions upon millions of prescriptions to wherever vaccine is actually available.
Last night, I saw a news segment on how the country mobilized to get everyone vaccinated for smallpox. Thousands of volunteers were used, with many vaccination locations. We don’t have enough vaccines yet, but we should really be ramping up for mass distribution. The point being that prescriptions were not needed and the government saw the importance of doing this.
My guess for when I’ll get vaccinated? 1-2 years.
Yep, a friend of mine works for Rotary, and a few years ago he was in Bangladesh on the day of a mass vaccination drive (polio, I think). He said it was totally wild to watch - they basically kept track of who had already been vaccinated by dipping their fingers in blue ink IIRC. I can’t see that sort of arrangement happening in the U.S.
The whole thing can be done over the phone if the doctor’s seen the patient recently enough to know that they have got the qualifying condition(s).
I don’t know how the volume in any specific area at a given time is going to compare to the volume of all the other prescriptions being routinely written. We’ve got an awful lot of people on prescription meds, many of them on several at a time; and most of them need renewal and/or different prescriptions written every few months if not more often. So it would be a bump, yes; but maybe not a huge one in comparison.
– @Sunny_Daze, I don’t think the suggestion is that everyone should need a prescription to get the vaccination; but that at stages when people of a given age and occupation wouldn’t be eligible except for having a pre-existing condition, that the prescription system could be used for those specific people to certify that they did indeed have a qualifying condition.
Ah - thank you for clarifying.