I have not found this to be the case. I check nearly daily and when an appointment does open up by the time I select it, review it, and confirm it – the appointment is no longer available. The Memorial Stadium location is a couple of miles from my home, close enough to ride my bike (wish the cool weather had lasted longer if I have bike there though!). That being said none of the locations seem to have any vaccines available to me. (An overweight male with no health insurance over sixty years of age.)
I also have a friend who is a former healthcare provider and she is a decade older than I am and SHE can’t get an appointment either. Her husband is a bit younger and still working in the field so he has been fully vaccinated for months.
I tried a couple of the pharmacies in my area also on a different system and also had no luck getting the vaccine. Whatever the state officials say, it is easier to get Cold Stone ice cream than it is to get vaccinated.
I just made an appointment for an 18 an older person with no health issues for tomorrow here. I didn’t mean to, but it confirmed it without asking if I was sure I liked that time. Now I’m going to cancel it.
Its stupid that you folks in Maricopa county (I assume) don’t have enough, but its just languishing here. Make an appointment for yourself and your friend at Yavapai County Medical Center. You can use my zip 86333 and say you live in Mayer. Or you can PM me with your name and friend’s name and I’ll do it for you.
I just cancelled my appointment, so the 8:20 am is still available…as is the rest of Friday. And Saturday.
No. I’m saying that the websites for Arizona citizens are totally fucked up. Very eligible people cannot get appointments because they don’t know the “tips and tricks”.
The vaccines are delivered by state requirements, not by regional or county or city requirements AND Arizona is not requiring state residency to receive a vaccine. That would be stupid, we need undocumented people to get vaccinated and get back to work. We need snowbirds to spend money.
I, personally, think that Arizona will be very lucky to get 50% vaccinated. I want it to be better and I will do what I can to facilitate it.
Hey @Temporary_Name if transportation is a problem, let me know. I’m retired and fully vaccinated. Its been so long that my car has gone more than 50 miles in a day that it would be good for it if I were to come and pick you up and take you home.
It’s not a constitutional issue so much as it is a conservative principle. The term is “local control,” and having lived 25+ years in an ultra-conservative state, I can say the loyalty of those conservatives was, in order: local in-group, city or town, county, state, feds. The bigger the entity, the greater the mistrust.
However, the tide has shifted in the conservative pool, and the paranoia has deepened. If “local control” means, for instance, a public health officer who orders businesses closed during a pandemic, they immediately toss their belief in local control in favor of ideological control. There are deeply troubling implications in this.
@Temporary_Name If you’re uncomfortable playing around with what @JaneDoe42 mentioned, there’s another way to get on the list for vaccines that couldn’t be given in nearby areas.
My dad got a notification from them even after he got his shot, since he signed up as soon as they were open to him. They notify you by text, and give you 15 minutes to confirm via text that you’ll take it.
Note: I started a reply yesterday afternoon/evening but accidentally deleted it before sending, sorry for the delay.
That is my understanding also but they do ask if you have insurance, if the appointment is for yourself, if you live in a communal setting, and if you have underlying conditions. I assume all of those data points are figured into determining level of priority. For example I have a nineteen year old relative with no underlying health risks but lives in a group home whom has been fully vaccinated. I never thought I would be turned away, but after several unsuccessful attempts I did consider the possibility they would prefer to vaccinate the insured first for some reason.
I thank you for the offer, but as I said it is not that much of an obstacle to remain safe. An occasional trip to the grocery store fully masked (if during a busy time double masked), and occasionally passing others walking their dog in Papago Park (again masked and distanced with very brief encounters). The Maricopa sites are supposed to have more paid staff, more volunteers, and be better managed from a top down perspective soon. If things do not get better soon I will pursue additional means because I don’t want to wait for the heat to get unbearable.
Lots of good points here. First almost half the population of Arizona lives in Maricopa County, of course they are going to have more logistical challenges than other areas. But we also have many more medical facilities and have more reliable routes of transportation and less extreme weather. But I would rather those at risk in areas where medical facilities are few and far between are vaccinated first. Also some of those communities are so isolated that an outbreak could ravage all the residents, and if a road is closed there may not be any alternative or the secondary route may be hundreds of miles out of the way (we have this gouge in the north of our state and while it is pretty to look at- it does eliminate the possibility of building a road using the most direct route).
For the time being I will be patient, isolating is far less of a sacrifice than those who lived through the war made. I am not being asked to give up sugar or rubber or steel and my loved ones are not being shipped overseas to kill or be killed. See, I am determined to be vaccinated so a delay is only an inconvenience – not a missed opportunity. In addition I spoke with a minister friend of mine who has a flock of mostly retired folks and they got impatient with the state and county and have a doctor who is helping them all get vaccinated (my friend is a week away from his second dose). I can use that connection if the local governments do not come through for me. One more thing on this subtopic-- for me the hardest part will be waiting a few weeks to lower the guard. I just know myself well enough to know once the second dose is on board I will want to run with scissors, but I will wait the extra weeks (after all the waiting what is two or three more weeks?).
I am also concerned with the percentage of Arizonans who will vaccinate. (And those same folks who are resistant to the vaccine are also resistant to wear masks any more than necessary.) The numbers are supposed to be getting better with fewer on the conservative side being resistant to the vaccine. I am hoping by Summer (for the rest of the country- here in central AZ Summer started yesterday) we are well over sixty percent vaccinated and with fewer appointments to manage the numbers will go up from there (of course I am pretty optimistic). Perhaps by then, with the help of religious leaders and the support of some sane Republicans the social and political stigma of vaccinating will not amount to betraying their beloved Trump (who may be further disgraced by then) or their beloved faith. I am actually surprised by the number of the faithful who are softening to the idea of vaccinating.
And JaneDoe42, I am very grateful for the offer of the ride. It is not necessary I have a couple of vehicles to drag my sorry hide around the state. It would be nice to meet a fellow doper once things are more resolved and I suggest we start planning a social event for the Spring. It would be great to meet the Arizona Straight Dope posters and we are likely to have something to celebrate by then. I am hoping it will be an 88% vaccination rate in AZ!
Thank you for the suggestion, I will be looking into this a little later today. Like I said above- I will be getting vaccinated. I am more concerned about those who refuse to vaccinate upon stubborn support of “the virus is all a hoax” which came out of a lab in China. They do not seem to be able to see the inherent flaw in that argument, but I have come to expect less and less from them.
I bring this up because one friend refuses — no, not refuses (she says she will vaccinate if her boss demands it as a condition of employment) but is quite resistant to the vaccine. Having learned her arguments fail, instead of giving the real reason for her resistance she is saying it is because the vaccine is too new and too untested. I concede this as a viable argument. She does not see the flaw in this argument, namely that next year when millions of people have taken the vaccine without complications or sever side effects, her argument ceases to be relevant.
I truly hope that those who are resistant this year due to identity politics and the big lie will quietly comply next year when it is not quite so shameful for them.
Some counties seem to be fussier than others. As I commented a couple weeks ago in the Have you been vaccinated? thread, Yavapai county’s site said nothing about being a county resident but had no appointments available and ditto for Maricopa county, where I live. Pima county, to the east, had appointment slots open but the site said specifically, “Residents of Pima county only. You will be asked for identification and turned away of your address is not in the county.”
With 10% of the population Maricopa I’m assuming they felt they could not absorb even a handful of our residents drifting across the border while the other direction would be no biggie.
Just as a follow-up to my previous posts, this morning I was able to book a Johnson & Johnson shot for late morning. The Mesa Convention Center had lots of J&J shots available and apparently some Moderna (which were all taken as were many of J&J by the time I logged on) all to be scheduled before noon today.
I arrived to a packed parking lot about a half hour before my appointment and was done and out before my appointment time rolled around even though I waited a few minutes longer than the fifteen mins they wanted to check for side effects. There were lots of very helpful Mesa Fire personal and plenty of volunteers also. It was one of the best run public events I have ever witnessed. So while it was hard to get to the front of the list- once I did it was a cake walk.
J&J would not have been my first choice but now I am all done and my friend who managed to get her first shot before me still has to wait a week or two to get her second shot. Within two weeks I should be as protected as I will be (unless they develop a supplemental booster shot).
I’m glad you got it! Hopefully any side effects will be mild, I have heard that J&J doesn’t come with the punch that the others do.
Its so weird. Today I went to a huge nursery in Cottonwood (Verde River Growers - its worth a trip just to wander around the acres of healthy, blooming plants) and every single employee was wearing a mask correctly. Then we went to a small Mexican restaurant (with outdoor seating) and nobody was masked.
"Although the COVID-19 vaccine is now available to all Arizonans 16 and older and appointments are easy to obtain, the number of shots administered statewide last week declined.
And the majority of people in Arizona are still not vaccinated, with men lagging far behind women.
There were 345,466 vaccine doses administered statewide during the seven days ending April 18, which is 16% lower than the number of doses administered the prior week, data from the Arizona Department of Health Services shows.
The number of doses administered statewide last week was the lowest it’s been since the first week of March, according to the data, which includes first and second doses."
If the article is pay-walled (the Arizona Republic has weird rules about that) let me know and I’ll snip a few more pieces for you.
I’m thinking almost everyone who wants to be vaccinated has been – we’re just picking up the stragglers. I was reading the other day that if everyone who is ‘considering not to get vaccinated’ does not in fact, we’ll never achieve herd immunity in this country.
I agree, there are a few stragglers but mostly everyone around here who wants to be vaccinated has had at least one shot.
I’m also quite sure that it won’t be masks forever…not out here. Voluntary compliance wasn’t very high when Douchey was suggesting that people wear them, and its gone way down now. As in, there’s me wearing a mask, a few employees wearing chin-straps and crowded stores full of bare faces. Shopping online has become my default, stores are a last resort.
The CVS website lets me go through the process, but it only finds one appointment, not very close. I assume it’s a cancellation, and if I don’t take it, someone else will.
When I can pull up a bunch of appointments I’ll show mu husband and push him to sign up.