My daughter lives in Indiana, and she and my son-in-law have already been vaccinated because they are Red Cross volunteers and get counted as first responders.
She doesn’t usually have much good to say about the place, but she does think they have handled vaccinations well. Is it done at the state instead of local level? There seemed to be less of the “which of the fifteen possible vaccination sites can I go to” there.
It is not mandated where you go, but the website where you sign up is excellent. You can enter the zip code where you live, and it will give you a list of the 10 or so (I don’t remember exactly) location beginning with the closest. I suppose you could enter your work zip code as well.
You click on the location you want, and it tells you how many minutes it will be until you are able to sign up-- for me it was 6 minutes, so I stayed by the computer. It happened to be midday. If it had been, say, 6pm, it might have said “45 minutes,” in which case I could have gone back later, or stayed in line, but left the computer to do something, and set an alarm for, say 35 minutes.
It was drive through at my location. I was expecting a line, and having to wait, so I timed leaving to show up about 15 minutes early. There was not a stand-still line, but I was allowed to continue through. A path through the track parking lot was marked off with cones-- yellow in, orange out. The actual injection happened in gasoline alley. All the equipment and things the vaccine crews needed were taking up the shelves and spaces usually used by the mechanic crews. From in to out, including the time to wait in case I had a reaction, was 35-40 minutes.
Shot #2 received yesterday, at a county health department site. Pretty much the farthest away I could have gone and remained in the same county - I’m in the south central part of my county and this was in the northwest, but it was what had appointments available. Woohoo!
No side effects at all, aside from some soreness in the upper arm - less so than with shot #1, actually.
Yesterday - first shot Pfizer. I started volunteering at a clinic and we get shots if there are no-shows - last shots of the day.
All states got allocation based off population - no state has turned anything down. At this point, there is some amount of correlation between how far you are along and your population demographics and your vaccine refuser population. For instance - states with a lot of medical personnel and elderly who are seeing high compliance are almost a week behind or more states with fewer medical professionals per capita, low numbers of elderly, and low vaccine compliance. For instance Minnesota (high per capita medical professionals) has 21% having received the first vaccination (or the J&J one), but yesterday was only vaccinating people 65 and older, teachers and health care. Until we got to 70% vaccinated for the 60+ crowd, the next group wouldn’t open. Today we opened it up for people undergoing chemo or folks with organ transplants - with instructions that you can move to the next group if you are seeing issues filling spots - the next group is people 50+ with medical issues, or people under 50 with more than one medical issue.
Indiana reports 17.6% vaccinated (one dose or the J&J vaccine), but is opening up the requirements faster.
The NYT just released this:
Great news so the family and friends can now visit loved ones in nursing homes. It has been a loooong year.
this is great!
My second shot was scheduled for 12:30 today. I got a conformation email and text when the appointment was set that told me to bring in a completed release form with clear instructions as to where to obtain them (click here and print). In the last three days I got 2 email reminders and two text reminders, all of which included reminders about the release form.
Wanna guess who I ended up standing behind in line? If you guessed someone who not only didn’t bring in a release form, also thought she should argue about it because she gave them a release form last time than you would be right,
I’m not usually a violent person, but I really wanted to give her a good smack upside the head.
My recollection is that Indiana opened registration to 50-55 year olds the day after opening to 55-60 year olds. My wife is 56, and registered for her shot as soon as she got the email. I am 54, and got my email the next day. I also registered then and there. Like your experience, ours was fairly simple.
My wife got the first Moderna vaccine last Friday. Some aches and fatigue over the weekend, but otherwise no big deal. I am scheduled for my first Moderna shot tomorrow.
The closest site to us offering the J&J vaccine was a two hour drive. Moderna, on the other hand, was at the local Walmart, so that’s what we opted for.
I registered as soon as I got the email from my PCP’s practice. It could be they were slow on the uptake, but that’s not like them. It’s also possible I misunderstood what I heard on the news, and 55-60 wasn’t opened when I thought it was.
The closest place to me was the Brickyard, and an appointment there was easy to get. They had J&J, and frankly, I didn’t care that much which one I got-- if it were looking like a 2-3 hour ordeal to wait, I would have looked for the J&J, but that wasn’t happening.
This is the first time in my life I’ve been proud to live here.
I am not planning on voting for Holcomb, but it will not hurt my feelings if he wins again. I haven’t felt this good about a Republican since I lived in Bloomington, and I voted for one (dist rep Jerry Bales) against an anti-abortion Democrat. I wasn’t old enough to vote at the time, and didn’t live in Indiana yet, but my aunt and uncle, mostly die-hard Democrats (my uncle was a precinct committeeman) were big fans of Bales, because he was instrumental in getting the ERA through the Indiana legislature.
On March 9th Louisiana opened up the floodgates – anyone 16 years of age or older with BMIs over 25 now qualify. Few people with BMIs of 25 are visibly overweight – that’s like a fit adult man putting on 15-20 pounds.
Further, the qualifying medical information is merely self-attested. No medical records, prescription records, or supporting documents necessary.
I got my first Moderna vaccine yesterday, 25 hours after the state deemed me eligible. On the 9th, when the new eligibility went into effect, I called nine local independent pharmacies & clinics to get on their waitlists, plus applied for a vaccine online with a large local hospital chain. I got two appointments on my first runthrough, then got a phone call an hour later from one of the waitlist places asking if I could make it in the next day (the 10th).
Not sure if this information is helpful in other states, but around here, doing the legwork and getting on a bunch of small independent pharmacies’ waitlists seems to be the best strategy. There is no one-stop-shop at the state level to sign up for a vaccine – Louisiana residents do have to place several phone calls for best results. The big national chains that have online sign-up in Louisiana, like Walgreens and CVS, are apparently booked up way in advance. However, people who know people at these major pharmacies have been commonly getting their vaccines over the last several weeks (presumably via access to no-show/‘waste’ vaccines).
How about,
“So, how long do I have, doc?”
“Ten.”
“Ten what? Months? Weeks?”
“Nine.”
I got my second Pfizer yesterday and DesertRoomie her first. Except for a little tenderness and heat at the injection site, nothing noticed wit me. She was hit harder.
Pfizer jab number 2 is in. Completely uneventful. Updated my vsafe so for a week will hear from the federal overlords daily.
Got my first Moderna shot Tuesday, Mrs. Martian had gotten hers last Friday.
Arizona (or at least Maricopa County) rollout really stinks. They opened to 55+ early last week. There are three pods run by the county health department, tried to sign up for them but was always booked (plus two of the pods are way on the other side of Phoenix).
Walgreen’s is giving vaccines, but their site stinks too - you go there and enter your information, it says that appointments are available. Click on the appointment time and you get a message that no slots are available for the second dose, so forget it. Tried that site for a day or two, kept getting the same message.
The pharmacy at Fry’s Supermarkets are also vaccinating. Go to their site and answer basic questions, then you get a message saying there are no appointments available within the next three days. There is a re-check button, I kept hitting that until an appointment time popped up. Clicked on the appointment, times for the second appointment then popped up, clicked on one of those. Then three pages of information - address, insurance info, consent to treat - than a message that the appointment is no longer available. Grrr…
Back to the page to check for appointments. Kept refreshing until a time popped up. Scheduled the first, scheduled the second, then to the info pages - which still had my info on them so I could fly through them. This time got the appointment. Had to repeat the procedure for Mrs. Martian’s appointment. All in all I probably spent 3-4 hours booking the appointments.
Oh, and my appointment was 40 minutes drive, Mrs. Martian’s was 30 minutes.
There’s got to be a better way…
I’m in California and do not qualify yet under any of the eligibility rules in place, yet got my first Pfizer shot yesterday. One of the advantages of being a volunteer at the local drive-up community vaccination program.
I personally know 5 people in NorCal who have been vaccinated through Kaiser. My wife and I, both over 55 and immuno-compromised, still wait.
Got an Oxford Astra Zeneca vaccination today here in the UK. NHS website just asks for name and age and then gives you a list of appointments to choose. Currently they are doing everyone over 55.
It was at my local GP medical centre, a short walk. I was in and out in five minutes. All very efficient. A few questions, a painless jab and all I got was a small card to say which vaccine and which batch and the date. Sadly no T-shirt, merchandise or memorabilia.
I hear ya. I was online at 9am the day the new set (55+) opened and was 45 minutes getting DR’s appointment. I’d pick a time slot, wait about 30 seconds only to get, No appointments left at your chosen time. Reschedule/Close
Go through the process again, filling out the validation, again, only to get the same error. Thing was, it started out with 6 slots per time available and after getting the error, there’d still be 6 slots open. I think it was just the host being slammed. I was changing locations and times trying to get through to a completed appointment. I finally got a hit at 9:12pm Tuesday the 9th at Cardinal stadium.
Thing was, the appointment for my second vax was the Dysart location at 12:18pm and like you, we’re on the east side. Rather than cross midtown twice we got mine, ate at a favorite restaurant in CenPho, drove around some, saw a movie, and simply waited a couple miles from the stadium for the last three hours.
Sounds like you’re all set, but if anyone else is having that same issue with the Walgreens site, I found that when I chose the latest date available for the first shot, the second shot availability opened up.
I only ever got one available slot for the first shot. Never had the choice of two…