Corona Virus

[voyager]

After spending half a day on a website that kept crashing, I was able yesterday morning to stay on hold for half an hour with our medical group and book by phone sequential vaccine shots for both of us mid-February.    Feel like I've won the lottery.   

[joethefoodie]

Provided that there are actual vaccines in stock, ready to go into arms, I think I'll be getting shot one today.

 

[voyager]

Husband is skeptical until he actually gets his + second round.   

[StephanieL]

My parents in NJ, who are both 77 years old, had a vaccine appointment for 2/2, then it got cancelled.  Apparently, that particular hospital got a glitch in their reservations system, opening up to a wider population than it had planned for (ie, just healthcare workers).  So they registered with the state and who knows when they're going to get vaccinated.

[Anthony Bonner]

My father (73) got his last week in Palm Beach County. My mother (69) is hunting down a slot in Columbia County NY - she thinks she's on the right path.

Frankly I suspect the competence of the vaccination drive will scale exponentially over the coming weeks.  If the vaccine supply chain were f'cking up I'd be worried, but acknowledging the perfect is the enemy of the good and getting shots in arms seems to be starting to happen.  

Bluntly prioritizing healthy people who work in healthcare over just general old people seems not optimal in terms of reducing mortality and morbidity across the population. But political third rail I guess. Trust the science until it disagrees with my priors 

[Anthony Bonner]

Oh yes - and I've had it as has my direct family. Positive test and all and the most recent data suggests that's more effective than the already highly effective vaccines so I'll put myself last in the queue for the shot.

[Tubbs]

2 hours ago, StephanieL said:

My parents in NJ, who are both 77 years old, had a vaccine appointment for 2/2, then it got cancelled.  Apparently, that particular hospital got a glitch in their reservations system, opening up to a wider population than it had planned for (ie, just healthcare workers).  So they registered with the state and who knows when they're going to get vaccinated.

When you think of the amount of time and money that's gone into building the hundreds of registration systems nationwide, none of which work well, it really is mindboggling (or vomit-inducing). It sounds like the more rural states that are doing well in vaccinations only have 2-3 hospital systems that are coordinating everything, makes much more sense!

 

Incidentally, for NJ I believe Hackensack Meridian still seems to have appointments popping up all around the state - obviously based in Hackensack but they have locations in red bank, brick, edison, and a few others. I got my mother-in-law one by pressing refresh for an hour or so...  Burlington Mall seems to be a big location too. Some of the state super sites haven't opened yet, I guess waiting for doses...hopefully those ease the backlog once they do. 

[voyager]

In California, confusion resulted from the state's announcement that 65+ were allowed to get the vaccine in the next round.   This, while the first tier (medical workers) was still being addressed and second tier, (75+) beginning to set up appointments.    So websites and phone banks were necessarily slammed by people calling before their tier was up for appointments.    That this would happen is such a no-brainer.   

[small h]

2 hours ago, Tubbs said:

Incidentally, for NJ I believe Hackensack Meridian still seems to have appointments popping up all around the state

My parents (75 and 78) have been trying to get an appointment for a while with no luck. What my dad described sounded like me trying to get concert tickets - keep a bunch of browser windows open and refresh refresh refresh.

[Orik]

5 hours ago, Anthony Bonner said:

Oh yes - and I've had it as has my direct family. Positive test and all and the most recent data suggests that's more effective than the already highly effective vaccines so I'll put myself last in the queue for the shot.

I remain surprised that we haven't gotten it yet. 

If the quality of the registration process improves in line with inventory coming online then that's fine, but it's still something that any large tech company would have implemented quickly, efficiently, and likely pro bono. (of course the individual providers would still be able to screw up their own scheduling) 

[joethefoodie]

31 minutes ago, small h said:

keep a bunch of browser windows open and refresh refresh refresh.

It's why I use friends, scalpers, brokers, and wait till the last minute. In this case however, much easier getting on the phone and being on hold for 5 minutes.

Of course, at the city hospital where I got the shot, I had an appt. for 2:30, showed up at 2, didn't get injected till close to 5. Because they seemingly need to take the same info I would give Iand have given) going in for surgery. The same info, by the way, that I'd already entered in like 3 times. I guess they figure if I stroke out or go into shock, they might've needed to admit me, and this would save them the trouble of getting the info at that point in time.

[Anthony Bonner]

My assumption has been its a weird HIPAA related thing that made everyone overly cautious about that part of the process, and historically the big tech cos are not big on touching HIPAA. I'm assuming as we speak there is a message being sent "Don't worry about documentation. Just shots in ARMs and make sure they know what vaccine they got so we get the second shot right."  I am of course looking forward to the Times writing articles in the Fall of '21 about people praying on people using data stolen from them during vaccination. To which I would say we could probably compensate those people 5x for their monetary loss and its still a good deal for us.

Also need to stop worrying about timing on the second shot.  The current interval was just the shortest interval the literature would allow PFE and Moderna to use in their trials.  For all we know (And evidently there is some science to support this) a longer interval might even be better. 

[Anthony Bonner]

Just now, joethefoodie said:

, I had an appt. for 2:30, showed up at 2, didn't get injected till close to 5. Because they seemingly need to take the same info I would give going in for surgery. I guess they figure if I stroke out or going into shock, they might've needed to admit me, and this would save them the trouble of getting the info at that point in time.

This right here is a an example of the issues. At a single person level good, at a population level bad.  

[joethefoodie]

1 minute ago, Anthony Bonner said:

This right here is a an example of the issues. At a single person level good, at a population level bad.  

Right - I can't imagine them even giving more shots if they had them, if every single shot takes this much fucking time. It was a Fellini casting call.

[Anthony Bonner]

IDK if posted this before. My favorite Pfizer thing is that "Must be held at -75C" thing. Pfizer knows it needs to be cold, but doesn't actually know how cold or for how long. Data suggests its probably materially warmer, but there has been not time for tests to figure that out.   So where does the -75c thing come from? Turns out -80 c is as cold as a lab freezer goes on traditional chemistry and there had been a campaign to turn the freezers up tp -70 as a best practice from an energy efficiency perspective. So -75c is the average of the two!