Day #387 – Getting a Vaccine: It’s Easier to Win at the Casino

As anyone who lives in Central or Northern New Jersey will attest, finding available COVID-19 vaccine appointments is akin to playing roulette for high stakes. In fact, you have better chances at the casino than you do getting your shot scheduled. Go to South Jersey and they’re giving them away! The further south you go, the more appointments are available. That seems a little strange. There are plenty of people in the southern part of the state. Do none of them meet current eligibility criteria? I find that hard to believe.

A few days before I became eligible, a friend texted me tips and tricks, invited me to join a Facebook group and gave me the routine for navigating the CVS appointment site. There are groups on Twitter dedicated, just like the Facebook group, to updating the vaccine seeker with where and what time vaccine appointments open up. There are people, God bless them, scheduling appointments for people who have had no luck, for the homebound, and the elderly. There are people who vigilantly stay up all night to watch for appointment “drops” on CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, Wal-Mart, Acme and a plethora of locations throughout the state. There are sites that aggregate all publicly available information, such as VaccineFinder.org. You can post in the online groups the brand of vaccine you are looking for, where you live and how far you’re willing to travel. The scheduling angels will swing into action. Because this is all being done on a voluntary basis, I chose not to utilize the schedulers – there are people out there who really need their help, and I was just joining the ranks of shot-seekers. Didn’t think it was right. 

I’m also seeing that there are sites with a surplus of doses due to no-shows. That’s right, you read that correctly: people are no-showing for the one thing EVERY. DAMN. PERSON. wants right now. 

AND. If that isn’t enough, apparently no one, anywhere, is recording that you’ve gotten the vaccine in any database. All you have is a paper card, that you apparently cannot laminate, and you will likely lose. 

If ever there was a situation that illustrated how badly this country needs a central health records database, it is this. This is what single-payer would do – eliminate all the information sharing barriers. You put yourself on 300 waiting lists, one comes through, you get your shot, it is recorded in the database and your spot on the 299 remaining waiting lists are now freed up. And there is a record of your vaccine: when, where, and what. So when you inevitably drop your card in the toilet accidentally, there is an actual record. And no supply goes to waste or sits unused. 

Back to the Facebook group: there is a lot of activity on this group and it is amazing. There are J&J, Pfizer and Moderna threads, in case you’re interested in a specific shot. As soon as something is posted as available, the members of this group are ON IT and the appointments magically disappear. There are schedulers, seekers and “drop” watchers all talking to one another about where to find vaccines. People are literally traversing the state just to receive their dose. 

I’ll share some of the tips: If you’re keen on a Pfizer shot at CVS, you cannot enter the scheduling site through the New Jersey link. That will show that all stores are fully booked, whether they are or not. (Hint, most of them are.) You enter through another state, usually in the south or heartlands, and identify your location as New Jersey later in the process. You can also enter via the link for second doses, as it doesn’t differentiate between newcomers and people who’ve already received a shot. Apparently, CVS typically drops its next day availability in the wee hours of the morning. I’m beginning to think that they’re mixing it up a bit because at 4 this morning, their site was not functioning. I awoke at 6:30 to a very grumpy spouse who had been refreshing the site for two hours to no avail. No new appointments appeared. 

So how did we manage to get appointments, you ask?

Luck and determination. Period.

Tuesday morning, I went on the CVS site on a whim, through the Iowa link, I think. Got through all the pre-appointment stuff and IT WAS A MIRACLE! there was ONE store with availability within a 20 minute radius. I booked the last appointment of the day – there were at least 30 time slots open. When I went back to book John’s appointment, none were left. The whole process took less than five minutes. Sheer luck at 6:30 am.

We each then spent the rest of Tuesday trying to find him an appointment. Nothing. Then his not so great experience this morning. For the last few days, I had been seeing posts about Wal-Mart having appointments, and in my area. Every time I would go onto the Wal-Mart site, I would be directed to a store that OF COURSE had ZERO appointments. My local store wasn’t listed. Perplexed, I figured I’d call. What was the worst they could tell me?

JACKPOT! Ding, ding, ding! Most of the Wal-Mart stores were not on the online appointment system and were making them the old-fashioned way. John now has an appointment this Sunday morning. 

Whew! Adults will be ready for socialization by May. But in two weeks, ALL the people in the house will be eligible and guess who will be setting the appointments? 

Yep. You guessed it! Maybe we should play the lottery?