Ah, yes! Good times. Back when the pandemic was cool.
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Journal of the Corona Year
04/04
This week, everyone older than 30 in New York State became eligible for some type of COVID-19 vaccination. Thatās me. And unfortunately that is my only qualification. Iām actually well over 30, but not old enough to get any real benefit out of it.
I first went to the stateās website. It was suggesting vaccination sites way out in the middle of nowhere. That didnāt seem right. Then I thought, maybe the City has its own website. And of course it does. Proving once again that Iām not really a resident of New York State. It collects my taxes, but I never go there.
I tried a few times during the week to schedule an appointment from the Cityās notorious website. It has an interactive map showing a wide variety of locations. A few had actually had appointments available. But the NYC website has a long list of boxes to check to prioritize applicants. I could only check two boxes: yes I live here, and yes Iām at least 30 years old. That makes me unimportant.
A colleague sent me an email on Thursday. She found appointments available in early May on a website named TurboVax. Itās an independent website someone put together to be helpful. It extracts the useful information from the Cityās website and presents it directly. I was busy and got to read her email half-an-hour later. By then there were only two appointments available ā both at the end of May, and at the Javits Center. The Javits Center is nowhere near me, and neither is the the end of May.
This is going to take a while. By the time I get one of the vaccines it will probably be moot.
The colleague who sent me the link, by the way, has been vaccinated. She is definitely under 30, but immunocompromised. I didnāt ask how ā thatās none of my business. She said she had to rent a car and drive out to one of the vaccination sites for suburbanites.
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Conversely, in Chicago they started to realize that only 40% of the people coming to the United Center (where the Bulls and Blackhawks play) were actually from Chicago, and started blocking out specific times suburbanites could come, refusing to vaccinate them the rest of the time.
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Iām in that boatā¦ both the stateās website, and the countyās, are sending me to scheduling sites that have every location at a minimum of almost an hourās drive away from me. Which is extremely annoying, considering that the county site sent a family member to a place just a few minutes away for their first shot.
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A lot of people from St. Louis drove 2+ hours to a rural county, because St. Louis was woefully short until recently, but little nowhere towns had a surplus.
They were fine with this ā but then said people need to go to the same place to get their second dose.
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our state (NV) is opening up to vaccinations for anyone 16 or older as of today. with some obsessive page-refreshing, i was able to snag an open spot at our county vaccination site this coming saturday. iām kind of stunned. suddenly, thereās a light at the end of this tunnel.
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Not to be a negative-Nelly, but my brother (whoās 61 and has no spleen) got his 2d shot but still has to wait until after 4/9 to be able to hug others. And I got the one-shot, but I still have to wait two weeks after I got it until my bodyās built up full immunity.
Thereās still some tunnel, but damned if thereās FINALLY no oncoming train for once!
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oh, believe me, i know the process. but what iām saying is that even knowing that, worst-case, i could be fully vaccinated and out of the 2-week waiting period by mid-May ā that is the light iām talking about. thatās at least a full month, maybe even two months earlier than i was anticipating even a month ago.
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I checked the Virginia website for Covid-19 vaccinations. It is not accessible and I am now very sick.
P.S. They have 2 separate sites, both are migraine triggers:
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Sorry to hear that.
ETA: Is anyone else appalled by all the duplication of effort going on in the 50 states (or 40+ states plus the southern dictatorships)?
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The man, Kelly Sills, a tourist from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, bypassed the Orlando attractionās medical screening in February and refused to get his temperature checked when asked by Disney employees, according to a report from the Orange County Sheriffās Department.
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Lifehacker (or some similar site) suggested reusing convention badge lanyards because the vax cards are one of the standard badge sizes. I found one rattling around in my desk and it was perfect.
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About 18 hours after my first dose of Pfizer, and I can report that I am almost entirely fine! so far!
My arm muscle is sore, and my neck is sore on that side, but my (often painful) shoulder is the same as it was yesterday morning. In fact, Iāve had worse neck pain just generally, from whatever it is that makes my neck hurt sometimes, so it could be completely unrelated and a coincidence. {shrug}
I donāt know if this has anything to do with the state response, or if it was just the hospital system itself, but the vaccine clinic was not crowded, and was very efficient. In and out in 20 minutes, including the 15 minutes I was sitting quietly to make sure I didnāt have a reaction.
I rewarded myself with takeout for dinner, which I havenāt done in more than a year. I am sooooo tired of thinking of what to cook, and cooking. Iāve been tired of cleaning the kitchen since I was 10, so no real change on that front. LOL.
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I snagged my appointments by randomly looking at the Walgreens site at 3:00 AM. Iām technically an āessential workerā so I qualified.
But I made sure I had the essential worker letter from work and my pay stub to prove it and all the other things they said Iād need.
When I got to the store I was way early, but checked in. They didnāt want to look at my paperwork and just had me sign a sheet of paper where I checked off the reason(s) I was eligible.
But, still got the shot and now waiting for the next appt.
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i see in the news this morning that Pres. Joe is moving up his deadline for states to have all adults eligible for vaccinations to April 19th, two weeks earlier than the original deadline. i donāt know what happens if the states donāt meet that deadline, but at least the pressure is on from a federal level to keep ramping up the vaccinations.
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Maine, where my brother and his wife both are essential workers, did away with any sort of tier system except for age groups. The federal deadline means they should qualify months earlier.
So far, no particular side effects from my second Moderna shot. Maybe fatigue and general aches the next morning, but I canāt say that wasnāt caused by 5 hours of driving and then staying up way too late watching movies that night 
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My wife got her first shot last Friday. Some arm pain, and her fingers were a little numb, probably for sitting in a chair without arms for 30 minutes (she has some allergies, but seems to me not bad enough for that. But no biggie). For some reason she got a Pfizer, while I got a Moderna. Does that make us a mixed marriage?
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My state opened it up to anyone 16 or older last Friday. Prior to last week, the schedule was much more conservative, so anyone under 50 wasnāt expecting to be able to get it until late May, early June. People who just accepted that and arenāt keeping up with it may not know, so itās worth sharing and letting people know to check their status because itās moving much more rapidly than expected some places.
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I can go you one better!
Indiana has just announced that they wonāt require proof of residency: as long as youāre at least 16 and have snared an appointment somewhere in the state, they will vaccinate you. They said they made this decision because of all the college/university students in the state (Iām guessing Notre Dame put their very heavy weight on the scale), but it applies to anyone.
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Have you ever used one of these?
My wife has one and she uses it often for neck pain (from a pinched nerve). Just takes a minute and a half or so in the microwave. Works really well for her.
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