Vaccine angst because the people who want it most are the least likely to qualify?

by philg

Among the middle-aged, the folks I know who are most afraid of COVID-19 are the least likely to have received it. I wonder if this is why we hear so much about people who are upset by the government-run vaccine programs (the same folks, of course, want the government to take over additional sectors of the economy).

One 40ish friend lives in Southern California, sends children to an in-person private school (public schools are closed, of course), and is a lockdown denier. Rather than wait in his bunker for an army of Latinx essential workers to deliver what he needs, he has been a habitual in-person Walgreen’s shopper during our year (so far) of “14 days to flatten the curve”. He left his phone number for the pharmacists in case they had any extra vaccine doses, received a call the next afternoon, and had a shot 30 minutes later. Friends who stayed in their bunkers clutching N95 masks? They got maxed out web sites, infinite hold times on phone calls, and no vaccine.

A friend in his 30s regularly attends in-person social gatherings. His circle of irresponsible Covid-spreaders includes a dentist. The dentist called him in January and said “I made an appointment for you to get a vaccine. Show up tomorrow at 11 am.” He did and he is now vaccinated.

Friends who have been volunteering for various charitable organizations, accepting the coronarisk of various in-person programs, have all been vaccinated as “essential workers” or “first responders” or similar. Friends who’ve been cowering while denouncing Trump on Facebook? No vaccine for them because they don’t fit any favored category.

Has this been a cruel twist of fate?

19 thoughts on “Vaccine angst because the people who want it most are the least likely to qualify?”

  1. I don’t know how much of a cruel twist of fate it is, but in almost every circumstance I can think of that involves some individual risk and danger, taking control of the situation and acting in one’s own interest is a pretty good strategy. If you wait for someone else to designate your position and make your place, you might be waiting a long time.

    I get my shot this afternoon. My father and I got sick of waiting for our respective health care systems to flash a notice on their web portals and tell us what to do, so we spent about six hours and got some appointments nailed down.

    I told them: “I qualify under Tier II, Group II as someone with two or more comorbidities. I can bring the paperwork from my recent hospital visits and my doctors along with my insurance card and ID.”

    “Fine.”

    I have the feeling I could have just walked in and said: “Hi. I have 2 comorbidities. Give me the shot.” and they would have done it, paperwork and ID or not.

    • Just out of curiosity, did they test you for SARS-COV-2 antibodies before giving you the vaccine? I ask because I’ve noticed that nobody who talks about being vaccinated, or wanting to be vaccinated but being put on a waiting list, ever mentions being given such a test. I assume that’s because no such screening is done, but perhaps it is and nobody thinks it’s worth mentioning.

    • @Ken Hagler: Just got the shot, 45 minutes ago. As to your question, the answer is “no.” They did not test me for SARS-CoV2 antibodies. They did ask whether I had ever “had” COVID and took my temperature, asked me if I had any current symptoms, and I said: “None at all.” I was tested negative via PCR about two weeks ago for an in-hospital procedure, my fourth negative test in less than a year.

      I’ll do a full write-up on the process sometime in a more appropriate thread but the bottom line: it was easy and fast once I secured the appointment. The vac. center was an old National Guard Armory in a town that used to be a medium-sized manufacturing/mill town and has now been post-industrial and the economy runs on health care/local and state government/elder and senior housing/immigrants and New Americans/school. The Armory is no longer used by the National Guard; only the emblems remain, but the building was immaculately kept and had incredible wood flooring that looked like it was original from the 1930s or 40s.

      The room was divided into four sections: Intake/Registration, Initial Wait, Vaccination Stations (with collapsible cloth dividers) and then Pre-Exit waiting room where you sit and wait for 15 minutes to see if you go into anaphylactic shock. Nobody did while I was there and it didn’t look from the mood and expressions on people’s masked faces that anyone had that day. It ran very smoothly, the IT was working.

      Total elapsed time from walk-up to bug-out was approximately 50 minutes. It was well staffed and humming, with lots of volunteers and hospital people wiping things down, talking to people, etc. The intake screening consisted of answering a few questions to a worker behind a plexiglass tent, but nothing about my medical history except allergies/anaphylactic reactions and my current COVID status. Nobody asked me to prove my CoMos but I had the docs. in case someone did. Showed ID and insurance card, checked off on list. That was it.

    • @Ken Hagler: Toucan Sam just reminded me in another thread. It looked like the staff was: A handful of town police officers, about a dozen Senior Center volunteers (I didn’t ask if they were paid), quite a few RNs and other workers from the hospital a half mile away, and a few maintenance staff and younger workers who probably got min. wage for doing things like wiping down chairs, escorting people from place to place, keeping paper in the printers, etc. There was a surprising amount of paper: At least 4-5 sheets of paper total and I took home two sheets, a card showing that I had Shot 1 with my date for Shot 2, and a nice St. Patrick’s Day sticker which I immediately and proudly applied to my hoodie on the way out the door.

    • @Alex

      My experience was similar. While it wasn’t held in an armory per se, it was held in a convention center but run by the National Guard. My first dose I was in-and-out in less than an hour. The second dose was an even quicker 30 minutes, and both of those included the 15 minutes of mandatory wait time after the shot in case you had any immediate reactions.

      FunFact: For my first dose, they gave me an electronic timer set to 15 minutes and when it went off I was allowed to leave. For my second dose, I was told to time myself. Why? Well so many people had dropped and broken their electronic timers during the three week period between my doses that they didn’t have enough to hand out. BTW no one checked my timer the second time, so it was on the honor system that I waited the 15 minutes. I figured I might as well, rather than have an adverse reaction while driving home.

    • I don’t understand how this is taking control of the situation. Are you saying that you don’t actually qualify in that tier and you said you did or that it was difficult for you to find an appointment and invested the time to find one? Or something else?

    • @Scarlet Number: I had some fun with this today. In my vac. center, after you got the shot the RN who administered it pushed a button on her phone to record the timestamp, then asked: “What’s your favorite number?” and I immediately said: “I don’t have one.” And then she insisted so I said: “97”. She looked at me like I was 7 years old and said: “It has to be from 1 to 25.” So I said: “OK, 16.” We both laughed.

      She needed the number to direct me to a chair with the number I had chosen (if it was available) in the Anaphylactic Shock area. As we were walking over, I joked to her: “Lauren, I’m sorry if I’m being a little glib. Actually my favorite numbers are all transcendental but I didn’t want to say ‘Pi.’ ” She laughed again, and I figured I was doing pretty well at that point.

      So finally we get to the APS area and voila, Chair 16 is open. I sit down and watch the big clock they have hanging from the wall for 15 minutes and in the interim a couple of workers migrate among the newly-vaccinated to make sure they’re OK. I fiddle with my phone, study the architecture, etc., and after 15 minutes, a different woman who was looking at a computer screen walks up and says:

      “It’s Your Time.”

      I looked at her, threw my voice a little into the baritone and said: “Oh, my Lord let’s hope not, please don’t do this to me! I’m not ready!”

      Laughs, laughs, a little apology. She said: “Oh, I’ve never said it to someone that way before. I’m sorry. You have a great sense of humor.”

      I said: “Listen, don’t worry about it, whatever will be will be.” [Laugh]

    • @Mitch: The latter. I qualify, and I brought the paperwork to prove it if I had to. My health care provider gave me zero advice and no help, so I took matters into my own hands and successfully found an appointment.

  2. Anti-Trump, anti-Amrrican, anti Floridian snowbirds that I know, went to Florida and got vaccinated. And they support lockdowns, just not for them.
    The ironies and hypocracies run rampant through this pandamic.

  3. In Victoria County, the process was smooth once they got adequate quantity of the vaccine — sign up on line, get a QR code on your phone, show up at the right time, follow the Texas Highway Patrol officers’ directions to the volunteers who showed you where to park, keep moving, flash your code at everyone you met, pick up a vaccination record card and an appointment card for your second injection, get your injection, follow volunteers to the recovery area, leave.

  4. My latest thing to be outraged is this: why has the CDC said it’s okay for the vaccinated to mingle, but the recovered have been given no such dispensation? I believe that the powers of “science” are deliberately downplaying naturally gained immunity in order to push vaccination.

    • I would imagine because someone who thinks they may have had it didn’t necessarily have it.

  5. A person at little direct personal risk may still wish to get vaccinated because they are concerned about transmission. Why not just avoid people who have high risk? What about your contacts who may be low-risk themselves, but you aren’t sure if they are conscientious about avoiding high risk people, etc. etc. The only way to be really sure is to only have contact with a closed group of low-risk people. How big a group is that likely to be, for most people?
    On the other hand, if you are vaccinated and take reasonable precautions, you may be able to enjoy a significantly wider circle of contacts, with minimal concern about contributing directly or indirectly to transmission.

  6. Looks like no one is objecting to call or apply on line to set an appointment and be given a code with an appointment. All those folks have some kind of ID to get their shot. And even worse, they are being tracked in a DB for their injection record. So why cannot the same system be applied for voting?

    • Constitution says noting about any ids. It implies that election integrity is domain of the states. I hope that it is an only reason supreme court is not taking election cases.

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