The randomness of getting a COVID shot

Perhaps it’s best that I write this today rather than last week when my outrage meter was pegged at 11 and I was so put out with Williamson County that I was literally red in the face.

If you’ve tried to get a coronavirus vaccine, you know that the process can seem random and arbitrary. And difficult. Getting through to the county’s vaccine help line can seem pretty random, too. Getting registered on the proper website can also seem pretty random.

A note to me from an 80-year old Cedar Park couple, desperate to get on a waiting list — any wait list — focused my ire, as did the lack of useful response from every single county official to whom I reached out for help.

I lost some sleep Thursday worrying about that couple.

I know how difficult this is but we’ve had months to prepare. We knew back in December that there wouldn’t be enough of the vaccine to go around. What did they think would happen when the vaccine was released to people other than first responders and frontline medical personnel? If they didn’t expect thousands upon thousands of people logging on to wait list websites or calling the vaccine hotline every day, what were they thinking?

Then, I remembered. Right before Christmas, Gov. Greg Abbott and his advisors abruptly opened vaccinations to those of us who are in Phase 1B because they misread the data and accused hospitals and pharmacies of letting doses of the vaccine languish on their shelves.

They were wrong, of course, but the governor couldn’t (or wouldn’t) walk it back. Vaccines weren’t going unused. There was a massive lag in the data — largely because providers had trouble with the creaky software the state used to track vaccinations — and every dose on a pharmacy shelf was committed.

But, that opened the floodgate and local officials dutifully amplified the governor’s decree that those of us who fell into Phase 1B should call their pharmacy or their doctors and get a shot before the vaccines expired.

I got a copy of the vaccine allocation list and began calling around, just to see who had doses to spare. The general reply was something along the lines of, “What?!”

I relayed that response to the county health department and they confirmed that no local health care provider had excess vaccines. They were as confused as I.

With his sudden announcement, the governor botched any hope that local officials and hospitals would have the ability to stand up a glitch-free vaccination rollout.

Like many of you, I put myself on every waiting list I could find, and forwarded links for those lists to my 80-some year old mom.

It all seems pretty random. It is pretty random.

I’ve been told that, as chaotic as WilCo’s response appears from this end, it is (or was) absolute madness behind the scenes. How many times did you call the vaccine help line last week before a live human being answered the phone? I called 30 times over three days.

I contacted that Cedar Park couple on Friday. Some friends had helped them get an appointment for the vaccine on Saturday through Austin Public Health. They reported to me on Sunday that they had indeed gotten their first doses of vaccine.

Pretty random but, whew.

I don’t think my mom has her appointment yet but our local provider called me and my wife Thursday and offered us a pair of doses. They had a limited number and some people failed to keep their appointment.

Again, pretty random. We just happened to be in the position we could dash over to the doctor’s office in time to snap up a couple of unclaimed doses.

I remain frustrated by this mess. There is not enough vaccine to go around and our priorities are a bit skewed — neither that 80 year old couple nor my mother should lack vaccinations, and the fact that essential groups like teachers and grocery store clerks can’t even get in line is reprehensible.

But, that’s not all the county’s fault. I can fault them for muddied communications — and that aspect of the county’s response has been all over the map — and not having a plan to register its residents but, in all fairness, the state put the county in a deep hole from the outset.