My Surreal and Unsuccessful Vaccination Adventure
By Marc Cooper
My wife and I are both eligible for the COVOD vaccination. So it was with with great pleasure that on last Thursday we read a that a mass vaccination center was to open in Ridgefield, Washington about a half hour north of our home in Vancouver (Washington not B.C.)
The reports said the center would open on Tuesday the 26th and would be running Tues-Fri on an ongoing basis. Even better, the news report said that a provided appointment link would start taking reservations on Monday the 25th at 9:00 am.
Monday at 9:00 a.m. the link was still without appts. And there was an announcement that the link had in fact been opened a day early (last Sunday) with no notification but that all the spots for this week had been taken in 20 minutes, to standby and that sometime this week appts for next week will open (provided you are clairvoyant and know what time it will appear on the web).
Out of frustration on Monday I kept scouring the web and saw that the next closest mass vax site was open in Kennewick, about 200 miles to the East.
I almost cried for joy when I went to that link and saw that appts were actually available for that afternoon i.e. this past Monday. I made two for my wife and I for 3:30 pm . We piled into the car, raced to the Benton Fairgrounds in Kennewick. We got there at 3:10 only to find three police cars and signs saying the center was closed for new attendees. No problem, we thought. We had our printed out appt reservations in hand.
The cop we talked to acted like we showed him toilet paper. “All appointments are cancelled for this week. It will be first come first serve as we already hit capacity at 11:00 this morning (about 30 minutes before we left home 200 mis. away).”
“Just come back tomorrow. We open at 8:30 a.m. and should have vaccine but I would get here a little early,” he said.
We then took an overpriced hotel in what most call the small city we were in (Kennewick) the most boring in the PNW and set the alarm for 6 AM as my instincts were that “a little early” was not gonna be early enough.
We basically did NOT sleep. Just too wound up from the trip there and the see saw of emotions.
My wife and I reached the fairgrounds vaccination site in pitch darkness at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday only to find a line of about 200 cars and a police cruiser at the end telling us they were already full for the day — two hrs before it opened.
So with no choices and on no sleep we drove the 220 miles back home Tuesday morning. Got home at around 10:30 am Tuesday. Just as I walked in the door I got a call back from the Washington State Covid Hotline. I had called them while in Kennewick the day before and a recording said wait time was over an hr, just leave my number and they will call me back within 2 hrs.
The call that finally came back was almost 18 hrs and a day later. The very nice woman on the line basically said they had no idea where the vaccine would be at any given moment; that there was a supply in our area; that it was unpredictable when and where appts would open so keep checking links and good luck!
This is all in Washington, one of the states that has best managed the pandemic and that is now making great efforts to stand up as many mass vax sites as possible ASAP. The problem the state has had, say all local reports, is that the Trump admin never really made clear how many vaccines we would get here and when. One week of the Biden admin seems to have started clearing things up a bit. at least FEMA is now here and the federal intervention is easing things…a bit.
I can only imagine the frustration of other and even more elderly folks who don’t have a computer to sit in front of all day, refreshing the appt links. What a full on catastrophe this sub literate con man has bequeathed us. It’s no wonder that so many people needlessly died because of the criminal indifference and incompetence of the Trump administration and how many more will die before a robust and efficient vax plan that Trump never had is implemented.
Meanwhile, if you need me, I will be right here in front of the computer, clicking links!
