US parents who are having trouble finding pediatric covid shots, I recommend calling your pediatrician’s office even if they didn’t do shots in the last round.
We’re on a wait list at ours with no known vax date (because the private sector is so much more efficient than governmental distribution!!) but it’s a signal of interest to the office. Gonna call the pharmacy as well.
(This is ridiculous and I hate it, but here we are, part 849,902,344.)
@kissane for dose 2 for our infant, our ped’s doses had expired and didn’t know when they’d get more. They suggested we call state health dept.
Health dept. had availability but it was in 2 months and 40 miles away - we needed it much sooner. Health dept said pharmacies can’t dose anyone under 3 with any vax, so not an option. They suggested we call other peds to see if they could help us.
20 practices later, we found one that both had the vax and could see us within a few days.
@kissane It feels like we're somehow going through the same screwups as the initial rollout. There were probably no surprises for you in Patrick McKenzie's writeup of those in https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-story-of-vaccinateca (on leading a volunteer team to untangle the mess; one section head is "The System does not know where the vaccine is"), but it read to me like something out of Kafka.
@textualdeviance They’re booking and canceling a lot o of shots nationally, but not booking at all here yet. They originally said booking would open for under-12 on 9/29 but they’ve since retracted that. It’s really something.
As I understand it, we have now moved from bureaucratic modes into consumer modes, so no one wants to order more shots than they will use. So consumer modes of action—like calling and politely demonstrating demand—are probably the best lever in this deeply stupid system.
@kissane When I called my HMO to schedule mine, it was strange, the receptionist said they wouldn’t have any doses until mid October because they all had to be funneled through county public health for some reason (??), and my appointment is only tentative (and the news stories have not given me confidence). Meanwhile, friends whose plans will pay for Walgreens (mine won’t, I must go to the clinics they run) got theirs already a week or two ago. I feel like we’re in a stepped wedge study demonstrating why privately run healthcare is terrible.
@kissane Oh no sorry, I thought this was general commentary on the mess, though I appreciate it could be worse for peds. My eleven year old actually they scheduled (just as tentatively) alongside my husband and me. Not sure if she gets the same dose?
@emjonaitis Oh it’s definitely all a mess. The HMOs are doing some truly weird shit. County public health should only be involved in super specific situations where I live, but there are state-level allocation rules that affect that, I think.
@kissane I just can’t fathom why my state would be like, the first set of shots goes to Walgreens, medical clinics get in line and wait a month. You know? Maybe I should call the state health dept and ask
@emjonaitis Walgreens would have ordered directly from the manufacturer, is the thing, I think. Why the HMO couldn’t or didn’t do that is an excellent question!
@kissane Even Kaiser-Permanente which is huge and has incentives to keep people well isn’t vaccinating yet (I asked). I wonder if the drugstore chains got the first batches?
Add comment