The state lists various vaccine providers to check out. So you begin by acquainting yourself with all the potential places you might go. You should also check out all hospitals you've ever visited. Your local health department. Various, but not all, pharmacies. National guard-run or sports stadium mega vaccine operations. Local vaccine pop-ups. But more rarely doctors or private clinics, in part because the first two vaccines, the Pfizer and the Moderna, require special cold storage.
Actual openings for jabs are posted on the various websites of the various vaccine providers. Dozens in this state alone. Then, because doses have been in short supply, you must wage computer war to find them, like an addicted gamer.
I'm talking pretty much all day until you find something, plus occasional website checks at night to see if new openings were posted. In the background, you are aware that Trump is being impeached for armed insurrection against the United States. But if you take time to really follow it minute by minute, trust me: No vaccine for you!
Imagine you're competing for tickets for the very last Beatles concert ever in a giant stadium. But each row of the stadium is sold by a different ticket website and you don't even know who they all are.
My wife, who is both an MD and a registered nurse, wanted immunity so she could volunteer to give vaccine jabs. I, more selfishly, wanted it because I need to have a hernia repaired. We are both over 65, which is the cut off age right now in our state.
We could have done what Rodney Baker and his wife Ekaterina did in Canada, where the vaccine is much harder to find. America, for all its scheduling chaos, has vaccinated 11.5 per cent of our citizens with at least one dose of the two-jab regimen. Canada? It's about 2.5 per cent and it's been easiest to get if you're a member of an indigenous band, as they are called. So Baker, a successful casino CEO, flew up to the Yukon in his private jet with his wife in late January. They posed as newly hired motel workers and got their jabs online with the locals. They were suspected and arrested, and now face the possibility of jail time. We ruled this out because we are not that desperate and because we do not have a private jet.
Done by the rules, crazy as they are, the American vaccine hunt is a game best played by the computer-literate and by fast typers, and fortunately I am both. I spent 20 years as a software exec and, much more impressive, I type at 110 words per minute. And I got totally skunked my first time out. Shut out. Zero appointments.
But I'm actually lucky. Because almost all scheduling is done online, if you're computer illiterate, or a poorer minority with limited web access, you're sailing into a headwind. As a result, for example, in Washington state Hispanics comprise about 13 per cent of the population but only about 5 per cent of the jabs.
I started with our local health department. I jumped in, started filling forms madly, and by the time I finished they notified me all appointments were gone. I was competing for about 200 jabs among 5000 others. I tried dozens of other outlets, including a drug store on a neighbouring island that proudly announced it had supply. But when I finally got an appointment, they cancelled it, claiming no supply. This went on for days.
Fortunately, we had also registered at various Seattle hospitals we had used over the years. But they have a don't-call-us-we'll-call-you policy. You register. And when they decide it's your turn, based on criteria that isn't clear, you get an email and have a chance to compete with everyone else they sent an email to.
So, after several days of fruitless web hunting, I got the golden invite from the University of Washington Medical Centre. I saw it appear as it came in, and I pounced like a vaccine-hungry tiger. I managed to get a reservation last week. My wife, a little slower on the keys, couldn't find anything until March. But then, like manna from heaven, a different Seattle hospital sent her a golden invite too, and she was able to schedule a jab the same day as mine, just across town.
We travelled down to Seattle, which is about 110km and ferry ride away, and got jabbed after an hour wait in lines. We got the Pfizer, which New Zealand has bought for 750,000 people. We both had arms more sore than a flu jab, but not so bad we wanted painkillers and it only lasted a day.
By the time we got home, the dose shortage was easing a bit. The National Guard is coming to our county later this month to administer 2000 inoculations. I was able to sign up two of our elderly neighbours. Daily jabs in the US have grown to an average of 1.6 million, occasionally hitting 2 million daily. That's up form 900,000 on Trump's last full day in office - almost double.
My guess is that Joe Biden, like me last week, is more worried about getting jabs into people than the fact that our Senate wouldn't convict Trump by the needed super majority. Because if Biden can stop the pandemic and restore our economy, it's Trump's future possibilities that will need a jab.
