The vaccination pace is picking up. My wife and I had our first round of shots last Sunday at CVS. Ironically, my daughter in Northern Virginia scheduled them for us. She had been checking the CVS website and saw that they were scheduling for two days in Richmond. (I had checked the day before and nothing in the state was available.)
Furthermore, I just got a call from Henrico County about scheduling our shots for tomorrow. This was a week or so after I registered on the main state website.
(comments below)
(comments below)
It appears things are starting to move along well through most of the state. We live in the Blue Ridge (formerly Thomas Jefferson) Health District and my wife got a call two days ago to schedule her vaccination for Saturday (tomorrow). They’re giving the shots at one of the high schools in Albemarle. She’ll be getting the single-dose J&J vaccine.
After reading others’ comments it appears I spoke too soon.
I guess spending most of my time around people who have had positive experiences scheduling and receiving the vaccine has blinded me to how badly things are being screwed up – and here I was ready to compliment our government on a job well done…
Just got an automated email invitation myself, but I have had #1 and have an appointment for #2 already. Clearly the systems are not talking to each other. Within a few weeks supply won’t be the issue and it will be access (Larry points to some remaining issues) and the remaining reluctance of too many people to do this. If the process stalls out at 50% or 60% penetration, it will just add fuel to the “keep it all locked down” nonsense.
If enough people took the masks and other safeguards more seriously ,we might have been able to operate with less lock downs. We just have too many people who don’t believe or won’t believe until they themselves are personally impacted.
It been almost one year since I have seen a person inside, in a place of public accommodation, who was not following protocols regarding masks and/or distancing. And, while I have heard people gripe about having to wear a mask, I have yet to be in a place where someone was refusing to wear one or causing a scene over wearing one.
Where, specifically, have you seen people refusing to wear masks in a public, indoor, space?
In a number of places – At the Walmart where a kerfuffle occurred and he left but another day one in the aisles… at Lowes, Sheetz and WaWa inside… yep. And then at he other end, folks wearing masks at the Costco pumps and out in the Battlefield parks (where I don’t , and think it’s overkill).
Once the vaccination is widespread I won’t continue to abide by the lockdown rule with the single exception of wearing a mask indoors in public places. Adolf Northam can send his gestapo to arrest me for running at 4:30 in the morning or having a large number of vaccinated friends over to my house for a cookout. I know a number of restaurant owners in NoVa who will reinterpret the rules for their businesses too. It’s time that Commonwealth Attorneys start refusing to prosecute Northam’s mindless edicts and for local law enforcement to publicly say they won’t enforce them either.
Don’t look now but there are a number of folks who will not go to a place that does not enforce masks – lost business – and they do let them know.
Okay.
Yeah well, once we get down to just the anti-vaxxers, we’ll be good to go.
Well, it didn’t take long for the anti-maskers…they’re out in force and they all say “I’ve got my shots and don’t need a mask”!
Well, it didn’t take long for the anti-maskers…they’re out in force and they all say “I’ve got my shots and don’t need a mask”!
Yep, Darwin Awards all around for those morons.
Yep, Darwin Awards all around for those morons.
My personal experience has been a fiasco. I registered as soon as the VDH portal opened but I never heard a word back. A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine who worked at a nursing home called me to say they expected to have some leftover Pfizer shots. So, I zoomed over and got my first shot. However, the nursing home was switching the next day to Moderna, so I could not get a second Pfizer shot there. I’d have to find one somewhere else.
The next week, my physician’s practice got a supply of Moderna shots — enough to vaccinate all their 65+ patients. But I’d already gotten a Pfizer shot, so they couldn’t vaccinate me. Drat! They also couldn’t find any record in the state system that I’d gotten the Pfizer shot. Not sure if that’s the nursing home’s fault or VDH’s fault, but somebody screwed up.
Meanwhile, I have yet to hear a word from the state. But I did hear this morning from the Centers for Disease Control’s Vaccine Administration Management System! They contacted me out of the blue and asked me to fill out all the relevant data. I did so, and the system told me that mass vaccinations were taking place at the Richmond Raceway… but it couldn’t schedule anything for me.
I have tried contacting CVS (I’m a regular customer) and the Henrico County Health Department.
Nothing. I got bupkis.
I’m supposed to get my second shot within two weeks or…. I’m not sure what. Will the vaccination lose its potency? I don’t know. Nobody knows anything.
There is evidence longer waits between #1 and 2 are actually better. I wouldn’t sweat it but keep looking. UK is doing 12 weeks.
Depending on what one wants to read and/or believe, some are saying a 3rd booster will be needed…. not beyond belief… we have to do that already every year for flu….
Keep calm and call Mom…
He’s lurking about here someplace.
Update: Just got an email from the Henrico/Richmond health district, telling me that I could go to the CDC website and schedule a vaccination. I did, and, lo and behold, I’m scheduled for March 26! Still no word from the VDH registry.
so curious… how many are getting shots NOT with VDH? Sounds like a pattern.
AND it sorta sounds like Henrico, Fairfax, CDC are not going through VDH so VDH is getting no respect…
I got CDC VAMS email Thursday saying that I could register and schedule an appointment, which baffled me: I am in Phase 1C. Did a little research. VDH said that Virginia had pulled away from VAMS and that VDH isn’t really interfacing with it any longer?! Today I revisited the VAMS portal and have an appointment scheduled Wednesday at the public health venue. Not sure that I won’t get turned away but I’ll go. I do not understand how CDC program is or isn’t layering over Virginia’s administration, but best I can understand jurisdictions are to dip into next phase if/when they project less than full absorption of doses. I think lots of people qualified for 1B are not known to VDH. Confusion abounds in discussions on NextDoor.com as a sample, and those folks at least know how to post a comment.
It’s been an unmitigated mess.
People who are not internet savvy, a lot of older folks and poorer folks are still screwed and the VDH process remains dumb as a stump.
I’ve got two shots and VDH has STILL not gotten back in touch with me to confirm they know, nor allow me to go on their website and TELL THEM, I no longer need to be in a queue.
Meanwhile, others I know are having similar issues except they were not so lucky as to have gotten their shots.
What we have , right now, is a cobbled together ad-hoc system – which really is no big surprise.. to be honest…. but it just gives more ammunition to those who question the competence of government – and in this case, rightly so.
We need Amazon or Google to step in and set up a process. 😉
Next time, Larry. Next time. It took something like 5 years to fully register and evaluate SocSec, two or 3 years for Medicare, one year to develop the Marketplace (with one month to rewrite it and get it working), and VDH got something up in a couple of weeks.
The ACA marketplace is a MODEL of good operation compared to VDH.
You have to ask – how many potential shot-getters are NOT being contacted because VDH is holding shots for folks they don’t know already got theirs?
Saw the Doc the other day. We talked about masks and vaccinations, etc and he said that 90% of the hospital staff HAD been vaccinated but you show up at the hospital without a mask on and you’ll NOT be served. These are the SAME YAHOOs that refuse to wear masks in other venues because of their personal liberties that Haner says is the fault of the lockdowns… not the anti-maskers…
I hit the Marketplace the 1st day it opened. ACA made my retirement possible. It was a disaster. It took two weeks and 1/2 dozen phone calls to delete my first application so I could start again on the new and bug-free edition.
One lady I was talking to became quite flustered with the system. I said, “Darlin’, if I knew where to send them, I’d have flowers delivered.” She started crying and that’s when I realized as bad as all these programs may be, at least we only have to deal with them once.
Masks. Aside from the vanity, no one has a reason not to wear one. Even years ago, long before this crap, if you showed up in an ER with a cough, barely able to breathe, the first thing they’d do was slap a mask on you.
ACA had a bad start – bad software and database issues but they got it straight… similar problem combo of Fed and States, some states have Fed ACA webpages and some have State ACA webpages….etc, etc, yadda yadda…
but anytime there are multiple databases trying to manage the same data records, without a link to keep them concurrent…
ACA is complicated.. it tracks income both forecast and actual after to reconcile the PTC at tax time… but it’s still a Godsend for the folks that have it, even those who are over 400% poverty level threshold… still quality insurance compared to alternatives.
Masks are the essence of personal responsibility during ANY major contagion and we’ve proved “we” are not, as a society, built that way.
No easy way to fix it… it is what it is.
Wasn’t the ACA marketplace originally a mess because the contract was awarded to some quack college friend of Michelle Obama’s. Accenture took over and fixed it. Like I said previously, all government needs to do is hire a competent contractor and get out of the way.
Wasn’t the ACA marketplace originally a mess because the contract was awarded to some quack college friend of Michelle Obama’s. Accenture took over and fixed it. Like I said previously, all government needs to do is hire a competent contractor and get out of the way.
Social security? You mean in 1934 or thereabouts? Medicare in 1967 or thereabouts? Lord have mercy. Putting up a good vaccine registration system may not be child’s play here in 2021 but it isn’t some Herculean task either. See what Coastal Cloud has done in Florida or what IBM is doing with Moderna. The only trick is to hire a competent contractor and let that contractor do the work.
F-35… some things, even with the most capable, jus ain’t gonna happen.
Just having the govt do a contract to the private sector does not assure nirvana by a long shot. For every competent vendor, there are scores of posers…
well.. the “trick” if for the govt to KNOW which contractors are competent, no?
COTRs they’re called…
What health district are you in?
Rappahannock. We’ve had good success from Mary Washington Hospital PRIOR to VDH taking over… if you had a MyChart, you were golden.
But clearly MWH and VDH are not using the same database – VDH seems to have no clue those who MWH gave shots.
This part is not government’s fault. The private pharmacies would not interface with the state system. The guy from Henrico who called me thanked me for answering the phone so he could know that I had had the shots and they could take us off the list.
You need to have one database system that everyone uses. When you have multiple different databases, you end up with duplicative data and trouble keeping it all updated so the guy who called was just trying to get their database up to date but other databases, he can’t fix so you still end up with multiple entries – not consistent.
In the database world, this is called concurrency and no modern database system can operate correctly without it. The more separate databases you have trying to manage the same information, the bigger the problem.
Ridiculous. The private pharmacies do whatever the contract demands. If the contract required interfaces there would be interfaces. And who wrote the contract? Oh right – government. Pharmacies hold a mountain of sensitive medical data in their databases. I certainly wouldn’t rush to open an interface to some half-assed government system that might or might not be secure. Of course, if Virginia still had a cabinet level Secretary of Technology these issues might have been foreseen.
I’m sure CVS also interfaces with a number of government databases, as well as say Bank Card databases also so they can accurately determine the validity of a credit card before accepting it…and PBMs as well as all the various health care plans that help pay for prescriptions.
but all such databases have to maintain concurrency if the data is going to be up to date and accurate.
And it just appears that the data VDH has is not consistent with others like CVS or in my case, our local hospital that administers shots… which shows 2 shots and VDH only knows a name and nothing about shots… and sends emails that says “you’re on the list and we’ll let you know soon”! 😉
This is a similar problem to being able to maintain a medical record for an individual that all providers can see and interact with….
say, you go to a new provider and he/she wants to see data that confirms your shots…. 😉
Fairfax has done quite well, sharing the county workload with INOVA, Giant, and others. CVS/etc. is independent, on top of that. Our 2nd shot is next week.
Ffx has not yet taken reservations for the below 65 age group- very soon though. Oops gave away my age! Younger than Larry I hope.
Well, that 65 and up age bracket comes with some fine print. A 50 something friend of mine just got his first shot because he has high blood pressure. Another friend survived a cardiac arrest (cause by a genetic disorder) 10 years ago. He’s in his early 50s and he already has both shots. One of my relatives is a cancer survivor in her 50s. She has already gotten both shots. I know people outside of Virginia who have been designated as occasional care givers for elderly relatives and got pushed up the vax list because of that.
If you’re over 55 and really want a shot you should talk to your doctor. My guess is that he or she can find something wrong with you that will accelerate the schedule. If there is nothing wrong to find … well, that’s better than an early shot anyway.
Yes the current 65+ Group (1b?) includes those below 65 with risk factors. Ffx had some pecking order, such that those under 65 with risk factors were taken at a slightly slower pace, not quite as high priority as 65+ Age Group. They are moving fairly fast now, so it is not a big deal.
I have to give credit to the District Director at Three Rivers District, Dr. Richard S. Williams and Riverside Hospital Gloucester who worked with three local doctors to get all their older, higher risk patients set up. In January, my doctor had prioritized her patients according to age and health conditions, and let everyone know from the beginning, if we were offered another opportunity, take it because there were no guarantees how many doses she’d get or when–and she had 569 patients eligible for the shots. She gave the first 50 to over 80’s patients.
I figured I’d been out of circulation so long, I could wait a few more weeks and didn’t register with the state. Riverside did a great job of organizing it. They told the doctors how many to book and when. The doctor’s office called with the first appointment about a week in advance in February.
At the hospital, plenty of staff to sign people in, give disclaimers, answer questions, give them a Pfizer or Moderna tag to turn in and usher them to the shot-givers. Afterwards, a staffer gave you a timer, filled out the vaccination card recording the first shot and booked the second shot. Second shot, last Tuesday, went just as smoothly. A friend in Warsaw had the same experience, but not sure which hospital she went to.
It’s a shame other districts couldn’t do the same.
Overtime we will learn that Dr Avula is not a logistics expert. Not sure we have one in Virginia. We need a tool like My Chart for VDH and a ways of using the data to get the vaccine to the most needed places, like where the most hot spots are, where there are the most essential workers. Why collect data if you don’t use it. West Virginia just opened mass clinics. Put grandma and the guy in the wheelchair at church and your family van and get vaccinated. Too many layers.
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