SUMMARY: Feb 22: I'm a one-fer! And in 3 weeks, hope to be a two-fer!
[ELLEN: ADD LINK TO PART 2 WHEN THAT's DONE]
COVID vaccination: I have an appointment for the 22nd of February, about half an hour from home. Getting any appointment was a challenge! Plenty of folks on Facebook talking about struggles to find an open appointment, or traveling an hour or two to get one. Kaiser members were supposed to go through Kaiser and other sites were turning Kaiser folks away, and Kaiser was still limiting to over 75, so I was stuck.
Then, on Feb. 8, Santa Clara County stepped up and offered vax to anyone who lives or works in the county (and who meets the other qualifications due to limited vaccine availability, such as over 65 or being an essential care worker).
So, on February 8, I tried:
- Fairgrounds, which is close to me, had no appointments available.
- Everything else was farther away or had no appointments.
- So I looked at what I figured was the farthest-away option for most Santa Clara County people (Valley Health Center in Gilroy), and Lo! they had tons of appointments starting on the 11th!
I went thru the sign-up process, including picking one of their listed times on the 11th, Yayyy! But it said sorry it can’t schedule it. So I went back, and then it listed times only from the 16th! And those were almost all taken already! So I picked one and raced thru the options and--- it said it couldn’t schedule it. So back to the beginning and all of those dates had vanished, too, so I went to the last date available for scheduling, and finally it went thru. So not until the 22nd! They must have just opened up dates for that location and word got out fast and I wasn’t fast enough to get something soon, but at least fast enough to get something.
From notes on Feb 22:
I couldn’t get into the places closest to me, so I signed up to go way down to Gilroy for my first dose (a bit more than a half-hour drive).
[ignore numbers by photos]
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They labeled everything very well. It was calming in the face of COVID-19. |
The pre-existing round bench, one of many places we could sit to fill out our forms, had a 6-foot-distance reminder sticker. In fact, everything did. Lots of the usual floor stickers for the lines. |
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Reading material about the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines while standing in line. Convenient. And note the usual floor sticker. |
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Keep your distance! In four languages! All are common enough here that it's well worth accommodating them. (English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese.) |
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After the shot, on my way home, I made a quick stop at the Gilroy Outlet Center. In normal times, a bustling place. In these times, not many cars or people, quite a few empty shops. |
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Signs everywhere: On walkways, on stores' windows or doors, inside the shops, on benches, restrooms... I plan on posting a good sampling of those at some point. Haha. You know my track record for this. |
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A mobile COVID-testing station. "We accept insurance." My medical HMO (Kaiser) did this for free onsite--with a pretty long line for drive-through tests. I had one back in November and came out clear. |
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And it was all worthwhile, because I got this button!! Yay! |
P.P.S. (Noted on March 24) I haven't talked about my concerns about vaccines that were developed so quickly without the possibility of long-term testing. All that are approved are through an emergency OK after whatever testing the CDC required for emergencies. So: NONE ARE OFFICIALLY APPROVED yet. But I accepted that this IS an emergency situation, after all, and we need to put a clamp on the virus spreading because it's already mutated too much into nastier versions because it has had so many willing hosts (won't wear masks, won't socially distance--you know the lot).