Today, for the fourth straight time, I was denied an appointment for the COVID-19 vaccine.
I should mention that the shutout occurred on the Publix supermarket site, which, along with the Florida state site, seems to be the only source of vaccine right now. I think that is rather odd – why Publix? Why not CVS or Walgreens (both of which have many more sites and many more qualified people capable of administering vaccines)? I have to believe that some money went into the pocket of some politician somewhere.
The Publix website is actually pretty good, listing appointment slots available by county. The counts are updated each minute, so you can sit in front of your computer for an hour or more and slowly watch your opportunity to get immunized slip away. Also, if you are lucky enough to be offered an opportunity to book an appointment, you can book it anywhere in the state where there are open slots, if you are willing to travel.
Today all slots for southwest Florida were booked in under 45 minutes. But I am willing to drive 2 hours to get my shots so I continued to watch. 90 minutes after all local slots were gone there were still thousands of slots available in Orlando. I imagine some of those slots were taken by people like me who were shut out of the local venues. That strikes me as an inept allocation of doses. Why allocate so many to Orlando, which has relatively few eligible residents (i.e., over 65) and so few to southwest Florida which is drowning in retired folks? Isn’t it both incompetent and cruel to make retired people travel 12 hours (2 6-hour round trips to Orlando) to get the vaccines that the state wants the elderly to receive?
Today was especially egregious. In my previous 3 shutouts , all slots were taken within 90 minutes. Today, 3 hours after the site opened for business, there was still one county up in the panhandle that had slots available.