Frustration Is Spreading Faster Than the Vaccine Is

Similarly, CBC news reports about <i>Allegations of vaccine queue-jumping at Ontario nursing home</i> [1].<p>I suspect that we should tone down the outrage over the edge cases (end-of-day left-over doses). The Atlantic article points to the need in the U.S. for a more consistent online queue&#x2F;registry for timely left-over doses while the CBC piece makes clear that Ontario is way behind the U.S..<p>Perhaps the concept of <i>continuous improvement</i> should be discussed more widely during these trying times.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;HL5Ww-YBaDo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;HL5Ww-YBaDo</a>

Central Maryland resident here (same general area as the article&#x27;s author is talking about). The situation is insane. My elderly parents are in Group 1A and are still waiting on their turn. But Group 1B got opened up, so teachers and others could get vaccines. Oh, and Group 1C also opened up, including other essential workers. At this point I think half of the adults I know are eligible to receive the vaccine for one reason or another.<p>Three people I know (1 in her 20s, 2 in their 30s) fit the description of hospital staff who got vaccinated despite doing non-patient facing work, entirely or mostly from home.<p>Schools are being pushed to open back up, and why shouldn&#x27;t they, right? Teachers have been eligible to be vaccinated for a while now! But I know of plenty of teachers who still haven&#x27;t been able to get an appointment.<p>I&#x27;ve been playing the &quot;refresh 7 different websites&quot; game to find appointments for my family and I finally managed to snag ONE yesterday! Except it&#x27;s in Cumberland, which is technically Maryland but might as well be West Virginia. So now I have to decide whether it&#x27;s worth spending 4 hours in a car on Monday to get one of us a shot. And presumably do that again in a few weeks for the second dose.

They mention having to enter insurance and other details repeatedly.<p>Why didn&#x27;t Maryland simply create a MarylandVaxAuth site, where you create credentials and enter all your details like insurance and age.<p>Then their distribution centers can still have a scheduling system, but the first step is to log in with MarylandVaxAuth SSO and the 2nd step is to pick a time slot. If you already have a valid session cookie then you wouldn&#x27;t need to type in your password. Just click yes allow Safeway Covid Vaccine Scheduling access to my vaccine related health details. Just need to give each partner an API key so they can set up sso and fetch patient details in case they want to automate things like checking for double-bookings or eligibility.<p>I think back in March people were expecting that we might need to vaccine our way out of this. It&#x27;s been 10 months. Why do we only have shitty web applications? I think this is the most outrageous part. I don&#x27;t understand how complicated it is to create and expand a distribution network for vaccines but I understand that building out an SSO system would dramatically help and it doesn&#x27;t take 10 whole months to develop.

I don’t understand why there isn’t a simple system where you register your interest in vaccine, age, medical conditions and leave your contact info to be called in when your shot is ready.

We’re naturally inclined to a technical solution here with a web application. No matter what, this will flummox some fraction of the population. Also, when dates open up, the ideal of “first-come, first-serve” degenerates into a game of chance based on who can get through. Given this, a solution would have been to get the Selective Service System involved and use something similar to the algorithm NIST came up with for the draft (obviously there would need to be separate async registration for that since everyone doesn’t have to register for the draft). There’s enough demand for this that people are willing to reschedule their life around their vax appointment, so choosing an appointment slot is unnecessary.

I’m glad I’m not worried about getting off the plane such that I stand up and wait for 10 minutes, hunched over, waiting for people to shuffle out.

I get it, but you&#x27;ve made it 11 months already, case counts are falling rapidly, spring is coming, and people getting vaccinated will drive down new cases even more. Calm down and wait another month or two.

Legitimately humorous how the article associates America&#x27;s failure with a communist distribution system, when communist countries worldwide have completely knocked their coronavirus response out of the park - so much so that it is considered unfair to compare America&#x27;s atrocious coronavirus response with these countries instead of its &quot;cohort&quot; of countries failing just as badly, like the UK.

Kool-Aid &gt; Vaccine

&gt; America’s distribution plan is no more fair or logical than a Soviet-style queue for cabbage.<p>I don&#x27;t see how a capitalist distribution system (if you have money you get it earlier) is in any way more fair than a system which is based on need.<p>Capitalism&#x27;s strength is in extracting resources and increasing production and efficiency in things there is a good market for. But it&#x27;s not good at all in distributing things.

Oye vey. I totally understand the sentiment of this article. The vaccine roll-out in the US has been maddeningly frustrating. But could we please stop comparing everything to &quot;communist Russia&quot;? IMO this article is nothing more than a fluff piece meant to generate outrage and clicks. No actual reporting went into explaining why the vaccine rollout is stalled. The author instead chose to write down some unsubstantiated anecdotes and cap the story off with the specter of communism. Perhaps I am being too harsh but I find articles of this nature incredibly frustrating and corrosive to productive discourse.

First Dose First and approving more vaccines are the easiest answer to this question. The prioritization is not working well, for the reasons outlined in this article.<p>However, we can give approximately 4x the rate of people getting 100% protection from ICU&#x2F;death.<p>First dose first gives you approximately 2x the throughput (all first doses from all vaccine candidates thus far are fully protective from death).<p>Approving Astrazeneca, J&amp;J, and Novavax today would give you a group of vaccines that don&#x27;t rely on cold storage, so can be run through different distribution channels.<p>At 4x the rate, these prioritization concerns are much less important.<p>The US is flatlining in its number of doses administered, which means that by prioritizing 2nd doses, we will start to vaccinate very few new people soon (choosing instead to administer 2nd doses). We can see a looming shutdown of any progress towards herd immunity, and urgent action is needed.