The whole thing started with my parents. At 69 and 67, they were eligible for a Covid-19 vaccine in Pennsylvania the week of the presidential inauguration. They immediately registered with their local health department and were sure they would be called soon. They did not realize that the situation in Pennsylvania at the time was a disaster – that millions of people were now eligible and there was not enough stock.
I decided to help them, but my efforts were fruitless. It did not take too long to realize that it was my part-time job to discuss my parents’ vaccinations for my parents. I devoted a few hours a day to the task – enough to make me feel like I was trying hard, but not so much that I would burn out right away. I will wake up before dawn between 5 and 6 a.m. and work on the vaccination hunt until about 7:30 a.m. when my 4-year-old daughter gets up.
I had the time and energy for the task. I left a high-pressure job early in 2020 to work for myself, then the pandemic hit, and like so many other women, I cared primarily for my daughter and put my career in the background. think of ways to pass the days and weeks while keeping everyone safe and relatively healthy.
At the time, there was no centralized source of information or federal implementation, and it took a few days to quickly catch up on what exactly was happening in Pennsylvania. The state Department of Health has posted a digital map with thousands of points indicating hospitals or pharmacies with vaccines, marked in red (outside vaccine) or green (vaccine to offer). Unfortunately there were none of the places any availability, regardless of color. (They have since changed all the dots blue and added more colored dots ?! It’s awful.)
The more time I spend my head on the condition of the rollout, the more I worried that I was missing out on the chance to save my parents’ lives. If I only paid attention to the day when they opened group 1a for people over 65, I think. I knew I was catastrophizing and engulfing my own anxiety, but I could not help myself. I was particularly concerned about my mother, who started working as a public librarian throughout the pandemic. But I also had a strange kind of confidence about the whole situation, that I would make it happen to them through willpower.
Every morning I dragged myself from my bed, went down in the dark, turned on the coffee machine, opened my laptop and went to work quietly. I opened three browsers: Chrome, Firefox and Safari. I have tabs open for Giant, Weis Markets and Wegmans, as well as some local pharmacies and health departments. On my phone, I would open my favorite Facebook group for vaccine hunters, Maryland Vaccine Hunters, where people would post notifications every morning about their successes. Next to me, on the kitchen island, was an orange orange construction paper crept from my daughter’s art supply, which functions as a fraudulent page with the relevant information of my parents (address, phone, email, DOB) , a list of PA code, and reminders about when certain sites are likely to release appointments.
After about a week of research and a week of dedicated research, I hit the jackpot and booked appointments. Once I confirmed the details, I had an unexpected, tremendous cathartic release – just sobbing, for about five minutes. Some of the tension of the past year has lifted. I did not realize how worried I was and how much I was immersed in the worry of getting through my days – just as I was returning to a personal school with my daughter.
I did not think long to text my elderly aunt to ask her if she could get a vaccination. The next day I managed to get her one close. On the same day, my parents got their shots. It finally feels like I have some control after a year of the pandemic that increased my life.
Word traveled. My aunt knew people in their 70s who, like her, could not find appointments. My parents knew a woman in her late 60s who was the sole caretaker of her 98-year-old mother. There were other elderly relatives in Pennsylvania and Maryland. A friend of a friend’s parents. They were all on waiting lists. I asked for their information and how far they could drive. I have had notes under names like ‘cancer’, ‘diabetes’, ‘obesity’, ‘idiopathic lung fibrosis’ and ‘heart problems’. You do not have to mention the terms on most sites to book an appointment, but people want me to know.
Every time I would get a hit and register someone, it was like a little dopamine to my pandemic-depressed brain. I felt powerful. I also felt exhausted. At the end of a successful session, I will be drenched in adrenaline sweat and shock from the black coffee I drank while clicking and refreshing on the sites for hours. I was so tired that I could not stay awake at 19:00.
For some reason, the people I did not know were more stressful to hunt than the people I knew. Every time I managed to make someone an appointment, I was worried that I would not be able to get one again. I joined a second Facebook group, PA Covid Vaccine Match Maker, and became interested in becoming a ‘Finder’ for seniors. There were more than 300 “Finders” and more than 3000 “Seekers”, and the group gave priority to finding appointments for people 75 years and older. I feel comforted by the common spirit of the groups, the positivity of the women (they all seem to be women) to look for others and share tips.
I emailed strangers some of their confirmations and said I was worried about the weather. I was hoping the 68-year-old woman and her 98-year-old mother could reach their appointments because the Northeast would hit a storm. People asked me what to expect at the pharmacies, and I could only tell what I heard second hand. If people were not happy with what I found for them, because it was uncomfortable for whatever reason, I would feel disappointed for a while before trying to find something else for them. In the meantime, the thank you email and cards I received – I’ll always save it.
Being a vaccine hunter means having an unfair advantage in a very unfair system. I have a laptop, smartphone and reliable internet access. But for some reason, I do not have confidence in my skills, regardless of my success rate. You would think the more appointments I discuss, the safer I feel, but it’s the opposite. Some vaccine hunters boast on Facebook of landing 50 or 100 appointments, but every time I add names to my list, I’m worried I can not find appointments for it, as the situation is so challenging and I feel pressured to quit quickly. to deliver. I do not want to raise people’s hopes and then disappoint them. Sometimes the appointments are difficult for more than hours and days, and sometimes I see a tweet from one of the bot accounts I follow, and I manage to book a few within minutes.
In my first three weeks of vaccine hunting, I booked more than 20 appointments. The Maryland Vaccine Hunters Facebook group has grown from a few hundred members to nearly 50,000. People have put together websites that have scraped pharmacy pages for new appointments. The sites are seemingly useful, but I am concerned that it is becoming more difficult for normal people to make appointments. Giant has changed its search radius for zip code from 50 miles to 10, and its website is starting you up for too many zip codes; in response to this, I cleaned my closet and opened an incognito browser. Rite Aid, the most stressful pharmacist website I visit, leaves you with pages of information, including an abbreviated medical history, before you can confirm a time and date. In Maryland, I worked hours to book appointments for the parents of a woman who was married to a childhood friend of my husband. Then I took my daughter, wobbly with adrenaline, to the playground. I decided it was time to take a break or two. I feel like I’m just Covid-19 vaccines.
Clearly, the scope of the issue is greater than can be achieved with Facebook groups, which are essentially mutual help networks moderated by unpaid strangers. What is needed are top-down, structural solutions for the distribution of vaccines. There are people who do not necessarily have the flexibility to take work off for an appointment, and people who cannot really drive to get their chance, whether it is because they are housebound or because they have not transported. Networks of kind-hearted strangers trying to be helpful do not solve the problem.
To be fair, things seem to improve by the day. States are adding massive vaccination sites and opening phone lines so people can book appointments without internet access. Health departments look at vaccination data and plan to try to reach communities that do not have equal access. The federal government is working to increase supply. More and more adults are being vaccinated every day. And while the government in Biden says there will be enough supplies for all adults in May, our family is likely to be in a holding pattern for another year. Vaccinations have not yet been approved for children, and young children like us will probably not be vaccinated until early 2022. The exhausting, imperfect risk calculation we did over the past year when we left home – this activity is probably ‘safe’, “This one is not – will not end for us any time soon.
I have so far interrupted twice from vaccination of vaccines, the most recent consequence of exposure to Covid-19 in my daughter’s class that forced me to keep her in quarantine at home (fortunately she was not infected) . It was hard not to think of the two remaining people on my vaccine search list. I was scared to open my Facebook app because I knew it would be filled with posts about public appointments that I didn’t take advantage of. After almost two weeks of unplanned interruption, I set the alarm for 6 hours on Monday after daylight and thought there would be less competition due to the time change, and managed to book it within hours.
Part of me wants to close all the tabs, leave all the Facebook groups, unfold the Twitter vaccine bots and just be done. Honestly, why do I keep doing this? This is exhausting and frustrating. But perhaps the simplest answer is that people still ask for help, and it feels good to say yes.