To get her coronavirus vaccine last weekend, Frances H. Goldman, 90, did extraordinary length: six miles. On foot.
It was too snowy to drive Sunday at 8 a.m. when Ms. Goldman took out her hiking boots, dusted off her snow boots and started at her home in the View Ridge neighborhood of Seattle. She drives to the Burke-Gilman route on the outskirts of the city, where she moves along a set of old train tracks heading south. She then crossed the residential streets of Laurelhurst to reach Seattle Children’s Hospital.
It was a quiet walk, Ms. Goldman said. People were scarce. She sees a glimpse of Lake Washington through snow falling. It would have been harder, she said, if she had not replaced a bad hip last year.
In the hospital, about three miles and an hour from home, she got a jerk. Then she bundled up again and walked back as she came.
It was an extraordinary effort – but it was not the extent of it. Me. Goldman, who was eligible for a vaccine last month, has already tried everything to think of an appointment. She has made repeated calls and fruitless visits to the websites of local pharmacies, hospitals and health departments. She recruits a daughter in New York and a friend in Arizona to help her find an appointment.
Finally, Friday, a visit to the Seattle Children’s Hospital website yielded results.
“Look, there are quite a few times,” she said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. ‘I could not believe my eyes. I went to get my glasses to make sure I saw them right. ”
Then came the snow, which will eventually fall more than 10 inches in one of Seattle’s snowiest weekends. Me. Goldman was wary of driving on hilly, unplanned roads, and decided to go to the hospital on foot. She took a test walk on Saturday to get an idea of how long the trip could take.
And on Sunday she went to the hospital to get her vaccination. The Seattle Times reported on Monday about her walk.
The appointment went smoothly, she said. And it has a special meaning for me. Goldman had because she could remember the joy of national celebrations in 1955, when another important vaccine was developed.
“I can remember when the polio vaccine was rolled out,” she said. Goldman said. She was a young mother at the time and polio made tens of thousands of children sick, sometimes leading to paralysis or death, and she remembers taking her children to get the vaccine at a school in Cincinnati, where she lived.
The deployment of the vaccine ‘was done in a very organized way, and it made a big difference in the way people could live in the summer – not only that people did not get sick, but that they did not the threat had to coexist. of becoming ill. ”
This time, Ms Goldman was disappointed with the distribution of vaccines. “There is no excuse for doing it the way it was,” she said. “It was disorganized. Completely disorganized. ”
Seattle is just one of the many places in the United States where residents are struggling to access the vaccine.
“There just’s not enough vaccine in the state and the country,” said Sharon Bogan, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Health in Seattle and King County. “Even under the best of circumstances, we knew it would take time. We know that residents like me. Goldman has trouble accessing appointments as the vaccine is limited. “
And while similar stories have unfolded across the country, the distribution of vaccines is slowly improving in the United States. President Biden said this week that every American who wants a vaccine against Covid-19 should be able to get it by the end of July, but he also warned that the logistical distribution would continue to cause problems.
In King County, health workers are struggling with limited supplies to deliver the vaccine fairly, according to Ms Bogan. “We focus on the qualifying high-risk individuals who are not affiliated with a physician or the health care system, and establish sites to reach older adults in communities that have been excessively affected by Covid-19,” she said.
Me. Goldman will receive her second dose of the vaccine next month. She plans to drive.
And when it’s all over, she hopes to house people in her home again, resume her work as a volunteer at a nearby arboretum, and keep her new great-grandchild, whom she has so far not touched at all.
For now, she makes many phone calls – her long walk has been covered by numerous local and national newspapers. The attention, she said, has not bothered her so far.
“I hope it will inspire people to take their shots,” she said. “I think it’s important for the whole country.”
Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.