Healthcare, schmealthcare rant

/ Tracy Abell

As of yesterday, I am eligible in Colorado for a covid vaccine. As of this moment, I’m about to pull out all my hair.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels

Off and on today, I checked the various sites for vaccine alerts and availability. Every single time, the listings for available appointments were always false. I’d click on the link and get variations of “There are no more appointments at this site.” But just now, I was actually allowed to select a date and time for an appointment and I thought, “This is it!” I made it through the entire process, answering all the questions about allergies, health condition, etc., and then it came time to confirm my appointment. Confirmation? Yeah, right. I got “We’re all out of vaccine.”

I’m very fortunate to be able to commit time to trying to make an appointment. I don’t have an outside job. I have access to a working computer and the internet. If it’s this hard for me to find an appointment, how in the hell are people without my circumstances supposed to get vaccinated?

They’ve had a year to get their acts together on the vaccine roll-out. But the government’s number one priority during this pandemic has been to protect capitalism at the expense of the people, so this vaccine mess shouldn’t be a shocker. I mean, they’re denying us Medicare for All during a freaking pandemic that’s killed 541,000 people so far. People are being evicted and unhoused people living in tents are being harassed by police, all during a freaking pandemic. Our well-being is clearly not the priority.

Still, I can’t help but be appalled how this pandemic has proven (again) that here in the United States, the world’s most expensive health care “system” is the least effective. More than half a million people dead . . . and counting.

11 thoughts on “Healthcare, schmealthcare rant”

  1. I was eligible in the beginning of January. The sites were overloaded and I do have a job outside the house, so I didn’t have time to hit refresh over and over until I got an appointment. At the end of February, the state sent me a link to appointments they finally had available for me to sign up. I got my first dose (Pfizer) two weeks ago and go for my second next week. The catch is that the mega sites closest to me in the most populous area of the state are booked, so I had to choose a site 150 miles away. The site itself is very well run, staffed by National Guard soldiers. There was no waiting, except at the end in the observation room to make sure I had no reaction. I had none, thankfully as I had the long drive back. If only the reservation system was run as a efficiently as the mega sites, we’d all be vaccinated by now.

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    • Whoa, that’s a real saga. I’d heard the National Guard sites were well-run and I’m glad you were able to (finally) get in, but having to drive 150 miles is beyond ridiculous. (What state do you live in?) I’m focusing on places closer because I’m worried about winter storms here in CO. Either way, thank you much for reading and sharing your experience. ❤️

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