The Vaccine Minefield

 I promised that I would sit down and record our experiences with getting the Covid-19 vaccines.

There are five of us in this tale. Myself, my wife, Daughter #1, Daughter #2 and Daughter #3. Daughter #2's hubby and her two young sons haven't been vaccinated as of yet.

My wife and I started by registering with the State of New Jersey. We thought that would act as a central hub and would inform us when we could make a vaccine appointment. This was in late December.

Ahh, we were so young and naïve.

My wife was in a facebook group that was passing around vaccine information and that's how she found out about the state site.

At that time only healthcare workers were being vaccinated which made sense. Then things started to go frizzy. Daughter #2, who works for a hospital but is not a healthcare worker, was offered vaccine. Apparently they had a lot left over because many healthcare workers had refused the vaccine and they didn't want them to go to waste. So she got a Moderna shot and then three weeks later the second shot.

Then the hospital offered to provide vaccine to older family members if they lived with employees or cared for the children of employees. We didn't qualify for that but Daughter #2 had found a county sign-up site where she lived and suggested we check for one in our county.

Yes, there was a Bergen County site and we dutifully registered. That's the last we ever heard from that site. The state would send occasional "updates" but to date has not provided anything useful.

Then we heard that places with vaccines available were taking appointment directly. In particular Virtua Health in Burlington County was taking appointments.

We went online and made appointments on January 16th in Burlington County for March 24th. Honestly, I'm not even sure where Burlington County is but my wife seemed to think it was about 2 hours away.

Then, about a week later, my wife saw a post saying that if you logged on to Meridian Health just after midnight there were appointments.

So, I waited up until midnight and, sure enough, appointments magically appeared and almost immediately started to disappear. It was a race and I could only make one appointment at a time.

I managed to get an appointment for myself at Bayshore Hospital in Holmdel on February 18th. But when I went back for my wife Hackensack had appeared and Holmdel has disappeared. So I made her an appointment in Hackensack also on February 18th.

We had improved by over a month but now we were going two different places on the same day during the worst weather period of the year. At that time there were stories of people getting their appointments cancelled or showing up only to find out there was no vaccine. We also only had the first appointment so we decided to keep the Burlington appointments as backup.

I now had a new daily routine. I would check the long range forecast for February 18th and it started to look a little ugly which was a definite concern.

The next adventure began on February 4th as I was downstairs on the stationary bike. My wife got a message that Valley Hospital, which was only 15 minutes away, was taking appointments.

I logged in on my laptop and she logged in on her phone. I got an appointment for February 9th at 4:15 PM but she was having problems on her phone. So I tried to get her an appointment on my laptop. But as I selected times I kept getting messages that the time was no longer available. Basically the appointments were disappearing in real time.

Finally I succeeded for February 10th also at 4:15. As we were sitting there high fiving ourselves an e-mail came in CONFIRMING my appointment. Wait a minute. We waited and waited but no e-mail came for my wife's appointment. 

I called (and actually got someone pretty quickly) and they said that they had my appointment but not my wife's. Finally an e-mail came in saying "something" had gone wrong and that she had no appointment. By that time there were no appointments left.

Well, at least I didn't have to drive to Holmdel and I could go with her to Hackensack on February 18th but the February 18th weather forecast was getting uglier.

February 9th arrived and I made my way to Valley Hospital. They had turned Kurth Cottage, a coffee shop, into a vaccine center. The gift shop, which had been next to coffee shop, had been converted into the post vaccine waiting area.

It was all very civilized. There was reserved parking right near the Kurth Cottage entrance based upon whether your appointment was at :00, :15, :30 or :45 after the hour. The guard at the gate directed me to the right parking and told me to wait until 10 minutes before my appointment to go in. Since Kurth Collage has its own entrance you could walk right in.

That's what I did at 4:05. They took my temperature with some sort of remote camera thingie. I then went immediately to register and they gave me my official CDC Vaccination Card and, since I was getting the Pfizer vaccine, an appointment for the second shot on March 2nd. I then went behind a screen, got my shot and then waited my 15 minutes in the old gift shop.

It was all over by 4:30 and I was on my way home.

As soon as I got home I cancelled my Meridian Health appointment. Now Meridian Health had asked for confirmation. I had never confirmed my appointment but I asked my wife if I should confirm hers. She said that I might as well so I proceeded to attempt to do that.

I say "attempt" because the web site crashed and I couldn't log on to her account. My wife was convinced that meant that her appointment was gone as well and nothing I said could convince her otherwise. Honestly, I was a bit concerned myself.

As I continued to fail to log on my wife's cell phone rang. I have to explain that cell phone service at my house sucks. Carrying on a conversation can often be almost impossible and that's what was happening here.

Finally, she must have twisted the phone just right, and she found out that it was Valley Hospital. They wanted to know if she was still interested in getting the vaccine and could she come right now.

Well, yeah, I drove her to the hospital and she got her shot at 6:15. She got an appointment for her second shot also on March 2nd but at 6:15.

When we got back the Meridian website was back up and I cancelled her appointment for the 18th. The next day I cancelled our Virtua Health appointments in Burlington. Virtua Health sent us thank-you e-mails for cancelling our appointments. I suppose they must have had a lot of people just not show up.

So, three weeks until full vaccination.

We kept getting notices from Valley Health. Of course they were coming individually so whenever one of us got one, the other had to make sure they got one as well, We remembered her vanishing appointment.

First they sent us texts to confirm March 2nd. We confirmed. Then we got texts telling us that the appointment had been moved from Kurth Cottage to a new vaccine facility at 599 Valley Health Plaza in Paramus. This was also only about 15 minutes away from our house. Then we got e-mails telling us the same thing. Finally we got requests to confirm the appointment at the new facility.

So, we had appointments for the second shot on the same day, at the same place but two hours apart. The question was should we go together and see if we could get my wife in early or should I go and then come back for her? We never really considered going separately.

At Kurth Cottage I don't think it would have been a problem to get her in early because there were very few people there. At the new facility, who knew?

We decided to go together figuring the worst that could happen would be we'd have to take turns waiting in the car.

It snowed over a foot on February 18th. Going to Holmdel or even Hackensack would have been a disaster.

Anyway, we decided to go together and see if we could get my wife in early. As soon as we got there we figured that was a forlorn hope. It was a much bigger facility and there were about 40 people waiting outside in the cold. We asked anyway but, as expected, we couldn't do it.

So she went back to the car and I got on line. It was a bit chilly but it was no big deal. The line snaked around inside as well. I worked my way through the temperature check and the check-in desk finally arriving at a side room set aside for registration.

Along the way I learned that the overwhelming majority of people there were getting their first shot and I was almost the only one getting the second. Given how few people had been at Kurth Cottage three weeks previously that made a lot of sense. I'm also going to say that almost everyone was a lot younger than 60 and I'm pretty sure they weren't all in priority occupations.

Since I didn't have to schedule another shot I was through registration in a flash and got on the last line waiting for someone to actually give me the shot. While I was waiting a young lady came out of a room and said they could take someone and I was told to go in.

That's how I got my second shot from a student nurse while a second student nurse looked on and a supervisor supervised.

They updated my official CDC Vaccination Card and fifteen minutes later I was back in my car. It had taken a little over an hour this time. We sat in the car until it was time for my wife to get on line. It was dark by then and much colder. I kept her company until she went into the building. About an hour later she came out.

She got a sticker saying that she was vaccinated. I didn't. I suppose because I got the student nurse shortcut.

So three of us were done. Daughter #3 is a teacher and they began taking teacher's appointments about a week later. The wife of someone at the school where she worked made it a point of honor to get all the teachers an appointment. She got Daughter #3 an appointment for the J&J vaccine at a CVS in a Target in Union City. Daughter #1 knew where the target was located and drove her.

Finally Daughter #1 became eligible and decided to get herself an appointment. She initially got one in Atlantic City which is about 125 miles away. I said I would go with her. But about a week later a group that she was in touch with told her to log on to the CVS site just after midnight (the old just after midnight trick) and she got an appointment at a CVS in Clifton, which is about 30 minutes away, for March 22nd. I went with her anyway because I knew where the CVS was. She got the Pfizer vaccine so she has an appointment for the second shot on April 13th.

All that's left now are Daughter #2's hubby and her two young children. I'm not sure when that will occur.

This was a lot harder than it had to be. A central agency setting up appointments in some priority order would have made a lot more sense. I'm not sure why that wasn't practical or considered the right way to go but the way it went down struck me as unnecessarily chaotic.

Yes, I felt a little guilty that at one point my wife and I each had three appointments but I'm not going to apologize for that.

I read that the vaccine lasts for "at least" three months. Or at least that's all the data they have so far. It better last a lot longer than that because I don't want to go through this every three months.