1/27 Coop Scoop Update

Why a lag?

Dear Subscribers:

This is a quick note to explain why you have received nothing from me in over a week.

First: unexpected house guests. That ate up a couple of days.

Second: Thanks to Donald Trump’s incompetence in buying and planning for distribution of the vaccine, my wife and I drove almost 220 miles to a “mass vaccination” hub WITH appointments only to get there and be told all appts had been cancelled as —get this— there was never a connection between the appointments page and the operators of the site!

This was on Monday. We were also told that this week only it would be first come first serve. The cop at the gate said they would re-open at 8:30 on Tuesday and we should just come back. Probably a little before opening time.

We then took an overpriced hotel in what most call the small city we were in (Kennewick) the most boring in the PNW and set the alarm for 6 AM as my instincts were that “a little early” was not gonna be early enough.

We basically did NOT sleep. Just too wound up from the trip there and the see saw of emotions.

My wife and I reached the fairgrounds vaccination site in pitch darkness at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday only to find a line of about 200 cars and a police cruiser at the end telling us they were already full for the day — two hrs before it opened.

So on no sleep we drove the 220 miles back home. Got home at around 10:30 am Tuesday. Just as I waled in the door I got a call back from the Washington State Covid Hotline. I had called them while in Kennewick the day before and a recording said wait time was over an hr, just leave my number and they will call me back within 2 hrs.

The call that finally came back was almost 18 hrs and a day later. The very nice woman on the line basically said they had no idea where the vaccine would be at any given moment; that there was a supply in our area; that it was unpredictable when and where appts would open so keep checking links and good luck!

This is all in Washington, one of the states that has best managed the pandemic and that is now making great efforts to stand up as many mass vax sites as possible ASAP. The problem the state has had, say all local reports, is that the Trump admin never really made clear how many vaccines we would get here and when. One week of the Biden admin seems to have started clearing things up a bit. at least FEMA is now here and the federal intervention is easing things…a bit.

I can only imagine the frustration of other and even more elderly folks ( I am 70) who don’t have a computer to sit in front of all day, refreshing the appt links. What a full on catastrophe this sub literate con man has bequeathed us.

The newsletter will resume tomorrow Thursday. I am sleeping most of today. Thanks.