Welcome to the Vaccination Hunger Games

Welcome to the vaccination Hunger Games

That, dear reader, is a slight variation on what my sibling unit said to me when I related the saga of my attempts to schedule a COVID-19 vaccination.

As I have mentioned from time to time, I am an Old Fossil. And, well, the supply shortage of the COVID vaccines has set off a fierce (if anything involving Old Fossils can qualify as “fierce”) competition for very limited appointment slots.

What your helpful neighborhood MegaPharmacy has chosen to do is to open up their website for vaccination appointments pretty much in the middle of the night. If you haven’t made your appointment for a date in the next week by the time of your first morning coffee, you are shut out.

So yesterday I intrepidly opened the vaccination portal immediately after getting up in the morning, only to find that the three nearest sites to me were already booked up. So I tried to book at the fourth, about 45 minutes away, and lo and behold, there were slots available today!

After navigating through the sign-up process, which took about 10 minutes, I was greeted with a confirmation screen – which revealed that I had misspelled the name of the city I wanted, and had been redirected to a town over 4 hours away. I furiously tried to backtrack and get to a closer site, only to find that in the 15 minutes I had been online, they had been all booked up. Which meant I could either accept the appointment about 200 miles away or wait until next week and try again.

Guess what I am doing, dear reader, as you read this little story? That’s right, I am driving through yet another snowstorm in the East, and if I don’t get into an accident or some other calamity, by tonight I will be back home, but I will have claimed victory in Round 1 of the Boomer Vaccination Hunger Games!

Wish me luck.