it didn't flip at midnight ...

It had been said Maryland would enter Phase 2B today, but I see no official sign at the Maryland vaccination website that we actually have entered Phase 2B yet.

And the two closest vaccination locations offered to me by the federal Vaccine Finder website have also not yet updated their eligibility criteria.

I imagine it takes time to update the web pages ... they couldn't flip them at midnight?  Or is the state late in providing the new criteria list?

Sigh.  Whenever y'all web jockeys have dragged into your chairs and finished your second cup of coffee and answered your emails and read your Facebook feeds, maybe you can update the eligibility for me.

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[UPDATE]

I checked the Maryland site immediately after posting this, and they have updated, I am now eligible!

So, I went back to the federal Vaccine Finder website and started going through the list of 50 closest providers.  Most of them are chain pharmacies and can be hit together.  Safeway said no appointments.  CVS said I'm still not eligible -- they haven't updated their criteria in the screening questions.  Giant said no appointments.  Walgreen's said no appointments.  Everybody else, including every non-chain pharmacy, was already listed as "out of stock".

The closest hospital, Holy Cross, has no appointments.  It seems they open their appointments at 4pm on certain days, but they don't say ahead of time which days.

Maryland has a list of 390 sites, I'm trying to figure out how to download the list.  I can try some independent pharmacies and hospitals that are outside of Montgomery County?  OK, got the list.  Here I go.

OK, I'll take a break

I've pre-registered with more places, but every place I've tried that doesn't have a pre-registration system has no appointments.

Most of the 390 sites are chain pharmacies, I went to ALL the chain pharmacy sites and none of them have appointments.

I pre-registered with a hospital over on the Eastern Shore, maybe way out there they'll have more availability than here.

I'm gonna take a break for now.

I've had to prove I'm not a robot many times this morning.  But I'm starting to feel like one.

I have a goddess damned vaccination appointment!

T heard from two of our friends who live in DC that they were driving up to PA to get their shots, because PA has no residency requirement.  York, PA -- via CVS.

Whereas earlier this morning, the CVS site threw me out as ineligible (still) in Maryland, when I went to the Pennsylvania CVS site it was smooth sailing, and there were DOZENS of consecutive appointments available at the CVS in York, PA.  I couldn't believe my eyes.  Click, yes, accept, consent, BOOM.

So I'm scheduled for Thursday morning at 10:15am, and again three weeks later -- Pfizer shots.

I spent all that time waiting to become eligible in MD and instead I'm getting my shots in PA because of a HOT TIP.

It's a 90 minute drive one-way, but definitely worth it to me.  I'll bring gatorade and snacks and give myself plenty of extra time to get there in the morning.

Maryland sucks, Governor Hogan!

Pfizer caravan to the CVS in York, PA

B scheduled his first dose for the same time, same place as me, following our HOT TIP from our DC friends, so he's going with me on Thursday morning; it will be nice to have company for the long drive back and forth.  He picked a different time for his second dose, because he has family up there in PA and will combine a trip to see them + husband with his second dose.

The data are inconclusive on the effects of intoxication after a vaccination, but I'm gonna take this weekend off from intoxication just to be safe (and I might have side effects anyway).  We have also been skipping the bottles of wine with dinner during the week lately, which has helped T to lose weight (maybe me also, I don't weigh myself).  Maybe it would be good to let go of intoxication until after my first 14 days have passed ... focus on my running instead now that the weather is improving (oh, that problem on my right foot went away when I changed into different shoes, sometimes that's all I need to do).

I wish the supply and demand for these vaccines were more uniform around the country, not everybody can take a day off to drive to another state.  Not everybody gets HOT TIPs from friends.

Well, at least I didn't fib to get my appointment; I waited until I was eligible in my home state, and then found a place that said I qualify.  But I probably could've jumped the line earlier had I known about the available appointments in rural PA.  I'd assumed that you could only qualify based on where you lived or worked.

I'll have to decide on April 15th whether one shot was good enough for me to start getting teeth cleaned and haircuts and hookups, or whether to wait three more weeks until my second shot has taken effect.

80% protected on April 15th vs 90% protected on May 6th.  Perhaps I should stop counting my antibodies before they hatch.

V-Day

What a profound mental effect of having those appointments in hand.  But later I did feel some guilt -- because if I lived in PA I wouldn't be eligible yet.  Why are they allowing people who aren't eligible yet, or who live in other states, to make appointments at that particular CVS in York, PA?  I can only presume because nobody else is showing up in that area of rural PA.  It is Trump country, voted 2/3 for Trump and represented by Republicans in Congress.  I've read that rural folks and Republicans are less likely to want the vaccine.  So if you want a shot, go look in rural Republican areas.  Seriously.

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I did write before about how I'd look for appointments in the rural areas, that I'd look everywhere in MD, that I was willing to register at every single location and drive for hours for a shot, and now ... yep, I found a rural appointment mere hours after I became eligible.  But across the state line.

It's fucked up.  I'm taking a dose that would otherwise go untaken, while in many other places people can't find a dose.

I complained to Public Health Friend and he said this was all Trump's doing, that people went to Trump last year and said, "OK, we need your authorization to mobilize the national FEMA vaccination plan," and Trump refused.  They had a national vaccination plan, and Trump refused to pull the trigger.  [Strangely, this is not unique to Trump, it happens quite often that politicians ignore the pre-existing disaster plans that have been carefully rehearsed by the career civil servants.  That's human ego in action.]

And the Biden team isn't going to rock the boat by trying to redesign a fucked up system in midstream, they're just trying to push more supply into that fucked up system ASAP.  So there are pockets of oversupply, and pockets of undersupply, and millions of people who aren't even looking yet because they've been told they're not eligible, and millions of people who are jumping the line.  And millions of people who don't give a fuck because they don't believe in either COVID or the vaccine.

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My two brothers had COVID last year and they were both pretty sick, but they survived, but I also know people who died.  I just don't want to roll the dice.  I'm a bit older than my brothers are, I have asthma.  Why take that risk?  The last thing I wanted was to die from COVID while Trump was President.  It's why T and I wore masks and socially distanced within our own house when he was sick -- probably from a cold virus, but he never got tested.  And I didn't catch it from him.

But it was more than just me -- it was the risk that millions of people would die if we didn't take precautions as a nation, as a species.  If we all got sick at the same time and overwhelmed the hospitals, the percentage of us who would die would skyrocket.  To me, it was about avoiding millions of deaths in the US.  And, we did avoid millions of deaths.  We're at 551,000 right now in the US.

Some countries took extra precautions, keeping their death toll way down.  While others didn't.  And still other governments tried to take precautions but their citizens didn't care.  Or, their citizens cared at first, but then got sick of the restrictions and protested or rioted.

In the US, even where our state or local governments took precautions, there was practically zero enforcement.  I heard about other countries where people were put into strict quarantine with police checking on them.  Strict lockdowns where you needed permits to leave your neighborhood.  There was nothing like that in the US.  No police checking on you.  Practically zero enforcement.  Nobody bothered to stop me last spring when I started heading to the condo during lockdown.  And then the White House itself started holding superspreader events without masks or social distancing -- it's possible the President had COVID while he was debating his opponent on national television!  His family sitting in the audience unmasked.

It makes no sense to me.

And now the US has the largest death toll in the world from COVID.  Yet Republicans aren't ashamed of this at all, instead they claim our death toll has been exaggerated in the US while minimized elsewhere.

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It still isn't over.

But if my luck holds, it will be over for me, personally, soon.  Only because a friend of a friend found a place where we could skip ahead of our neighbors.

Mixed emotions.

And COVID won't go away, we'll probably need booster shots every so often, and the people who don't get these shots -- either because they're uninsured or uninformed or purposely defiant -- will still get sick and some of them will die.

If we'd all been like New Zealand, we could've wiped this out, like we wiped out SARS.  We still could wipe this out, but we still haven't set up the Test, Trace, and Isolate regime that would be necessary.  Half the country is going back to normal regardless, the other half is going back to normal after they get their shots, and COVID will continue to spread.  We will not reach herd immunity in the US, because as a country we aren't trying, because not enough of us care.  And I don't know how to fix that.