Vaccine Tourism

I didn’t expect to go anywhere this past year, not after COVID 19 hit.  But it was a trip I had to take, as did many of those around me.  They even coined a name for it, “Vaccine Tourism”.  In reality, it was often more like a junkie trying desperately to get a fix. 

Frustration led to the trip for most. Those in powerful positions who were supposed to protect us, didn’t.  When vaccines were finally available, instead of distributing them in a logical realistic manner by population, our Governor in the State of Missouri, chose to distribute the vaccines equally to each of the State Highway Patrol Districts.  No one is quite sure why that distribution pattern was chosen.  The Highway Patrol had nothing to do with dispensing the vaccines, but vaccines were sent to rural areas with sparse populations, rather than to the densely populated metropolitan areas of St Louis and Kansas City. 

The metro areas not only had the greatest population needing the vaccines, they had the majority of first line health responders in the big city hospitals who were supposed to get the vaccines first.   

Initially, we did as we were told.  We put our names on the county list where we lived, then we put our names on the lists for each hospital systemin our area (unlike other states who used local pharmacies to deliver the vaccines, our state relied on the pharmacies to deliver the vaccines only to the senior living facilities and nursing homes, leaving the hospitals responsible for the rest of us).  Then we waited to get notified. 

An email would arrive saying a system had available vaccines and to sign up for an appointment.  IF you were sitting at the computer when the email arrived, and IF you were fast fast fast, you might be able to secure an appointment, but not really.  The first email I got, the online scheduling system was deluded so fast with applicants trying to “score” an appointment, that it crashed.  Then they sent out a second email, apologizing and stating that the appointment program would reopen at X time.  As you filled out the 6 pages of questions, and finally reached the point where you could select an appointment and you hit SEND, the appointment would disappear.  Later, the administrator sent out another apology.  They had received 150 doses of the vaccine and had sent 1200 people the email saying they could sign up to receive it.  Any wonder their system crashed?? 

Frustration mounted on all sides.  People with fragile family members, with health conditions that should have put them at the top of the list, grew frantic trying to score vaccination shots for their loved ones. 

And still we kept trying and trying to get an appointment, to get a vaccination shot.  People started contacting rural areas and asking how to get on their lists then driving 4-6 hours, sometimes crossing state lines in order to procure a shot. 

People searched for other leads to vaccination clinics. A 14 year old boy who was very computer literate, after helping his grandmother secure her shot, started helping others. More and more people started sharing links, then found out after signing up for the vaccine with a shared link, that the link had only been good for the original person it was sent to.  If you were lucky enough to get an appointment, often you either stood in “crowded” (6 feet apart socially distanced) lines that snaked through hospital facilities for over an hour, or when “mass” vaccination sites were announced, drove your car through a large parking lot, Disney line style, finally reaching the person giving the shot, you would roll down your car window and stick your arm out.  Lines of traffic trying to get into the vaccination sites would block traffic for several miles.  Vaccination clinics at local community colleges resulted in people standing (6 ft apart) in lines that snakes throughout the college campuses, some over a mile long waiting your turn.  Some people stood in line for over two hours, inching forward at a snail’s pace. 

And still we kept trying and trying to get an appointment, to get a vaccination shot.  People started contacting rural areas and asking how to get on their lists then driving 4-6 hours, sometimes crossing state lines in order to procure a shot, even though the number of vaccines were supposedly issued based on state populations. 

If you did get a shot, you would try to remove your name from the many lists you had put your name on, only to find out that they hadn’t put any procedures in place to take names off a list.  Instead, we were told to just ignore the emails we got from other facilities after we had gotten our shot or unsubscribe from the other listserves.

 

Chaos ensued.  The state knew how many shots had been given, but had no way of knowing how many people were still waiting for shots or where those people were located at for future vaccine distributions. 

My husband and I were lucky, we put our names on the list for the next county over, where we own some property.  We were actually CALLED by the COMTREA Health Clinic, and given our choice of appointments in a small town 45 minutes from where we live. When we got to the Health clinic giving the shots, the process was smooth and quick.  Fill out a form on a clipboard and get our temperatures taken; walk to the next station where they input the information from the clipboard into the computer; walk to the next station where they told pointed us to the next available nurse; walk to the nurse and sit down beside her and get the shot; wait 15 minutes; then walk to the final station where they gave us our vaccination cards and scheduled our second shot a month later.  The entire process took less than 30 minutes.  A month later we repeated the process for the second shot. 

Meanwhile, we had friends who drove so far to get their shots they had to spend the night and drive home the next day.  

Our state wasn’t the only one having issues.  Some states, like Florida, got a reputation for not doing very close checks on who was receiving the vaccines to the point that vaccine tourists flooded the state and the state finally had to “push back” and require proof of Florida residency before giving someone a shot.  Other states got backlash when, at the end of the day rather than let the open vials of vaccines expire before the next days’ vaccination clinic, the staffs giving the shots would openly recruit people walking by whether they met the “technical” criteria for the tier that was being inoculated at the time.  That’s how my younger sister and her husband work got their shots. 

It’s now April 2021 and the federal government is opening up more clinics using the National Guard.  The Veterans Administration has gotten the go ahead to vaccinate ALL veterans AND their family members and caregivers, whether they normally receive their medical care through the VA or not.  The Chaos is slowly starting to form patterns and systems that are getting the vaccine shots out to people, but for those of us who participated in Vaccine Tourism, while we wish we hadn’t had to go through that, we are happy that we got our shots and can now start visiting friends and family.  Easter 2021 celebrated not just Easter, but also Thanksgiving and Christmas and many missed birthdays. 

Dale Weir

Photo by Daniel Schludi on Unsplash