(no subject)

[bobcatmoran]

First day at the Convention Center vaccination site today! I managed to get 3/4 of the way to the hotel (walking because they need all the parking spots possible for folks getting vaccines) before realizing I had left my ID in my room and booking it back. Fortunately, I didn't miss anything, since most of our first hour there was spent trying to figure out where to put the nearly 4 dozen new volunteers. There wasn't nearly enough experienced people to train us all in at any one station, and they wanted us to maintain at least some semblance of social distancing. So we followed someone from the site staff around like a bunch of ducklings, peeling off in tiny groups as we went around and all getting assigned stations just as the site opened for the day.

I wound up spending nearly all day scheduling people for their second doses, first shadowing another gal, then doing it with her watching, and quickly going to doing it on my own. After I took lunch, I wound up at a mobile workstation they'd wheeled in at the end of the big row of tables and computers, and once the line died down a bit, I went on the move, going to people spending their post-vaccine 15 or 30 minute wait, and helping out people with mobility difficulties get their second shots scheduled while they sat down rather than them having to stand and walk over to the computer ranks.

Of course, as soon as it was noticed that I was doing scheduling, I was slightly mobbed with people asking me to schedule them, and not all of them were happy with the idea that I was passing them by to get to a man with a cast on his leg. Eventually, one of the floor staff started helping out with crowd wrangling, since trying to answer people's questions, give directions, and actually target who I was trying to, was getting to be waaaaay too much.

Speaking of mobility needs, because this clinic is in the convention center, it's a BIG site with a LOT of walking for folks to get their vaccines there, and since one of the main groups eligible right now is over-65s, some people were visibly having difficulties with it. Wheelchairs and people to push them are available, but I'm not sure if there weren't enough of them, if people were overestimating their stamina and/or underestimating just how much walking there would be, or if pride played a factor.

Supposedly the drive-through vaccine clinics like the one I was at yesterday are supposed to be particularly targeted at people who'd have difficulty walking for that long, but since getting ANY appointment is still such a crapshoot, and since each site is open different hours on different days, and especially since not everyone has a car and this site is very easily accessible via public transit, there's still a lot of people I saw who, by the time they reached the station I was working at, the last one before they exited, were clearly exhausted.

Site vaccine count for the day: over 6000. Step count: 10,960.

Comments

[bobbiewickham]

It's amazing that you're doing this and writing it up. It sounds a bit like wrangling kids in a summer camp, hah. But obviously with much higher stakes.

[bobcatmoran]

It really is, especially since one of the big groups eligible at this point is the 65+ population, and many of them can get overwhelmed by the sheer size and noise and slight chaos of the whole thing — especially since it's been a full year of self-isolation for a lot of them. Heck, I'm a bit overwhelmed at times by the sheer volume of the place. I've talked face-to-face in one single day at the vaccination sites than I've probably talked face-to-face over any given three-month period in the past year.