Once Covid 19 vaccines began to be available, Wendy and I decided to emphasize getting vaccinated as soon as possible. While we had been quite careful, I had a sense that our luck might run out in avoiding the infection. The possibility of running into someone who was infected but symptom-free, or just coming down with the disease seemed too high for comfort. Also a new strain that was more highly infectious was being mentioned on the news. Vaccine started to be available for some high priority persons, like medical personnel and first responders, and, in the news, for persons over 75. We were glad when our new governor extended the definition of vulnerable elderly to 70 and over, which meant that Wendy and I could get the shots together. We were also grateful to be in Utah, because some other states seemed to be setting other priorities, like minorities or prison inmates.
The county health departments in Utah were giving the shots. Several weeks ago, Matthew and Kimberly had become aware that some over-70 people in their ward had gotten appointments to be vaccinated and advised us of the process, which involved finding out the date and time when a new appointments could be set up, then getting on the county health website to make an appointment. The competition for appointments was pretty fierce. Matthew helped us locate the Utah County Health Department website, and register our phone to get text messages when more appointments could be made for vaccinations. Then the message came that the county had some more of the vaccine and new appointments would be made at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, January 19th. Wendy and I each got on our cell phones and Matthew and Brianna on their computers at that time. There were so many persons on at that time that the county scheduler system crashed and no appointments made at all according to the feedback we had. The next day I got a message saying that the county would be making some system fixes and we could contact them on Saturday morning at 8:30 a.m. to make appointments through a phone number they supplied. Wendy and I tried but kept getting a busy signal. After 30 minutes, I gave up. Wendy kept trying and after 53 minutes, got a message instructing her to go to the appointment website. But when she followed this direction, the only information was that she found was all appointments were filled.
On Thursday, January 21, we got the notice that more slots would be available that evening at 7 p.m., on the appointment website, and these would be in Spanish Fork at the old Shopko building. We tried both the Web and the smart phone routes. After about 10 minutes, Wendy got access, but there was only one single appointment that seemed to remain. Wendy tried to schedule that for me, but someone filled it before she could claim it.
We were discouraged. A day or two later Wendy learned that one of her lady friends who lives in Highland in the north part of county was able to make an appointment for the Spanish Fork site, no less. We decided to try to get more information to become more competitive. Wendy called her friend back for details. Her daughter had actually made the appointment. She signed on to the appointment website three or four minutes prior to 7 p.m. and then kept hitting the refresh/reload button (near circle with an arrow head) every few seconds. We decided to follow this practice when the next sign up date and time occurred. We also felt it was advantage to have multiple persons trying to access the site for us. Using a computer also seemed to have advantages of faster manipulation than a smart phone.
The next appointment setting time came to us on Wednesday afternoon the 27th, for that evening at 7 p.m. We were at the cabin. We wanted to have multiple devices accessing the appointment site including computers. We had my laptop with us, so not have internet access there. In the late afternoon we drove around various places, like the Homestead to see if they had unsecured wifi, but no luck. We then called Matthew and he agreed to help, even to the point of delaying attendance at a meeting.
Implementing our plan: Just before 7 pm our team had Matthew at home on computer, Erin at Matthew’s on a second computer, Wendy on her smart phone at the cabin, and I on the phone with Matthew to coordinate all this. The three accessing people were all logged onto the Utah County Health Covid appointment site by 6:55. And in a moment each began to tap the reload button every few seconds. At about 7:01 Matthew informed us that he was in to the appointment page so he took the lead in completing the scheduling of our two vaccinations, for Friday Jan 29th at 10:10 a.m., at the Spanish Fork Shopko site.
We drove home Thursday from Midway where an e-mail awaited us with forms to complete and other instructions. We got to the Shopko building at about 9:50 am this morning, and started to follow the written instructions that we got in the email to not be early but sit in the car and wait. A nice man who had just finished his vaccination and was leaving, knocked on our car window and said that there was a long line and the staff are not worrying about your official time, so go on in and get started. We did this, and got in line to go to various tables in preparation for the shots. We got the shots at 10:57, so had been in line and visiting tables for just about an hour. After the shots we were sent to a waiting area for 20 minutes, to se if we had any after effects. We had none. Then we were able to schedule our second shots for February 19th.
The shots affected us similarly to our annual flu shots. We were instructed to rotate our arm around a bunch, and to do a little rubbing on the site of the shot. I wasn’t affected further. After 24 hours had passed, I did not notice any after-effects, other than that the injection spot was a little tender. Wendy still feels some soreness in her shoulder muscle, but is functioning.
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