VeeRatThe covid booster rollout in the US has been terrible, and it's making me think it's on purpose. I hope no one gets too discouraged. It's reminding me of the ways they discourage people to vote.
An example is the experience of a friend in southern New Hampshire. She and her husband tried to book appointments at CVS. They couldn't find any CVS pharmacies with any covid vaccine stocks at all in their town or surrounding towns, and had to travel a few towns over. And then they could only find Pfizer, no place had Moderna. Yesterday (Saturday Sept. 23rd) was the first appointment they could get, they had hoped for earlier in the week.
When they arrived, only her husband was in the system as having an appointment. He has Aetna insurance and she doesn't, and Aetna owns CVS, so maybe their system worked better for their own members. They took her too anyway. She said someone at the counter was needing to do manual work to get people's insurance coverage for the shots into their system, which brings the potential for typo's and resulting claim denials.
CVS is apparently booking multiple appointments for the same time slot. She said there were 4 people booked for her husband's appointed time, and the pharmacists told her that was corporate policy! She said the pharmacists were run ragged, no time for breaks, trying to get shots done for 4 people every 15 minutes, and of course not everyone arrives on time so there was a long queue and wait. This on top of the wait due to the manual insurance entry. The pharmacy was crowded with waiting people, most not masked.
I don't want to catch covid while waiting in queue to get my booster! Low stocks and overbooked appointments sounds like maybe they didn't expect so many people to want one, but other aspects of the rollout should have been expected.
Personally, I am waiting on Novavax approval. My reasoning is the specific protection it provides for FLip variants, which the mRNA vaccines do not. But we are in a wave now, so it might not make sense for everyone to wait. I have no kids and work from home, so I have less daily risk of exposure. Maybe in a week or two, these hiccups with appointments and insurance will clear up as well.
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