Vent about DC vaccine registration snafus

[Anonymous]

I gave up on getting the vaccine in DC and found a nearby state where I qualify (no residence requirement) and that has a better set up. Couldn’t risk my Health and longer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We had 3 laptops, 3 smart phone browsers, and I was on hold on the phone with the vaccine hotline this AM.

The laptops and smart phone browsers kept crashing out at various stages in the process: the landing page, the CAPTCHA, the name/DOB page. Finally made it to the map where you can see the sites. Tried 5 different sites and none had appointments.

Finally found a time slot at Lamond Riggs, but after I hit "confirm" the page told me the slot was already taken.

Ended up getting a time slot on the phone with a very nice DC government employee. Told her "Any location, any time - we will make it work" and she got my wife a spot at our nearby Giant Foods next weekend.

I was on hold for about 25 minutes. Was on the phone with this nice woman for about 10 minutes: 5 minutes to tell her my wife's info and she needed 5 minutes to find an available time slot and confirm it for me.

I think they hold some slots back from the web portal, so keep trying the phone.

If you were looking for spots for fewer than 6 people, you are contributing to the problem. Having 6 browers open will not help your cause.

+1. I had one computer and when that did not work and called with one phone. I did it because I am one person and did not want to clog the system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I gave up on getting the vaccine in DC and found a nearby state where I qualify (no residence requirement) and that has a better set up. Couldn’t risk my Health and longer.

I completely understand, but it would be great if the DC residents could be vaccinated in DC with the vaccine the Feds provided for us. Unfortunately, they left it to our city rulers discretion how to distribute it, and they have chosen to not vaccinate District residents in an expedient and transparent way. Is it time to ask the Feds to step in?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I gave up on getting the vaccine in DC and found a nearby state where I qualify (no residence requirement) and that has a better set up. Couldn’t risk my Health and longer.

I completely understand, but it would be great if the DC residents could be vaccinated in DC with the vaccine the Feds provided for us. Unfortunately, they left it to our city rulers discretion how to distribute it, and they have chosen to not vaccinate District residents in an expedient and transparent way. Is it time to ask the Feds to step in?

^ to be clear, not by providing the extra vaccine the Mayor keeps demanding (why should they give DC 'extra" when every state has been allotted based on population) but by setting up FEMA tents on the Mall etc? It's clear our rulers are not going to take care of us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As with DPR, I don't understand why the system is set as a race to see you can get through first. Would it be that difficult to have a snap lottery at the end of every day after letting people, during the day, register at their leisure. If your name is picked, you get a phone call/email and have a day to confirm; with a walkup or callin option to learn the results.

I really don’t understand why the system doesn’t let you set up an account, so you can log in and go directly to the appointment scheduler, rather than starting from scratch every time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I gave up on getting the vaccine in DC and found a nearby state where I qualify (no residence requirement) and that has a better set up. Couldn’t risk my Health and longer.

How did you qualify? Do you work in that state?

[Anonymous]

At this point FEMA should just open first come first serve tents.

[Anonymous]

This whole disaster is a major blow to the statehood campaign. DC with such a small geographic footprint and a high number of medical facilities/providers should have been a model jurisdiction. DC residents have done their part with the highest level of mask wearing in the country and suffered through closed schools, even when the science said it was safe to open. And for our patience and vigilance we were rewarded with this system. The website should have been developed and stress tested months ago. But we are left with website that appears to have been developed by a teenager. This is Cuomo level negligence and the blame is on the mayor and council for lack of oversight. They all should face challengers the next election.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This whole disaster is a major blow to the statehood campaign. DC with such a small geographic footprint and a high number of medical facilities/providers should have been a model jurisdiction. DC residents have done their part with the highest level of mask wearing in the country and suffered through closed schools, even when the science said it was safe to open. And for our patience and vigilance we were rewarded with this system. The website should have been developed and stress tested months ago. But we are left with website that appears to have been developed by a teenager. This is Cuomo level negligence and the blame is on the mayor and council for lack of oversight. They all should face challengers the next election.

This x 100.

It is simply unfathomable that the city had from May to December to plan this response and this is what we ended up with. I am actually starting to believe that the DCHealth draft plan was just a cut and paste job from another plan with nobody actually attending any of the planning meeting or any rehearsals being conducted.

DC is resting on the fact that by and large it has an educated and compliant resident base. DC locked things down in March 2020 and people have by and large followed best practices. I have family in several states and I am continually shocked by the laissez-faire attitudes of Socal, Ariz, Connecticut, Washington and Oregon.

DC complains about the problems of its interconnectivity. These issues pale in comparison to the size issues faced by CA. CA has more health care professionals than DC has residents.

DC should have been a model of vaccine modeling. You want to vaccinate out of state workers, great, make them register as an out of state worker and give a finite number of appointments each week. You want to figure out why there is zero impact to a highly affected demographic? Have stand by contact teams that go into the community with information, testing and vaccines... Don't wait for them to simply trust you.

DC's success to this point is due to its citizens. DC govt at all levels has failed and shown no interest in remediating, because, this is DC and there will be no fall out.

Elections have consequences and we have voted this circus in ourselves... Several times.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This whole disaster is a major blow to the statehood campaign. DC with such a small geographic footprint and a high number of medical facilities/providers should have been a model jurisdiction. DC residents have done their part with the highest level of mask wearing in the country and suffered through closed schools, even when the science said it was safe to open. And for our patience and vigilance we were rewarded with this system. The website should have been developed and stress tested months ago. But we are left with website that appears to have been developed by a teenager. This is Cuomo level negligence and the blame is on the mayor and council for lack of oversight. They all should face challengers the next election.

Yup DC residents' 12 months of compliant behavior has unbelievably led to rounds of self-congratulations on the parts of our rulers and a dumpster fire of a vaccination campaign that they think we can't "see".

I was born at Washington Hospital Center and have paid DC taxes for 20 years. DC is not in the red, and could have thoughtfully planned for, paid for and administrated all of this. We could have 20% of residents through round 1 by now. It's a slap in the face.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We had 3 laptops, 3 smart phone browsers, and I was on hold on the phone with the vaccine hotline this AM.

The laptops and smart phone browsers kept crashing out at various stages in the process: the landing page, the CAPTCHA, the name/DOB page. Finally made it to the map where you can see the sites. Tried 5 different sites and none had appointments.

Finally found a time slot at Lamond Riggs, but after I hit "confirm" the page told me the slot was already taken.

Ended up getting a time slot on the phone with a very nice DC government employee. Told her "Any location, any time - we will make it work" and she got my wife a spot at our nearby Giant Foods next weekend.

I was on hold for about 25 minutes. Was on the phone with this nice woman for about 10 minutes: 5 minutes to tell her my wife's info and she needed 5 minutes to find an available time slot and confirm it for me.

I think they hold some slots back from the web portal, so keep trying the phone.

My skills acquiring concert tickets through Ticketmaster in 1999 finally came into good use. No way Gen Z kids or younger Millennials would've figured this out.

Same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok. This is a debacle.

The 3500 appointments for tomorrow need to be made available to the entire city.

Thursdays appointments went to priority zip codes. Todays were available to ALL.

Tomorrows need to be available for all.

They are having really low senior uptake in Wards 7 and 8. These folks are in multi-generational housing, so they are still at very high risk. I understand why they are trying to hold vaccines just for these wards.

Frankly, I think they need to get a list of these seniors and just deliver the shot at their front door. My guess is that they are having a very hard time getting through the internet or phone to acquire a vaccination.

These wards also have a large contingent of frontline workers. These are not your WFH white collar professionals.

The health director, Laquandra Nesbitt had an attitude with councilmembers when they complained about the difficultly of older, poorer and browner residents having difficulty accessing the system. She was flippant and unbothered. Now the entire city is seeing how bad the process and software is. Can you imagine not having any computer skills or help and trying to navigate this system?

Agreed. I know enough to know to use incognito browsers and so on but my elderly next door neighbor doesn't even have internet and barely can work her flip phone. Luckily her grandchildren took it upon themselves to make sure she got an appointment (I checked because I was prepared to be an advocate for her if no one else was doing it) and she got her second shot last week.

[Anonymous]

We have been talking about this in the Health forum as well.
https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/952410.page

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's DC, where "not my problem" is the mantra of civic officials. The buck will be passed from the mayor to the council to the health department down to the employees responsible, who will receive a mild scolding, if anything. Do not expect heads to roll.

Look at the problems with the unemployment payments. The tech issues there have been known about for *years*. Elissa Silverman oversees this on the Council and has let it happen despite being well aware that it was a broken system. No one is holding her feet to the fire.

Or, try to get an appointment at the DMV. We are a year into this and it's impossible to use that website.

The website is less an issue than the lack of appointments. In both cases.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At this point FEMA should just open first come first serve tents.

Agree.

The real problem is that there aren't enough vaccines available.
If more vaccines were available then tents (or health department mass vaccination spots) would make much more sense than this sign up system.

This is, in fact, what FEMA has started doing in Greensboro, NC and two other sites.
In this effort, it will not help us to be true blue. I have a feeling swing state will be getting those vaccines first.