This is a post that might be relevant to a few people for a short amount of time. I just got my first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, and wanted to share a little bit of the experience.
Qualifying
Washington State has been running a "Phase Finder" service for a few weeks, and I guess that the service has been shut down, as the ramping up of availability has made administering the service of knowing who's eligible less useful. So that's good, I guess.
I got an email yesterday afternoon, telling me that I now qualify - anybody 16 years old or older with two or more "comorbidities" (eesh, I hate that word, I'd prefer something like "health factors") is good for the vaccine.
A friend of mine pointed me at https://www.covidwa.com/ as a website that helps people find places that might have doses. You can look for standby opportunities, filter by county, and other goodness. It refreshes frequently, so it's worth just having open and looking at through the day.
I found an appointment at the Arlington Municipal Airport. A hot tip I got on Twitter was to find the most red-leaning neighborhood within your radius (whatever that means, how far you want to drive, where you are eligible, whatever), and that's probably where the vaccines are in least demand, so perhaps with highest supply. Arlington is ~25 miles further out into the exurbs from my house, so that worked out.
Appointment
My appointment was at 9:05 this morning, the appointment signup sheet having slots every five minutes. I was given an address to show up at, which looked like a random point on the perimeter of the airfield. Turns out, the address was specific enough to let my GPS lead me to a gate where they let in a line of cars. I think I was around car #20 in the line, which they started letting through the gate at a little before 9:00. If you've ever lined up for a car-ferry, or if you've ever been at a concert or gone to a state fair where people direct you through traffic cone ad hoc traffic paths, this was a lot like that. More smooth than most of those, by a little bit.
They asked for my photo ID and my appointment confirmation (which I had printed out - good), and then gave me a questionnaire (what race are you? what ethnicity? do you have a fever?). I happened to have a pen with me, which meant I didn't have to share a pen with somebody else. Probably not a big deal. If I had thought to bring a clipboard to fill out the form, that might have been nice, too.
I was wearing a facemask with red sequins, and a jacket with red sequins. I got a few remarks about how festive I looked. This was, honestly, the biggest day for about a year, yeah I'm going to dress up.
They split us into three lanes to speed up the pipeline. Jab! Quick and painless. Then they funneled us into a waiting lane where we'd sit for 15 minutes, just in case there was some side effect that made us feel anything less than OK.
They gave us vaccine cards, with little photocopied information sheets (with "Pfizer" spelled incorrectly) to help us fill out our own cards. They told us that we'd get emailed to schedule our second shot. So, I've been refreshing my inbox, getting ready for that.
So far, no aches or pains to speak of. My arm doesn't feel sore. I've checked, and the bandage on my arm suggests this wasn't just a dream I had.
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