Vaccine clinic - a few follow ups

 First published on NextDoor, Monday, February 8.

Hi all! I don’t want to bore you every day with my ramblings, but I thought I’d put out a short update addressing some common questions I’ve gotten with my previous posts. First of all – for all of you who’d like to volunteer - https://www.vdh.virginia.gov/mrc/ Secondly, this is all about Arlington County. I have no insight into Alexandria or Fairfax. They may well walk on water, or maybe they’re a bit like the duck, gliding serenely along on the surface with its feet frantically paddling nineteen to the dozen underneath the surface. So, I’m sorry I can’t provide any insight there. Thirdly, for those of you who might be a bit concerned after my last post. Please don’t be scared. Please don’t cancel any appointments. I’m not sugar coating some of the challenges because I have faith in the steel backbone of our elderly and believe that forewarned is forearmed. I hope that the message is coming across loud and clear that the individuals who are working the clinics are all trying their best and have your best interests at heart, and most importantly, will stay as long as it takes for you to get your shot. Hang in there with us and we’ll get there together. I’ve been going back and watching some of the COVID updates that the board and county managers have put out and thought I’d put out a short timeline of what the poor county staff have been dealing with. 1/22/21 – the state changed how it is distributing vaccines, so the Virginia Health Center cancelled ~10,000 appointments. Of those, ~3,200 were county residents or people who work in the county. By 2/2/21, a small army of county staff, from parks and rec folks to librarians had volunteered over the following weekend to personally call ~3,000 people to reschedule. I’m sure the remaining 200 have been called by now. (If you haven’t heard from them AND you’re 75+, call 703.228.7999. They’re dealing with hundreds of calls, but apparently the average answer time is 12 seconds!!!) 2/2/21 – DURING the county board’s COVID update work session, the news came out that the federal government is now engaging with pharmacies. Another surprise development, another factor for the county staff to have to deal with. They must be getting dizzy with all the pivoting they have to do! And did you know that according to the Census Bureau, there are 10,000+ people over 75 in Arlington? If the county receives 2,750 first doses per week, needs to vaccinate the elderly AND other folks in the high priority groups, AND also manage second doses for the same number of people 3-4 weeks later, we’re looking at a minimum of four weeks, if my math is correct. Six days a week. Goodness! So you can see why I’m cutting them some slack. I have no doubt that there are cracks through which some people will fall, and there will be times when the left hand doesn’t quite know what the right hand is doing, but I don’t think that there are any systemic failures. And if there are, they’re caught and corrected quickly. Another development that you might not hear too much about, but since this is a company town, I thought I’d share. The federal Department of Homeland Security, which includes FEMA, has a large surge support force – people who volunteer from all sorts of other areas, such as the IT offices, ICE, TSA, accounting offices, policy offices … all across the 240,000 person workforce. These volunteers then get deployed in super critical emergency situations. I think that the first time was for Hurricane Sandy and the last time was after the multiple hurricanes in Puerto Rico and Houston(?) and elsewhere in 2017. The surge force is being activated again to support the vaccination efforts. I’m not sure of the details yet, such as where they’re being deployed (NO news on the DC area), but I read some of the ‘job descriptions’ and they sound pretty much like what the volunteers have been doing here in the county. Deployment is for six weeks. If it’s like the last time, they won’t get home in that time, and they’ll be working super long hours, 6-7 days a week. The federal government gets a bad rap sometimes, so I’m happy to tip my hat to these people, and to DHS for standing up this program.