Oh boy. Yesterday was a doozy. I think we had about 900 folks registered and the vast majority of them were elderly. Yesterday was by far the hardest day I’ve experienced and the closest I’ve come to crying. It is heartbreaking to see the distress of folks who’ve waited a couple of hours in the car, in line outside, in line inside the garage. They’re cold, they’re hungry, they’re sore, they’re frustrated, they desperately need to pee. I need to preface this by saying that almost everyone was a complete delight. And some were out and out chipper. I was screening for COVID symptoms—“Are you experiencing a fever/cough/shortness of breath/headaches/body aches/chills/ loss of sense of smell/loss of sense of taste …”—and by far my favorite answers were the gentleman who asked if the vaccine would fix his sex drive, and the lady who proudly informed me that she and her husband bicker all the time. I told them both that I thought there was something to help them in the vaccine’s fine print. Lots of people didn’t speak English and I’m sad to say I speak no other languages. Thank goodness for children who took my questions seriously enough and translated for me. And we had a sort of ‘holding area’ where those who couldn’t stand for so long could sit down. We had more wheelchairs than the day before. Before we left our morning briefing, we were all asked to turn the chairs over and remove the wheels to make them more stable for elderly as they sit down and less like dodgem cars. These are the sorts of changes that you might not notice and strike me as very thoughtful, and shows how every day the clinic staff are trying to make improvements. All of those things helped, but couldn’t in any way make up for the fact that we still have problems. And some people took that out on us. Those were sad moments. I haven’t been through the signup process yet – I don’t know what it takes to get a real live appointment. So I don’t know what makes sense and what doesn’t. I do know that we had people turn up who thought they had appointments (maybe they did, maybe they didn’t), or others who wanted us to slip them in (we can’t, please don’t put us in the awkward position of having to turn you away). Yesterday’s scheduling seemed like something out of a science fiction movie where time and space stretches and contracts seemingly according to some alien law of physics. From 10-2ish, there were hundreds of people – 30-40 appointments per 15 minute slot (+ their caregivers!), and by 3:30, the 2pm folks were only then getting inside the building. But by 4:30, we’d caught up and there were lines of no more than a dozen people. I don’t know why. There’s an IT system behind the scheduling. The county uses a commercial system called EventBrite. Are there more slots for different time periods? Or are people choosing slots in the middle of the day vs. the end of the day? Those of us working the clinic itself have nothing to do with those helping make appointments or running the appointment system. I do know that the leadership is conveying what’s working and what’s not to the county and there is coordination. And I know it’ll only get better. I don’t envy anyone their job in this. I can imagine that the county wants to dispense as many vaccine doses that they receive (you can imagine the outrage if we aren’t close to 100%, right?), but the one thing we can’t do is add more hours to the day. There’re only so many hours that the clinic can be staffed (remember, most of us are volunteers), and with the elderly, as I said in my Day 2 post, everything just moves. That. Much. More. Slowly. So … more doses, more people per hour, more moving parts, more chaos. The space we’re currently in isn’t designed for crowds. It just isn’t. It’s a series of classrooms with a single corridor connecting everything in a square circle. The entrances are only two doors wide and we have to have everyone come in the same door so we can check everyone in and send everyone in the same direction, and then back out the same way so they can easily get back to their cars. The attached garage is great for access, but it’s still cold and demoralizing when you see the lines. And those lines can’t serpentine or they’d interfere with traffic. So they streeeeeeeeeeetch, everyone trying to leave six feet in between. I really hope we can get out into a better space. I heard on the radio this morning that even the giant spaces, like Dodger Stadium were challenging, with it taking three hours to get from the freeway exit to the entrance to the stadium. Nothing is ideal, except for St Paul’s Cathedral in London where the organist played for people in line. I think I’d feel that I’d died and gone to heaven if I could hear that. Onto some advice from what I saw yesterday. I’m going to start with a little TMI, but I think it’s important. Pee before you go. A lot. There is a bathroom inside, but I was loath to let anyone inside before their time. You have to go through my screening (lost your sense of smell? Taste? Humor?) and then a temperature screening. Once inside, everyone is strictly six feet apart (remember all the yellow tape lines on the floor?), and to get to the bathroom, you have to brush past too many others. They’d feel uncomfortable, you’d feel uncomfortable, it’s not fair on those who are ‘holding it.’ I know when I go into a building for the first time, I get turned around and find it hard to make my way back outside, and we don’t really have enough people to escort individuals to and from the bathroom. Secondly, dress VERY warmly for the garage and bring a wee chair if you can so you and move it as you ‘sit’ in line. If you have someone with you, they can take it when you go inside. We have handwarmers, but we’re so busy doing our jobs, we forget to hand them out. In fact, I simply wasn’t able to open the jolly things while getting my spiel out! Normally I’m very good at multi-tasking, but somehow this one defeated me. So perhaps take a bunch of them and help others in line around you? Thirdly, we’re deputizing some folks in line. The first person in line for, say, the 11:15 appointment period is given a piece of paper that says “11:15 am.” Go find that person and stand at the back of that part of the line. If your appointment is at 11am, you can go ahead of them. And if you need to drop your loved one off in the waiting area, you can stand in line for them. One quick point though – it’s really hard for the poor greeter at the front of the line to remember what appointment time each person in the waiting area has. I think I asked two delightful ladies at least four times what time their appointment was. They’d giggle and tell me—once again—that it was 2pm. Entertain yourself! Bring a podcast to listen to, or some music on your headphones – the garage is very echoey and sometimes I had trouble hearing and I know the poor hard of hearing folks I was screening had a much tougher time. Perhaps the crossword puzzle? A little distraction goes a long way to helping pass the time. This one is harder. As I said at the opening, I saw a lot of distress resulting from the discomfort and the confusion. There’s very very very little we can do about it. We don’t have supervisors who can allow you to cut in line or do a favor for you. You’re all special, so how are we supposed to single you only out for individual help? Threatening to call the county manager doesn’t help anyone except make you feel more powerful than the poor volunteer you’re talking to. Everyone is in the same situation. So, please be pleasant and patient, and know that the bottom line is that if you have an appointment, you’ll get your vaccine that day, and no doses will be wasted. At the end of the day, as I saw my fellow volunteer crouching on the floor to bring some relief to her back, and I was able to check my text messages for the first time since 8 that morning, I saw once again just the superhuman level of effort that it’s taking to put these clinics on, six days a week. And it’s so worth it. I lost count of how many people laughed when I asked them if they’d been exposed to COVID in the last 14 days. They’ve been hunkered down in their homes for the last interminable, uncountable months. And when you’re 84, 97, 103 (yes!), you don’t have that many months to waste. It makes it all worth while, knowing that this is the first step to liberating them from those prisons and that in four short weeks, roughly a week after their second dose, they’ll be able to hug their grandkids, go back to church, enjoy happy hour with their friends.
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