Add me to the ranks of the partially vaccinated in America. Today, I received dose one of two of the COVID-19 vaccine available at a location convenient to my suburban home. Within three miles, which is “reasonably close” even by my auto-phobic standards.
My state redefined its list of eligible health conditions the day before my turn would have been due anyway. I don’t believe that the state knew* I went from one to two eligible conditions overnight—the system asked one to confirm only from the original list of “certain medical conditions” as I pre-registered—but that change moved me up one “priority group” within the current phase of eligible citizens.
I pre-registered with the state’s mass vaccination system on Sunday, receiving notification three days later that my chance at snagging an appointment would open up within 24 hours. I was offered a turn to register for a mass vaccination site appointment at 09:49 on Thursday. I had until Friday at noon to take advantage of the option.
As it turns out, the state system only offered me appointments over 20 miles away. Given my continuing ability to shelter at home, I almost left it at that, planning to wait for my next invitation and hope it would be for a local site. Our state doesn’t have truly centralizing vaccination booking, however; the state system only books one in to seven major centers churning out thousands of doses per day.
I tried “the other way” of booking Thursday evening, i.e., last night. A local physician’s group had three appointments open for this morning. I took that as a sign that it really was my turn to book. 
Someone else I know with one underlying medical condition was able to book via the CVS Pharmacy website. That screen grab makes a prettier picture than the black and white, all text shot from the doctor’s office where I went, so here is a CVS vaccine jab appointment confirmation. In both cases, the second, follow up appointment was automatically scheduled by the computer for the correct (3-4 week) wait after dose one, but the doctor’s office only shared my next appointment time with me after I’d arrived in person.
To be honest, I agonized a bit over whether it was really fair for me to take my place in line for the shot. There are many people who are more exposed than I am due to their working or living conditions. There are many people older, sicker, and at greater risk of dying from COVID-19 than I am. Those realities were reflected, however—if, perhaps imperfectly—by the state’s eligibility phase system.
I did not wangle, finagle, lie, cheat, or even fudge to make my appointment. I read and re-read the eligibility criteria, looking for any reason to find against the evidence that my government thinks I’m at higher than average risk from COVID.
I’m grateful to the reporting I’ve read in a variety of newspapers and magazines about the ethical considerations of “taking a shot from someone who needs it more.” The consensus is: if you meet the qualifications for the shot for which you’re signing up, it is your turn, and it is just and right to take it. To date, about a quarter of adults in my state have had their first shot, and closer to one third are fully immunized, similar to the national average.
No amount of logic erases the tendency to worry from those of us who are anxious, but I do fret less when I can ease the factual side of the equation. My worries on this issue are also alleviated by living with my frail, elderly mother-in-law. Her history of reacting to multiple vaccines and medications combined with a specific diagnosis she’s dealing with now makes her vaccination perhaps more risky than doing nothing.
It helps that my father-in-law has been fully vaccinated for awhile, reducing the threat that her closest companion could unwittingly expose her to the virus, but the kids’ gradual return to public life is already beginning. We’re scheduling dental cleanings again after a year of neglect, and some of DS1’s summer courses seem likely to include in person labs. We hope that DS2 will be get to finish out the year back with his friends at school.
With case rates coming down† and vaccination ramping up, it no longer feels fully fair to expect my kids to give up all outside activities due to the adults’ choice to live in a multi-generational household. Even my introvert has confessed to missing the act of going somewhere to attend a class; my extrovert seems quite eager to start at a bigger, busier, fully “in person” school next fall.
It may have been premature, but one of the first things I did, after booking my vaccine appointment, was to jump right onto Alaska Airlines’ website. I booked tickets—based upon DS2’s new school calendar—for us to spend Christmas 2021 with my dad in the state where I grew up.
Dad’s latest favorite joke is that he’ll “be immortal in just x more days,” where x stands for his distance from reaching a full two weeks after his second dose of the Moderna vaccine.
“I’m not sure that’s quite the right word, Dad,” I tease him. “Maybe don’t take up skydiving.”
“I-m-m… something!” he responds. “I’m pretty sure they said immortal.”
Somehow, he didn’t appreciate it when I suggested the word he was looking for could be “immature!” Not at his age, he retorts.
God and the pandemic willing, we will be heading west to see Dad over the summer, but I’m not quite ready to book an airline ticket‡ for June just yet.
December, though?
I’ve got high hopes for December. And now I’ve got some airline tickets to go with them.
♦
* I did add a comment to my submission stating that I was unclear whether to use their provided list vs. the new one the governor had just announced. It is possible that a human “corrected” my data after the fact, nudging me closer to the head of the line. I suspect that this comment box exists primarily to help the software developers improve the system, however. A newspaper article I read today suggests to me that availability is simply opening up across my state.
† Here I must acknowledging that those rates have remained stubbornly higher than everyone had hoped due to the emerging COVID-19 variants, and that cases are currently kind of level in our own community. I speak more to the overall trend from the winter peak. We remain a “more cautious than average” household, I believe, even with 1/6 of our number fully immunized and 1/6 of us partially so.
‡ The fact that many airlines have moved to discontinue the practice of charging exorbitant change fees to modify tickets helped tremendously in my decision to book now.
Really Wonderful Things 
Hooray! I’m doubly happy to hear you were vaccinated with your first dose and that you’ll be here for Christmas!!! I’ll be getting my first dose probably within the month. I’m on a waiting list at a local pharmacy. I could possibly get an appointment sooner if I was willing to drive into [the city] and go to the Convention Center but I’d rather not be amongst hundreds and hundreds of people.
I agree about mass vaccination sites. Even the local physician’s group office that I visited put me in a room with about 20x more strangers than I’ve been indoors with for over a year. I felt pretty secure, but waiting for 30 minutes inside–even masked and with social distance prescribed and monitored by medical staff–pushed me to the edge of my comfort zone.
My first choice would have been to get vaccinated outdoors (in a tent or at a drive through) somewhere local. Not possible, however.
I can see how mass sites are efficient, but I was disappointed that my state government didn’t make use of an existing plan that would have distributed vaccination centers more widely under the direction of local boards of health.