Knock, knock
January 31, 2021 12:42 PM Subscribe
Oregon health care workers were stuck in a snowstorm with expiring vaccines. So, they gave shots to strangers caught in traffic. (Pharmacy Today, January 29, 2021)
On January 26, the Josephine County Public Health Department held a Phase 1a COVID-19 vaccination clinic at Illinois Valley High School. Afterward, the team was en route to Grants Pass to administer the remainder of that event's vaccine batch when heavy snow caused a car accident expected to shut down Highway 199 for hours.
[Josephine County Public Health Director Mike] Weber’s leftover Moderna doses, which already had been transferred to syringes earlier on Tuesday, needed to be used quickly or discarded. Like the Pfizer version, the Moderna vaccine must be used within six hours after being removed from subzero storage and reaching room temperature. “We knew the vaccine would not make it back to Grants Pass,” said Weber. “In all likelihood, it was going to expire.” After consulting with his team, Weber and four staff members trekked through the snow, knocking on car windows.
One team member carried a bin with the vaccine doses, alcohol, gauze and other medical supplies. Weber, who was in charge of the vaccination paperwork, carried the forms inside his coat. Others carried a container for used needles and an umbrella for the heavy snow. (In this photo, Weber's holding the umbrella over a vaccine recipient. The staffer administering the shot is the only person wearing gloves, and they're of the blue surgical variety.) They even had on stand-by an ambulance that accompanied them earlier in the day, in case of an allergic reaction to the vaccine.
Over the course of 45 minutes, all six doses were administered, including one to a Josephine County Sheriff's Office employee who had arrived too late for the IVHS clinic, but ended up stopped with the others on her way back to Grants Pass (the county seat). There were many rejections to the offer: the state of Oregon has recorded fewer than 2K fatalities attributed to coronavirus, and vaccine misinformation is rampant. Still, one of the six volunteers was a man "so ecstatic that he got out of his car and took his shirt off in the middle of the snowstorm so the team could inoculate him." (The man may be the recipient in the picture linked above.)
The team kept going, kept knocking, until the batch was finished. Reporting via The Washington Post; cached; Seattle Times reprint; local CBS affiliate coverage. Josephine County Twitter account Threadreader spool with more photographs.
On January 26, the Josephine County Public Health Department held a Phase 1a COVID-19 vaccination clinic at Illinois Valley High School. Afterward, the team was en route to Grants Pass to administer the remainder of that event's vaccine batch when heavy snow caused a car accident expected to shut down Highway 199 for hours.
[Josephine County Public Health Director Mike] Weber’s leftover Moderna doses, which already had been transferred to syringes earlier on Tuesday, needed to be used quickly or discarded. Like the Pfizer version, the Moderna vaccine must be used within six hours after being removed from subzero storage and reaching room temperature. “We knew the vaccine would not make it back to Grants Pass,” said Weber. “In all likelihood, it was going to expire.” After consulting with his team, Weber and four staff members trekked through the snow, knocking on car windows.
One team member carried a bin with the vaccine doses, alcohol, gauze and other medical supplies. Weber, who was in charge of the vaccination paperwork, carried the forms inside his coat. Others carried a container for used needles and an umbrella for the heavy snow. (In this photo, Weber's holding the umbrella over a vaccine recipient. The staffer administering the shot is the only person wearing gloves, and they're of the blue surgical variety.) They even had on stand-by an ambulance that accompanied them earlier in the day, in case of an allergic reaction to the vaccine.
Over the course of 45 minutes, all six doses were administered, including one to a Josephine County Sheriff's Office employee who had arrived too late for the IVHS clinic, but ended up stopped with the others on her way back to Grants Pass (the county seat). There were many rejections to the offer: the state of Oregon has recorded fewer than 2K fatalities attributed to coronavirus, and vaccine misinformation is rampant. Still, one of the six volunteers was a man "so ecstatic that he got out of his car and took his shirt off in the middle of the snowstorm so the team could inoculate him." (The man may be the recipient in the picture linked above.)
The team kept going, kept knocking, until the batch was finished. Reporting via The Washington Post; cached; Seattle Times reprint; local CBS affiliate coverage. Josephine County Twitter account Threadreader spool with more photographs.
I'm very pro-vaccine, but... I'm trying to imagine what sort of credentials and evidence I would need to accept an injection from a group of strangers who approached me in my car during a traffic jam. I'm not surprised it took them a little while to find 6 yeses.
Don't get me wrong. I'm glad they did it, but I think my risk-aversion would have kept me from getting an early vaccination.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 1:48 PM on January 31, 2021 [17 favorites]
Don't get me wrong. I'm glad they did it, but I think my risk-aversion would have kept me from getting an early vaccination.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 1:48 PM on January 31, 2021 [17 favorites]
I think the follow-up dose details are in the paperwork the director carries to each car? At the "After Vaccination" section of the oregon.gov site,
- The currently available vaccines require two doses. You should talk to your vaccine provider to learn how you can get notifications about when you are eligible to receive your second dose. You should receive your second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at the same location you received the first, unless otherwise directed by the vaccine provider.
[I trust these drivers will be directed otherwise, and the county is holding clinics like the one earlier that day] &
- Download the V-safe app, which provides personalized health check-ins after you receive the vaccination. V-safe can also remind you to get your second dose.
The sheriff's office employee who missed her appointment at that day's clinic because of the weather and received the shot on the highway was already looped in. So it's five lucky people to track.
posted by Iris Gambol at 1:51 PM on January 31, 2021
- The currently available vaccines require two doses. You should talk to your vaccine provider to learn how you can get notifications about when you are eligible to receive your second dose. You should receive your second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at the same location you received the first, unless otherwise directed by the vaccine provider.
[I trust these drivers will be directed otherwise, and the county is holding clinics like the one earlier that day] &
- Download the V-safe app, which provides personalized health check-ins after you receive the vaccination. V-safe can also remind you to get your second dose.
The sheriff's office employee who missed her appointment at that day's clinic because of the weather and received the shot on the highway was already looped in. So it's five lucky people to track.
posted by Iris Gambol at 1:51 PM on January 31, 2021
Having the ambulance prop was helpful.
posted by Iris Gambol at 1:52 PM on January 31, 2021 [12 favorites]
posted by Iris Gambol at 1:52 PM on January 31, 2021 [12 favorites]
That's twice in the last week here in the PNW: Late-night freezer failure in Seattle sends hundreds scrambling to get a fast-expiring COVID-19 vaccine (Seattle Times, 1/29).
posted by frogstar42 at 2:42 PM on January 31, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by frogstar42 at 2:42 PM on January 31, 2021 [6 favorites]
mRNA is going to win a nobel fucking prize.
Whoever comes up with the lipids to stabilize mRNA vaccines at room temperature will win the second.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 2:56 PM on January 31, 2021 [13 favorites]
Whoever comes up with the lipids to stabilize mRNA vaccines at room temperature will win the second.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 2:56 PM on January 31, 2021 [13 favorites]
This is a great example of pragmatic decision making made by people working at the pointy end to get the most effective use out of limited resources.
This week's episode of the economist's "Checks and Balance" US politics podcast (30/01/2021) focuses on the US vaccine rollout and looks at some of these kind of trade-offs more broadly: if there's a limited supply of vaccine and you focus on distributing it to the community in a rather naive, direct way, you are going to vaccinate demographics (wealthier whiter people) who have easy access to nearby healthcare but exclude demographics who don't. On another hand, if a central bureaucracy enacts a bunch of policy with complex and vague rules on who is and who isn't a high priority to get vaccinated, with severe penalties for hospitals or administrators vaccinating people belonging to a lower priority category, then fear of doing the wrong thing and getting penalized is likely to cause wasted doses or unnecessary delay in getting a decent proportion of the population vaccinated.
Also discussed: people not wanting to get vaccinated due to lack of trust in government healthcare & an egregious historical example where the US Public Health Service ran a highly unethical & racist experiment for 40 years:
> the study was purportedly designed to determine the natural course of untreated latent syphilis in some 400 African American men in Tuskegee, Macon County, Alabama [...] the subjects received heavy metals therapy, standard treatment in 1932, but were denied antibiotic therapy when it became clear in the 1940s that penicillin was a safe and effective treatment for the disease. When penicillin became widely available by the early 1950s as the preferred treatment for syphilis, this therapy was again withheld. On several occasions, the USPHS actually sought to prevent treatment. [...] The first published report of the study appeared in 1936, with subsequent papers issued every four to six years until the early 1970s. In l969, a committee at the federally operated Center for Disease Control decided the study should continue. Only in 1972, when accounts of the study first appeared in the national press, did the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) halt the experiment. [...] At that time, 74 of the test subjects were still alive; at least 28, but perhaps more than 100, had died directly from advanced syphilis.
posted by are-coral-made at 4:35 PM on January 31, 2021
This week's episode of the economist's "Checks and Balance" US politics podcast (30/01/2021) focuses on the US vaccine rollout and looks at some of these kind of trade-offs more broadly: if there's a limited supply of vaccine and you focus on distributing it to the community in a rather naive, direct way, you are going to vaccinate demographics (wealthier whiter people) who have easy access to nearby healthcare but exclude demographics who don't. On another hand, if a central bureaucracy enacts a bunch of policy with complex and vague rules on who is and who isn't a high priority to get vaccinated, with severe penalties for hospitals or administrators vaccinating people belonging to a lower priority category, then fear of doing the wrong thing and getting penalized is likely to cause wasted doses or unnecessary delay in getting a decent proportion of the population vaccinated.
Also discussed: people not wanting to get vaccinated due to lack of trust in government healthcare & an egregious historical example where the US Public Health Service ran a highly unethical & racist experiment for 40 years:
> the study was purportedly designed to determine the natural course of untreated latent syphilis in some 400 African American men in Tuskegee, Macon County, Alabama [...] the subjects received heavy metals therapy, standard treatment in 1932, but were denied antibiotic therapy when it became clear in the 1940s that penicillin was a safe and effective treatment for the disease. When penicillin became widely available by the early 1950s as the preferred treatment for syphilis, this therapy was again withheld. On several occasions, the USPHS actually sought to prevent treatment. [...] The first published report of the study appeared in 1936, with subsequent papers issued every four to six years until the early 1970s. In l969, a committee at the federally operated Center for Disease Control decided the study should continue. Only in 1972, when accounts of the study first appeared in the national press, did the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) halt the experiment. [...] At that time, 74 of the test subjects were still alive; at least 28, but perhaps more than 100, had died directly from advanced syphilis.
posted by are-coral-made at 4:35 PM on January 31, 2021
I didn't see this reported in any of the links, but is there a plan for the lucky six to get their follow-up shots? Is it as simple as booking a follow-up appointment with Weber's team?
So far, in most states I have seen, they will notify you when you are ready for a second dose, but there are no guaranteed appointments. You are on your own to scramble to find a second appointment anywhere you can just like for your first dose.
CDC has expanded the time for the Pfizer second dose from the designated 21 days to anywhere from 18 days to 42 days. But even then there's no guarantee you can get a second shot. They are just jabbing arms as fast as they can without regard to second doses. Hopefully vaccine production ramps up enough to catch up.
posted by JackFlash at 6:09 PM on January 31, 2021
So far, in most states I have seen, they will notify you when you are ready for a second dose, but there are no guaranteed appointments. You are on your own to scramble to find a second appointment anywhere you can just like for your first dose.
CDC has expanded the time for the Pfizer second dose from the designated 21 days to anywhere from 18 days to 42 days. But even then there's no guarantee you can get a second shot. They are just jabbing arms as fast as they can without regard to second doses. Hopefully vaccine production ramps up enough to catch up.
posted by JackFlash at 6:09 PM on January 31, 2021
This makes me feel like maybe not everything is terrible. People with IDs, forms, and a storm, and labeled vials would convince me, as how could Evil Mad Scientist plan this? I have the idea that most public health workers are dedicated, and this reinforces it. Plz do not disabuse me of this notion, in a world where so many things are terrible.
posted by theora55 at 7:41 PM on January 31, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by theora55 at 7:41 PM on January 31, 2021 [5 favorites]
I'll admit it: I am irrationally obsessed with the possibility that doses will go to waste. Our local vaccination site in NYC became controversial because too many white people from outside the neighborhood were getting appointments, so now there is a 60% quota for people in the 'hood 65 or older. I'm seeing a lot of facebook posts about how you can get walk-in appointments now and I'm like "shouldn't that stuff be all booked solid?"
If they could invent some kind of "happy hour" to take all comers on some sort of stand-by line in their last hour of the day that would make me feel better. But, I should probably just get over it.
posted by anhedonic at 8:31 PM on January 31, 2021
If they could invent some kind of "happy hour" to take all comers on some sort of stand-by line in their last hour of the day that would make me feel better. But, I should probably just get over it.
posted by anhedonic at 8:31 PM on January 31, 2021
theora55, frogstar42's comment upthread links to a similar "maybe not everything is terrible" story out of Seattle; after a late-night freezer failure, nurses, firefighters and volunteers scurried [...] in a mad-dash scramble to use as many doses of Moderna COVID-19 vaccine as possible before they expired.
UW Medical Center — Northwest's associate chief nursing officer is Keri Nasenbeny; Nasenbeny said many of the staffers working the vaccination clinic had been at work since 7 a.m. When she received word that there was fast-expiring vaccine available, she called about eight nurses, who in turn rustled up pharmacists and other volunteers. From Nasenbeny’s perspective, a Seattle firefighter had seemingly appeared out of thin air to help. A hospital staffer’s boyfriend was helping manage the queue. “Everyone was just like, ‘Yes,’” when asked to help, Nasenbeny said.
Ultimately, all 1,600 vaccine doses were administered across several locations before the 5 am expiration.
posted by Iris Gambol at 11:10 PM on January 31, 2021 [4 favorites]
UW Medical Center — Northwest's associate chief nursing officer is Keri Nasenbeny; Nasenbeny said many of the staffers working the vaccination clinic had been at work since 7 a.m. When she received word that there was fast-expiring vaccine available, she called about eight nurses, who in turn rustled up pharmacists and other volunteers. From Nasenbeny’s perspective, a Seattle firefighter had seemingly appeared out of thin air to help. A hospital staffer’s boyfriend was helping manage the queue. “Everyone was just like, ‘Yes,’” when asked to help, Nasenbeny said.
Ultimately, all 1,600 vaccine doses were administered across several locations before the 5 am expiration.
posted by Iris Gambol at 11:10 PM on January 31, 2021 [4 favorites]
It’s a mess’: Biden’s first 10 days dominated by vaccine mysteries.
Biden’s team is still trying to locate upwards of 20 million vaccine doses that have been sent to states — a mystery that has hampered plans to speed up the national vaccination effort.
Vaccine tourism': tens of thousands of Americans cross state lines for injections.
With more than 50 unique vaccination plans across the United States, one’s access to the Covid-19 vaccine depends in large part on where one lives.
posted by adamvasco at 2:31 AM on February 1, 2021 [2 favorites]
Biden’s team is still trying to locate upwards of 20 million vaccine doses that have been sent to states — a mystery that has hampered plans to speed up the national vaccination effort.
Vaccine tourism': tens of thousands of Americans cross state lines for injections.
With more than 50 unique vaccination plans across the United States, one’s access to the Covid-19 vaccine depends in large part on where one lives.
posted by adamvasco at 2:31 AM on February 1, 2021 [2 favorites]
So far, in most states I have seen, they will notify you when you are ready for a second dose, but there are no guaranteed appointments. You are on your own to scramble to find a second appointment anywhere you can just like for your first dose.
This is not the case in Hamilton County, Ohio, and I assume the rest of the state does it the same way. You are automatically scheduled to receive your second dose at the same time of day, at the same place, as your first dose. They do ask you if that time works for you, so they're able to tweak things if you need to come in later or earlier.
posted by cooker girl at 6:56 AM on February 1, 2021 [1 favorite]
This is not the case in Hamilton County, Ohio, and I assume the rest of the state does it the same way. You are automatically scheduled to receive your second dose at the same time of day, at the same place, as your first dose. They do ask you if that time works for you, so they're able to tweak things if you need to come in later or earlier.
posted by cooker girl at 6:56 AM on February 1, 2021 [1 favorite]
Them not wearing a mask is their choice, but you wanting a vaccination is their choice too.
Saturday (Twitter thread)
We’re at the mass vaccination site at Dodger Stadium to get my mom the vaccine. The anti–vax protestors have approached the entrance to the site. The LAPD have now closed the gate. We have been sitting here for about half an hour. Nobody is moving.
LA Times
Dodger Stadium’s COVID-19 vaccination site temporarily shut down after protesters gather at entrance.
posted by adamvasco at 10:42 AM on February 1, 2021
Saturday (Twitter thread)
We’re at the mass vaccination site at Dodger Stadium to get my mom the vaccine. The anti–vax protestors have approached the entrance to the site. The LAPD have now closed the gate. We have been sitting here for about half an hour. Nobody is moving.
LA Times
Dodger Stadium’s COVID-19 vaccination site temporarily shut down after protesters gather at entrance.
posted by adamvasco at 10:42 AM on February 1, 2021
> a similar "maybe not everything is terrible" story out of Seattle
That is terrible, though. The 1,600 doses already had people who needed them, they just weren't necessarily people who could get to the hospital with no warning at midnight. It sounds like everyone did the best they could, and at least they got to someone, but it wasn't the oldest people in the county, or the people with the most health conditions, or the workers with the highest risk of exposure.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:48 PM on February 1, 2021 [2 favorites]
That is terrible, though. The 1,600 doses already had people who needed them, they just weren't necessarily people who could get to the hospital with no warning at midnight. It sounds like everyone did the best they could, and at least they got to someone, but it wasn't the oldest people in the county, or the people with the most health conditions, or the workers with the highest risk of exposure.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:48 PM on February 1, 2021 [2 favorites]
"It sounds like everyone did the best they could" is kinda the point I was making (in that comment, & in the post).
Everything is terrible, and here are these health care workers (and a few health-care-worker-adjacent folks, in Washington) still saving the day during the latest calamity in this homemade hellscape. Some of the people who need it most don't want the vaccine, and won't get it. They weren't scheduled at the Oregon clinic, or in Seattle before the freezer mishap. But six Oregonians were vaccinated in their cars, because a crew of five spent an hour freezing their asses off to make it happen. The 77-year-old woman at UW Medical Center, the one "waking up at 1 a.m. or 3 a.m. for more than a week to search online for hard-to-secure vaccination appointments," received a dose on Tuesday at 1 in the morning, because some people who started work at 7 a.m. Monday exhausted every resource they could think of, including themselves, to get it done.
posted by Iris Gambol at 4:17 PM on February 1, 2021 [5 favorites]
Everything is terrible, and here are these health care workers (and a few health-care-worker-adjacent folks, in Washington) still saving the day during the latest calamity in this homemade hellscape. Some of the people who need it most don't want the vaccine, and won't get it. They weren't scheduled at the Oregon clinic, or in Seattle before the freezer mishap. But six Oregonians were vaccinated in their cars, because a crew of five spent an hour freezing their asses off to make it happen. The 77-year-old woman at UW Medical Center, the one "waking up at 1 a.m. or 3 a.m. for more than a week to search online for hard-to-secure vaccination appointments," received a dose on Tuesday at 1 in the morning, because some people who started work at 7 a.m. Monday exhausted every resource they could think of, including themselves, to get it done.
posted by Iris Gambol at 4:17 PM on February 1, 2021 [5 favorites]
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posted by Alison at 1:12 PM on January 31, 2021 [5 favorites]