State to shut mega-vaccination sites in shift to more targeted shot efforts

and a comment that wouldnt post

pls delete

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Whatever works.. maybe we need to do it here

NEW: We’re launching our “Shot and a Beer” program to encourage eligible New Jerseyans ages 21+ to get vaccinated.

Any New Jerseyan who gets their first vaccine dose in the month of May and takes their vaccination card to a participating brewery will receive a free beer. pic.twitter.com/REiHTEa6mi

— Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy) May 3, 2021

The large vaccination centers made sense when supplies of a vaccine where extremely low so dividing it for smaller centers was not the most efficient method of distribution. (As in, it would have resulted in fewer people overall getting a shot.)

Now that there's no shortage, switching to community distribution makes sense. That was always the plan. It's been clear from months now that you can get the shot in location of your choosing but there would be a delay.

I was critical of Baker and the start of the vaccination drive but Mass is now #2 for first shots and #6 for fully vaxxed. So the plan seems to have worked better than almost any other state.

The real problem now is dopes who refuse the get the shot.

And while their already existing infrastructure of community pharmacies and medical practices worked at the start of the rollout, they fell behind quickly. Meanwhile, the assembly lines that the mass vaccination sites were able to set up handled the early demand by giving out as much as was available early on.

I have no fault with the winding down of the mass sites, but I also know that all of my Massachusetts family got or will get their shots through the mass sites, so they did what they were set up to do. Now that demand is slackening, let's move on to how influenza vaccines are distributed, albeit with the whole logistical nightmare that Moderna and Pfizer bring with them.

This is a distance race, and you can speak better than I can about how one approaches the different parts of a distance race.

No. Not for this. Not when we had hospitals and wealthy towns hoarding up the supply "for later doses" when there was too little to go around.

You have absolutely no idea how badly that was failing. I do, because I was involved with the enormous pivot that took us from half of the doses sitting in freezers in a zillion different places to most of what limited supply we had getting into arms in a two week period.

Most of those "private blah blah blah" that all the whinging PR huffers seem to perservate on were such noted "for profit" entities like Brigham and Women's and and consortia of regional hospitals - that's who was running those sites. I know because I was shipping them the goods.

There is a cure for Rachael Maddow Syndrome* - its called checking your privilege and looking at the magnitude and dimensions of the logistical nightmare that happens when you don't have enough vaccine, special storage is needed, and lots of impatient entitled people are incapable of waiting their turn.

*RMS is the belief that you (or your wife's mom, as a proxy for your personal angst) should be getting that dose on a silver platter at your door RIGHT NOW because of (name that proxy equity buzzword) and if you don't it is because Massachusetts SUCKS but CT is goood (despite factual evidence to contrary), not because supply is lacking and you really are not that special!

cities and towns had a perfectly good system set up already

Really? What "perfectly good system" was this?

I think you mean that every city and town had a system, or something that they call a system, that the people in charge of it would have called "perfectly good". And, hopefully, most of them were "perfectly good" for some purpose (although given the storage needs of Pfizer and Moderna, I have my doubts). But holding onto second doses that you won't be able to use for three or four weeks was simply wrong on every level. Did the people running these "perfectly good systems" not understand how supply chains work?

You also don't seem to understand that vaccinations were not only available through mass vaccination sites. I got mine at a site operated by my county, which also does flu shot clinics in normal years. They adjusted to use larger sites than in an average year, ran a very efficient operation, used the supply chain the way it's meant to be used (i.e., all the doses we have today go in arms today, and everyone gets an appointment for a second dose at the appropriate interval that will be fulfilled with vaccine that we'll get at that time).

The large sites will stop taking appointments for first shots, but they will still be booking appointments for the second shot. This is what happened at Fenway. That is a 2 to 3 week gap allowing for things to wrap up without trouble.

12-15 year olds are about 4% of the population - 250,000 to 300,000 people.

MA is getting 450,000 doses a week through the state and shipped via federal programs.

Two doses for every kid in that age range is about 1.5 weeks worth of vaccine.