Over promise O'Vaxxie

I wasn't always a vaxxer, but as a Born Again Vaxxer BAV, and because I was relentlessly institutionalised as a child, I'm quite the opposite of vaccine-hesitant. Which is just as well because I feel like The Man has ragged us around a good bit getting two shots into the arms of two elderly cohabitees. 

• First they took our Eircode; 
• Then they assigned us to the R95 vaccentrum in Kilkenny despite it being twice as far of a drive from the Y21 centre nearest us
• Then they gave us appointments separated by exactly 24 hours
• Then they wrote the wrong date on my card
• 12 weeks later, we [same Eircode, same household] were assigned slots 8 days apart
• The Beloved phoned to see if one or other could be rescheduled
• No!

Last Thursday 9th Dec 21 we got a rather peremptory txt from the HSE more or less ordering us to find the nearest walk-in clinic for a booster. The messaging was that Sunday 0900-1900 was the Best Time for 60 y.o.s to get their booster shot. Our nearest vaccentrum is Y21 Enniscorthy.  The HSE says people in Co. Wexford are ” eager” to get a Covid 19 vaccine booster. It’s inviting members of the public, who are over the age of 50, to attend a walk in vaccination centre in Enniscorthy on Sunday. The facility at the Astro Active Centre in the town will be open from 9am, and no appointment is necessary [source].

The following day, from a different Mobile #, we were given two appointments back at R95 Kilkenny - one at 17:40 and one at 19:15 both of which are well after dark; and it's a long way from home. As I have Wexford Science Café at 19:00, there is no way we can make that appt. We therefore took a punt on no appointment is necessary in Enniscorthy on Sunday morning. Figuring that Ireland sleeps in on Sundays, we turned up at 10:10 to see a line of folks straggling out of the Vaccentrum . . . into the street . . . across the LIDL entrance . . . up to the main road . . . and back towards town and not because they were separated by 2m. There must have been 400 people waiting there, outside, in the drizzle, in December and all of a good=vulnerable age. Seemed like a recipe for 'flu and we hadn't bought lawn-chairs, a flask of tea or a thermal blanket . . . so we did a U-turn and came home.

I'm delirah that the vaccine uptake is so strong in Wexford but that's a helluva lot of "at risk" person hours waiting around in marginal weather conditions. It's not as if it was tix for the last ever Bob Dylan concert or the allocation of a ration of mealie-meal during a famine.

PS added at 18:00. So as not to spend all our arms in one place, we found a no appointment is necessary vaxxcentrum in R93 Carlow open 2 to 5 this afternoon. Rocked up 25 minutes before the doors opened to be #2 & #3 in the line outside. All done and dusted by 14:30. The joys of not having to go to work, maybe? That would be Moderna: not expecting to develop Bell's Palsy or Myocarditis