Awaiting Vaccination

By state rules, I classify as Phase 1b, largely by virtue of age, on the state priority ranking for SARS-CoV-2 immunization. Despite having decent elected and appointed public officials, my FB friends from other states, whose officials are likely inferior to ours, have all received at least one dose of vaccine, some both doses.  I remain on a waiting list, bottom priority since I have the good fortune to remain in basically good health as my chronological age advances. By my own estimate I have moved up two places on the computerized queue, now languishing at  #74998.  Somebody ahead of me must have gotten Covid-19 and died while another ahead of me knew movers and shakers that I don't.  To usurp the turf of our local newspaper's entertainment critic, our state laid an egg.  Having met virtually all of our elected officials at least once, and chatted with many, they are as a group rather intelligent and dedicated, though really in over their head.  Their responsibility exceeds their resources, which lessens their authority.  From time to time an email appears to the tens of thousands of fellow seniors in limbo guiding us to pharmacies that administer these vaccinations.  We the People has shifted to the squeakiest wheel getting fixed first.  Within that 75K seniors like me, there are no doubt some alumni of Filene's Basement who have a lot of experience elbowing their way from the scrum to the alluring 70%-off merchandise in the bins.  Understanding that I may be the least in need relative to others on the waiting list, many with the chronic diseases or physiologic risk factors or lifestyle risks that I addressed daily before retiring from medical practice, I mostly have been waiting my turn, remarking on our Governor's Twitter posts with phrases that go for the jocular.  

Our officials added an Every Man for Himself cyberspace resource, linking pharmacies, some local, others national, with a presence in our state that have vaccine.  While I qualify as a 1b, I never get farther than entering my Zip Code before learning that no appointments are available. I stopped by my usual pharmacy, found it unusually filled to capacity with mostly female contemporaries, all waiting patiently in the SRO gathering, far more orderly than a Filene's Basement scrum. Somebody must either be getting through on the website or have a granddaughter who knows the system.  While my HS chums reconnected on FB seem to have found a pharmacy that would offer an appointment, perhaps residing in larger states and metro areas that have more pharmacies, their access seemed no more organized than mine, perhaps less as my small state at least has a list of people who both qualify and desire being immunized.

Perhaps most irksome to me personally has been my individual downgrade. At one time, not in the overly remote past, my institution would have labelled me essential.  Endocrinologists moved within the fray attending to diabetics whose chronic condition impaired their prognosis or who needed more insulin to adapt to dexamethasone.  Being at an inner city hospital, much of our community took the brunt of this pandemic.  The lady who makes sure we all get our mandatory flu shots would have sought me out, assuming I had the luck not to become among the many frontline stalwarts who got infected themselves. But off the payroll, an idle spectator, my communal value plummeted, perhaps along with any communal interest in keeping me alive more than anyone else.  So I wait my turn with patience and as much good cheer as I can maintain.