This week’s discussion centers on the latest trend of “Vaccine Shopping”. What’s that you ask – I had the same question. For some who are struggling with accessing appointments, worried that their appointment might be canceled, or even thinking they want to pick and choose the vaccine they get, they are booking multiple appointments. While many of us have played a “spread” the difference, in this case, is unlike husband and wife lining up in two different checkout queues at the supermarket, when you eventually finalize your choice your duplicate is released and someone else can fill it.
That’s not true with vaccine distribution with the short shelf life and friability of some of the vaccines in use. If vaccination sites have appointment no-shows there is a risk that the vaccine goes to waste or ends up being used in backup choices that may not match the intent of prioritization
Meanwhile, the vaccination booking systems continue to struggle but in a picture of innovation meeting adversity, Olivia Adams (@livgust) who is currently on maternity leave decided to solve the problem in Massachusetts and created an integration screen scraping site MA COVID Vaccine Appointments that goes to all of the booking sites in the state, pulls information and assembles it to a single page that people can review to find the nearest available appointment. Clever stuff!
And then finally we discuss the view that once you have received your vaccine can you now stop wearing a mask, stop washing your hands and hang out in close quarters with all your besties. The short answer is no but you can hear the details why getting vaccinated is not liberation from our NPIs
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Raw Transcript
Nick van Terheyden
Hi, this is Dr. Nick on the incrementalist here with incremental insights for better business better health.
Fred Goldstein
And I’m Fred Goldstein with accountable health and working with Nick and others to help employers consider how to reopen, operate and particularly look at their broader health improvement programs, post pandemic or wherever we are in the pandemic right now. So, Nick, lots of vaccine news vaccines going out. Now we’re starting to get shots into people’s arms, but there’s all kinds of unique things happening. Some of them perhaps not so good.
Nick van Terheyden
Yeah, so vaccine shopping. Yep. I’ll pause for a second what Wait, what did he say? You probably have to be like me and look that up and say what, how would people shopping for vaccines. So there’s a number of things going on here. First of all, we’ve got this piecemeal patchwork craziness throughout the US which is not just 51 different countries. It’s, you know, 1000s of different counties and you know, all sorts of implementations. You’ve talked about this a few times with Eve, Eitan, who knows for for scheduling, and all sorts of problems. So people are challenged and you know, recognize that, but for those folks that are able to get to it, that maybe are able to hit the refresh key that booking appointments, but then they’re not satisfied with that, and they’re going and booking multiple appointments. How do they do this? Well, they just find another site that’s nearby, they booked an appointment. And why are they doing this? Because they’re worried they might get canceled? Or worse yet, they’re saying, No, I want this vaccine over that vaccine. Well, my problem with that, and I gotta be honest, I’ve done something similar in the supermarket, I get my wife to stand in one line and bystandard another just in case one of them goes further. But here’s the difference, folks, when we decide to enter a single line, that space opens up and somebody can use it, what’s happening is, these vaccines are not getting used, because they have no shows. And they’ve got nobody to fill those spaces. That’s not okay.
Fred Goldstein
So, I mean, so you’ve actually got people multiple booking, and then not showing up. And then obviously, if there’s nobody there to take the vaccine, those get wasted,
Nick van Terheyden
wasted. Worst case, or put back in the freezer, you know, especially with the the vaccines that we’re predominantly using in this country that have all the cold storage, and they have a limited life expectancy, outside of that temperature, the super cold when they’re reconstituted. So, you know, waste is an awful thing when you’ve got all these people, so absolutely inexcusable. So I wouldn’t advocate it book your appointment. And except that, you know, yes, you might get cancelled, but I think we’re getting better. And you’ve got some news on that. Right?
Fred Goldstein
Yeah, well, it’s interesting to when you think about that, because I’ve been talking to some people out there about getting their vaccines and they’re not in the groups that one a or one B’s and I know we’re beginning to move into maybe this the seeds, etc. They’re not in those groups in certain states. And so they’ve actually been hanging out or going to the vaccination sites late in the afternoon, and just waiting to see if something opens up because of a situation you’re talking about to try and get some or maybe there’s some extra vaccine or people didn’t show. So it’s an interesting approach. And then you’re also seeing and hearing wealthy people buying their way in, which also is just a disgrace. And we still have issues around how do we schedule this? Who’s scheduling this? I know, Nick, you brought up earlier, a really unique idea that came out about scheduling that somebody’s done. So people are taking some of this and running with it and actually doing some cool stuff.
Nick van Terheyden
Yeah, so big shout out to Olivia Adams, she’s on maternity leave for crying out loud. She’s a programmer. And she looked at the state of Massachusetts and said, we have this piecemeal patchwork, nobody knows where the appointments are. And she created for one to the term a screen scraping program that went out dozen every five minutes and produces a centralized register of those appointments, where the availability wait time, or not wait times, but you know, for booking the appointments, and then links directly to it are a brilliant innovation, to the patchwork of challenges that we have. We don’t need that just for Massachusetts. We need that on GitHub. And I and her problem. She’s hosting this herself, she’s begging for money so that she can actually pay for the hosting. Because guess what, everybody’s go? Well, that’s brilliant. I’m going there. Instead of going to all these different places, we have got to roll this out and do this professionally. We’ve got to do a better job.
Fred Goldstein
Yeah. And definitely kudos to her for setting that up. What a brilliant idea. And and to show that, hey, this can be done. It’s not at the end of the day rocket science. And that, you know, brings up another point, and I’m beginning to hear this now because the vaccines getting out there actually from some professionals and others. I’ve been vaccinated. We’ve been vaccinated. We don’t need to worry about stuff anymore. We can go ahead and eat together and sit in small rooms and this and that. But the reality is we can’t can we Nick?
Nick van Terheyden
Ah, survey says. No. And you know, there’s a multitude of reasons, but let’s hit off on a few of them. First of all, even with the fantastic vaccinations, there is still a subset of people that will get the disease, you know, that 5% and the 95% coverage so you could still get it. Also, there’s all these other people around that don’t have it. So, you know, you potentially spread it and then we still don’t know. If you get exposed to it. You’ve had the vaccination. Do you get the disease But don’t have any symptoms and essentially suppress it. But more importantly, are you able to spread it? We can’t answer that with certainty. And until we’ve essentially suppressed this virus, things do not return to the way that they were or anything close to that. And we have to use the npis the non pharmaceutical interventions which are Freda,
Fred Goldstein
wear a mask, social distance, keep washing your hands and and use proper hygiene. And for me, it’s become two masks, as I’m reading more about it, and really trying to if I have to go indoors, it’s as fast as I can do it going through that door. And I am walking around this way and that way to try not to spend too much time because the new data is showing it from the NFL, as we’ve talked about, and others that it is can be spread in a short period of time. And and clearly with the more with the newer variants that are more transmissible, the issues are raised, they are much higher. So once again, Nick, another fantastic week. Really appreciate it. This is Fred Goldstein with the Campbell health. If you have any questions about your company, how you’re operating or even looking at your broader health improvement programs, consider the mental health issues we’re now seeing, consider the anxiety and stress the work from home issues. What about all the screenings that potentially people have missed over the past year, all of those are going to impact your health programs. So take a look at our website, give us a call. We’d be happy to help you.
Nick van Terheyden
This is Dr. Nick on the incrementalist here with incremental insights for better business better health. It’s funny, she was working this morning because I was going to put the link to I’m sure she got hammered. Oh, she has been and she was failing on you know, Patreon or whatever to try and get you know, support for you know paying for the hosting of this. I mean, it’s just it’s awful.
Fred Goldstein
Yeah. I got a note yesterday from Greg. He said, by the way, just edited your interview with Nick and now with a with Ben, it was unbelievably great. This one should get a lot of attention. So we’ll see what it sounds like. Oh, fantastic. But that was getting I just sent a note to Aaron with Nancy to try to get her scheduled to so we’ll get that one racked up and you’ve got
