Vaccine Rollout - State starts out with an 'F' but much improved, Big Island gets B+

[randomq]

Signed up for the shot via VAMS, no certain age or priority group required. They had appointments this month for all 3 vaccines.

[eightfingers2.0]

Went to the stadium today for the harpooning. Was run very efficiently, it took 30 minutes from the time we left our car to the time we got back to it. That includes the 15 minute wait time to check for adverse reactions.
I was really impressed.

[Kaimana]

Got my first shot yesterday also. It was so smooth and quick. Really surprised me.

[Justin]

I've been following this from halfway around the world, and I know this thread started off as an indictment of the state and regional authorities (and perhaps with good reason), but comparatively, Hawaii has actually been doing an amazing job. I'm not sure exactly why that is - perhaps the population centers are very well-known to the residents and there are more outdoor areas to conduct these sorts of things, who knows. But whatever the case, I wish I was in Puna right now, so that I could get my shot(s) in short order. I never thought I'd have been saying that six months ago.

[ChunksterK]

@Justin: Maybe I should change the title of the thread and give us a B+. While I still think that political connections played a big part in who got vaccinated first, the sheer numbers of people vaccinated as a percentage of population are among the best anywhere. The three Saturday mass events in Hilo have been amazing examples of good organization and community participation.

[birdmove]

I have to say that, for surviving Covid, I can't think of a better place to be, than our own Big Island. Maybe in a wilderness cabin on a mountain top in the Ozarks. I had to fly to Oahu in January for a surgery and jumped through all the travelling requirements. Turns out it was a good thing I didn't put it off any longer too. Flew over on the first flight of the day, and returned on the last one, same day.

[Carey]

I would love to see the title changed, as the "F" was never a true indication of anything that our state has done....
As far as I can see, our state has lead in keeping COVID from spreading through our rapid Tracing & Monitoring efforts & our mask mandates, travel restriction & closures... much to the complaints of some for failing the effected businesses...
As far as vaccination efforts, we have been in the top 10 states for all except the first week of the rollout...
The 3 main complaints from the vaccination efforts were due to receiving the vaccine days later than some states, complying with the CDC rollout plan & a perception that there was widespread ʻfavoritismʻ.... much of which I have TRIED to explain.... still, folks feel those of us assisting have failed!
1. Luckily now everyone that wants to register & is old enough (16+ for Pfizer, 18+ for Moderna & J&J Janssen), can register... at the Tuesday clinic we had folks from 18 to 90+ (for anyone that missed that, we are still getting kupuna signing up...) many of the folks at that clinic signed up for it on Monday & Tuesday - as to favoritism, I saw the exact opposite at the clinics... the rollout I saw followed the rollout with the essential workers coming on line at the % intervals the CDC had allowed UNTIL our state reduced the kupuna ages to 70, the 65 then 50... this was not within the CDC protocol, but stopped much of the complaints (however our clinics became much less organized, as most folks did regard their appointment times as anything but a suggestion... as you may have noticed, we are back to the organization we had for the months PRIOR to opening up to the 70-75yr olds...ETA: with a smaller volunteer & work force, as the last 2 weeks of March, we had a drastic reduction in volunteers signing up & now have ~1/2 the volunteer force!)
2. we were a few days behind in the initial rollout of the vaccine, however this was only due to the fact that to get the secured shipping to our remote location, with the way the federal rollout started (states not given advanced noticed of quantity or shipment until the federal date...) meant that with shipping here, we would be behind other states that were closer to distribution centers...
3. I have no idea how folks outside the VAMS process perceive favoritism, but as a business owner & one who assisted in the vaccine rollout, I KNOW how the essential worker rollout worked & the only way an essential industry could have added more workers or done anything towards ʻfavoritismʻ would be if the owners agreed to falsification of a federal document...
If they decided on that route, the state DOH had no power to do the massive paperwork tracing, AS THE MAIN EFFORT IS TO GET EVERYONE THAT WANTS TO BE VACCINATED.... if a business owner decided to commit federal fraud, that is on them! The state DOH does not have any legal standing on that item.... their work is to reduce the spread of disease... Did they stop it when they could? yes I did see that, when someone was stupid enough to open themselves to the fact they committed fraud to get the vaccine.
There is one other piece, & that is to reduce waste in the vaccine & I saw first hand the work (REAL WORK, MUCH OF IT ON THEIR ON TIME) the DOH workers did to make sure that all of the vaccine that could be used got into the arms that were on the CDC list... it would have seemed simpler to follow some states that had ʻanything goesʻ rules on that... but the real work of making sure that each person also got the second dose (if they had Pfizer or Moderna) was something no one outside of the system can appreciate...
So yah, it would be nice to see that the folks here actually realize that our state has always been in the upper % of the response & not to always see this title that we were a failure!

[Kiana]

ChunksterK, if you can change the title, please do so. We also received our first Pfizer vaccine at the recent Hilo mass vaccination. It was super fast, well organized, a bit amazing for the numbers coming and going. There must have been a hundred volunteers (of all ages), including maybe our Carey.... huge mahalos to all of them!

Hawaii has been one of the best places in the country to be, if not the world, as we've gone through this pandemic year +. I'm grateful every day that I live here, for so many reasons.

[ChunksterK]

I changed the title a few hours ago. If anything I posted was interpreted as disparaging those who volunteered to help with the vaccination effort, that was not my intent. A lot of people worked very hard, and they deserve a lot of credit. I went to last Saturdays mass event, and it was a marvel of both efficiency and aloha organized by Hilo Medical Center. I felt fortunate to get my jab when it opened up to an even larger group than had been initially hoped for.

I still resolutely maintain, however, that there was political favoritism early on in the "essential" designation process, particularly when it came to state and local government employees. There was very credible and documented reporting on the Civil Beat Honolulu website and in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser of entire government agencies moving to the front of the line. (Go to their archives, and you can still see it.) The reporting stated that more than a few of those agency employees were either working from home or in back office, no public contact situations. The Hilo paper even did an op-ed cartoon on the subject. I personally know two Hawaii County employees who questioned their own designation. One who works in an office job at the Water Department even described how his agency boss pressured everyone to go even though some felt they should wait.

Ultimately our isolation probably saved us from the horrors other places suffered more than anything else. Our indecisive and dithering governor's ineffectiveness actually did us a favor for once. Because no one could figure out the rules for getting into Hawaii from one day to the next, a lot of potentially infected people stayed away. This is indeed one of the safest places on the planet when it comes to the pandemic, and the efforts of the Big Island medical community to get everyone vaccinated will build on that.

[Rob Tucker]

Mahalo ChunksterK,

Yeah, the local vaccination workers deserved a better grade but I too was suspicious of the county workers getting front loaded. Public servants get served first.