[conspire] covid shots in Santa Clara County

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):

> Rick,  Sorry, I don't have info for San Mateo County.

'S OK; it's a quickly changing situation.

As many know, there's a member of our household wno's qualified to
receive vaccine doses based on the new revised definition of Phase 1a
that added all age 65+ Californians to the previous definition of that
category (front-line health care workers and residents of long-term care
facilities).  Late correction:  S.M.C. claims to be doing Phase 1b now:
https://www.smchealth.org/sites/main/files/main-images/phase_1a_0.jpg
https://www.smchealth.org/covidvaccine 

When I heard about that modification (a day after Gov.  Newsom announced
it), I joined the mad land-rush for appointments on behalf that member
of our household, staying on "hold" (call queue) for over 4 hours, and
getting an appointment for shot #1 of 2 at Kaiser SSF on Jan. 30th --
which duly happened, and turned out to be the Moderna vaccine.  (They
issued an appointment for shot #2 of 2 in about a month, at the same
location.)

There's been a lot of mutually conflicting tips about how age 65+
S.M.C. residents can maximise their chance of vaccination.  It's said
that the state issued 80% of available doses for San Mateo County to the
county itself, and only 20% to commercial providers (Stanford Health,
Kaiser Permanente, Sutter Health/PAMF, Dignity Health), and some claim
that the greatest current availability is now via the County at the
S.M.C. Fairgrounds ('Event Center') mass-vaccination site in San Mateo.
Some folks recommend just trying to go there (but I'm pretty sure that
is _not_ correct); some folks say use the California Dept. of Public
Health clearinghouse site for vaccine reservations,
https://myturn.ca.gov/ .

Some physicians working for Stanford and Sutter Health say that the
commercial providers are mostly now for the time being not issuing new
appointments until they know when they will be resupplied by the state.

S.M. Daily Journal has some recent coverage:
https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/allocation-of-vaccine-expanding-in-san-mateo-county/article_aea6b49c-66a1-11eb-a5d8-a7905df4638a.html