(no subject)

[olivermoss]

According to multiple sources, a lot of the vaccine appointment times are released at 4 AM in our time zone. Apparently, if you can book then it's easy to get a time. So I stayed up until 4 AM and got the exact same results as every time. The Vaccine finder website claimed that the usual set of stores totally had appointments and then when I went to book at Walgreens or Freddy's or Safeway none of the appointments turned out to exist.

Back to the drawing board. I am going to install the Edge browser for a bit. I've heard that the sites have a lot of errors if you use Chrome. I've been using Firefox and maybe there is a caching problem somewhere? The whole reason I have Chrome is because not everything works right in FF and I'll load a site there if I am having problems. But if some of the reservation systems don't work in Chrome I gotta try something else.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

isn't Edge basically Chrome under the hood?

[olivermoss]

I don't know? What other browsers even still exist?

I have an iPad, so I could try Safari. I was just looking at browser market share and those are the heavy hitters.

[mistressofmuses]

Have you tried on Safeway's(/Albertson's) pharmacy site directly?

Of all the different sites I was refreshing, that was the one that did seem to update the most frequently. (Allegedly they update it every 30 minutes, which seems about right.) I had a lot of frustrating "looks like an appointment is available, oops nevermind, no timeslots" happen, but was lucky enough to be on there when something came available for next week, and got it.

I didn't use any of the vaccine-finder websites, but I do worry that it could be an extra layer of delay. (Though maybe another browser will help!)

[olivermoss]

The vaccine finder sites send you to Safeway's / Walgreen's / etc's site. On the local reddit most people are recommending going to other cities. The vax booking website for our largest hospital is borked. We go 'all adults' in ten days.

[mistressofmuses]

I wonder if it would be *any* faster to start on the pharmacy page, just to save the extra click from the vaccine finder site.

I don't know how much the site varies by location, but at least in CO, I was able to search the Safeway pharmacy availability for up to 50 miles from my zip code, which is how I wound up with an appointment about an hour away from me. (But it's an appointment, so I'm not complaining.)

And jeez, I'm sorry you're in a time crunch before you'll be competing against even more people. :(

[olivermoss]

I am using the finder site to pull up all the places with supply and then refreshing the actual pharmacy pages. I am using a fairly wide radius and failing to respect the state border despite all the ads from the Washington Health Department saying us Oregonians shouldn't touch WA's supply.

I've got 9 days before it's a free for all. Maybe in 2 days this will all become super easy, who knows?

[mistressofmuses]

That makes sense. It sounds like you're definitely doing the best thing possible. I really hope you catch a lucky cancellation, or a new shipment of supply, or something.

It's frustrating to me that states (including CO) kept opening up new eligibility groups when people in early groups have still been struggling to get appointments. :/ Obviously they don't want unused appointments when people could be getting vaxxed, but it's shitty to make you compete with *more* people, when you were supposed to be in a higher priority group.

[olivermoss]

There is a big federal push for all adults to be eligible by the 16th, but that don't mean much when we've got supply and distro stuff going on.

The roll out was always going to be a mess, but I feel like I am stuck in a hamster wheel right now

[mistressofmuses]

That is definitely a frustrating hamster wheel feeling. :/