ha! getting the vaccine appointment .
i'm signed up on the website and am in the "waiting room". i also have the app. they set up a vaccination center, across the street from my house. place is a ghost town. looking for my parents first and then us.
Ah sorry, I'm dumb.
CA might not be as random and screwy as WA has been. Here there's no statewide process, so eligibility and process are handled on a county-by-county and even provider-by-provider basis. For instance, as of last week my mom's former county (where she still owns a house for a few more weeks) went into vaccinating 75+, while the next county over went 85+, and the county we're all currently living in went 65+. There are other subgroups eligible but those were the relevant groups for them. And then in some counties, they will let you get a vaccine there even if you don't reside there, while other counties won't.
So I guess what I'm saying is first, understand what phase each relevant place you might be willing to go to is in and when you qualify. It's updated daily it seems, so I bookmarked the county health department websites as well as the WA state COVID site and just kept re-checking.
Then, also sign up for notifications for each provider that you know will be getting vaccines. For me this ranged from big health systems to smaller health providers to CVS/Rite Aid to Safeway to
anywhere. I used my "alternate" email for this, but actually it has resulted in zero spam so far anyway. But here all of the above are getting doses for distribution. In some cases, especially the smaller providers, you have to be a current patient before you can get from them, but in most cases you don't. The first appointments I got for them were in a big health system that they've never been in, but because that one had tons of locations I was able to get in by just looking at every damn hospital in a 90-minute radius.
Another source of info that was invaluable to me, as painful as it otherwise can be, is that I joined local Facebook groups because those damn people are always posting to ask about where to get vaccines or informing when a new distribution place opened up. The appointments they had today came from my learning of a new distribution that was occurring this week and for which appointments opened at 10 am on Monday. Which leads me to the last advice...
Persistence. I kept checking back and "upgrading" their appointments to earlier times when I found anything. For instance, the big health system where I got their first appointments scheduled was totally booked, but then as other providers opened up people would cancel those and times would open up. So I just kept checking and checking until I got them something. And then each time I saw something new I would try to get them an earlier date and then cancel what I had for them later. The one they had today is something I booked Monday morning...the site opened at 10 a.m. and I was on there ready, but then it didn't open on time and I used my FBG-honed F5 skills to get in there when it did. My mom tried to book at all the same places I did and never was able to get through, so I thank FBG for Friday-thread F5 education.