Trying to get a COVID vaccine is like playing roulette

Welcome, everybody, to vaccine roulette!

It's a crazy, new game that requires great endurance, an epic tolerance for failure and, above all, luck.

Maybe you'll be lucky enough to get stuck in a snowstorm near a carload of health care workers who happen to be carrying a few doses of the COVID-19 vaccine that's set to expire and needs to be used ASAP. That's how a few people in Oregon scored their shot the other day.

Or maybe after your vain attempts to sign up for a vaccine at those big pharmacy conglomerates, you'll be the surprise winner of a hospital's vaccine lottery. A couple of Chicago people I know have scored that way.

Or maybe you'll be lucky enough to have a friend who discovers through other friends that a different Chicago hospital is opening vaccine appointments to non-patients. Maybe your friend will share that precious info with you. Maybe, if you hurry, you can call and, after half an hour on hold, get an appointment for a shot in March.

That's how I, as a member of vaccine group 1b, just got my appointment at Rush University Medical Center, after hours of losing the virus roulette game on assorted websites. I made the appointment gratefully, but painfully aware of how many people are still stuck.

Roulette, says the dictionary, is "something involving a high degree of chance and unpredictability." And the only predictable thing about the COVID vaccine rollout at this point is its unpredictability.

To be fair: It's important to acknowledge that getting the vaccine to millions of Americans is a vast, daunting operation. A certain amount of confusion is inevitable. Patience is necessary.

But finding a vaccine appointment is testing the patience of saints. Almost everyone I know has a story by now. Of hours spent on the Walgreens site, the Jewel-Osco site, various government sites. Of phone calls made in vain, of tips followed down rabbit holes.

Try early in the morning, someone says. No, try late at night. No, try on Fridays. No, Mondays work best.

In virus roulette, there are no obvious, fixed rules, and even the tech savvy are stymied.

Some of the saddest stories come from people desperately seeking a vaccine not for themselves but for their parents.

"I've been manically focused on it for the last three weeks," says Cara DiPasquale who lives near Chicago while her parents live in New York state. "First two appointments I nabbed were then canceled by the county, after promised shots did not arrive."

She then made appointments with the state and Walgreens. This week, at last, her parents got their first doses.

"But," she says, "the system is not — and this is a generalization, of course — designed for the senior set it is intended to serve. Not to mention people without access to a computer or Internet."

Deborah Risteen Mercer echoes that complaint. The Chicago hospital where her mother is affiliated, she says, requires patients to get their app to be notified about the vaccine. But her mother, who's 89, doesn't have a smartphone. So she signed up on her mother's behalf.

"It's a ridiculous system," she says, "and I don't know if she could navigate it on her own."

The tortuous systems exist from coast to coast.

"Every health department or grocery store distributor has a totally different system," says my colleague Lara Weber, who has been trying to navigate the mess for her parents in Florida, "and it's hard enough for me to sort out the website guidance, let alone my parents and their friends."

A friend in California reports that his parents — ages 87 and 88 — had to drive two hours to get their first vaccine dose.

My colleague Georgia Garvey signed up for text alerts about when and where her dad in Florida could get the vaccine, but so far has received only campaign ads for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

"Infuriating," she says.

Pamela Halloran, who lives in Chicago's western suburbs, has been trying to get a vaccine for her 87-year-old mother, who has dementia. The futility, she says, reminds her of the time she tried to get tickets to the Dave Matthews Band for her son. And in the face of constant futility, she has decided to calm down.

"Why stress?" she says. "We've come this far."

That's the healthiest way to play virus roulette. Remember how far we've come in this pandemic, how much stress we've endured. The vaccine is getting closer for all of us. With some luck, its distribution will become less of a gamble.

In the meantime, we can keep washing our hands, wearing our masks, keeping our distance and crossing our fingers.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Previously:
• 12/30/20: The year of the virus, the year of the mask. Be gone, 2020, that's all that we ask
• 12/28/20: As the light returns, it's time to make a list of what we've missed, and appreciated, in this dark year
• 11/23/20: How to enjoy Thanksgiving alone. How to help someone who's alone enjoy it
• 10/23/20: Voting in Kamala's shoes --- the power of a candidate's sneakers
• 09/30/20: Tis the (election) season. Don't despair, take deep breaths --- and did I mention don't despair?
• 09/15/20: Winter's coming. The secret doctors won't tell you about surviving it in a pandemic
• 09/04/20: It's September. Already. Again. This year many wish we could skip ahead as an election and cabin fever loom
• 08/19/20: Is 2020 the worst year ever?
• 08/14/20: Mailmen brave the storm, and not just the political one
• 05/05/20: Coronachondria, coronacravings and pandemania: A few words to describe our strange new times
• 04/14/20: If you get the coronavirus, would you, should you, make it public?
• 04/02/20: The pandemic, a professor and a duck named Honey: A story of life in a time of death
• 03/23/20: It's OK not to feel OK right now. But here's how to feel better
• 03/20/20: Befuddled and grieving: As nursing homes restrict visitors in the COVID-19 crisis, one woman fears she'll never see her mother again
• 02/04/20: Where do we find relief in a relentlessly jangling world?
• 12/13/19: Reject the comparisons. Embrace the complication. Be the brightness you want to see. Tips for happier holidays
• 01/21/19: Farewell, Mary Oliver, a poet whose name you may not know, but whose words you most certainly do
• 09/06/18: A breeze of hope blows in the Windy City
• 08/29/18: Another summer. Again, a gift
• 08/17/18: In search of family in a small-town graveyard
• 08/09/18: Courage, kindness two years after 12-year-old blackboy was shot in Chicago
• 07/26/18: An everyday encounter made brighter by a good question: 'Do you have a story for me?'
• 06/19/18: A Big Sister's Guide to Life: Don't chase men and other practical advice
• 06/12/18: For 13 years, 2 friends wrote letters daily. It was a love affair of poetry, separated only by death.
• 06/01/18: What would we do without our brothers?
• 05/17/18: Forget a fiddler. City woman awakens to find a goose on her roof --- and laws about removing it and her eggs
• 05/10/18: A high school senior with college dreams was paralyzed by gunfire. Two years later, he's still pushing forward
• 04/05/18: Remembering the youngest history makers
• 04/03/18: The Parable of the (Expletive Deleted) Comfort Dog
• 02/15/18: Fees, fines, loans, scams: How the poor get poorer
• 02/01/18: When Paul Simon, Daniel Day-Lewis and Elton John say 'farewell' to work they love, should we too?
• 01/25/18: At Oscars time, let's snub the snubbing
• 12/28/17: The real 2017 word of the year
• 12/20/17: The laundry-folding robots are coming
• 12/13/17: How not to waste the last days of 2017