When I transitioned to new internist, she wanted info about each of my vaccinations and asked me about each of them and got confirmation from the pharmacy where I had gotten them. Similar for my covid vaccines. They didn’t want my cards, just the information, which is now in my medical record.
We tried to tell my daughter’s doctor at her appointment yesterday and they already knew. Said that everyone in our state is input into the same database that doctors can just see.
Thank you for your cogent clarification and analysis. But there’s got to be some reluctance/barriers at play, because surely the state wouldn’t allocate more doses to low HPI places than actual population? Or would they!? But your explanation does explain why a place like Bakersfield would continue to get a large number of doses, despite a slow uptake among the local population.
It’s actually amazing how reasonably well California is doing with its vaccination efforts despite all the bizarre and counterproductive micromanaging at the state and county level. High enthusiasm and resourcefulness among the population, I guess.
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“ First of all, you should resist the urge of laminating the card after the first dose of a vaccine that needs two, as it would make it hard to note down the information of your second shot. But even after the course is complete, we don’t yet know whether there will be a need for booster shots next year and if they will have to be added on the card.”
H mentioned another problem with laminated cards—it makes them”fatter” and takes up more space in his wallet if he has to carry it around. For now, ours lie in laminated next to our passports in the metal strongbox in the closet, beside our dusty suitcases.
California was apparently trying to be “equitable” in terms of giving poorer people access to the vaccines (since richer people tended to vacuum up all available appointments as soon as they became available, while poorer people may have worse or no internet access and computers, more travel limitations, and/or more limitations on hours when they can go get vaccinated).
However, just looking at the results in terms of number or percentage of people in a given poorer area getting vaccinated does not make it obvious whether the lower numbers or percentages indicate lack of access (the problem that they are attempting to solve) or vaccine refusal, although the view from the ground suggests that it is mostly the latter in many such places. Many of the poorer areas in the state are areas where the demographics* suggest high rates of vaccine refusal. Poorer areas of the state where the demographics* suggest high rates of vaccine enthusiasm are often embedded in or adjacent to richer areas from which people will come from to gobble up any available vaccine that appears there.
*Specifically political party affiliation, which is the strongest correlate to vaccine refusal in most polls and surveys.
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The blueprint for reopening explicitly states “To end the pandemic, we’re setting aside forty percent (40%) of vaccines to distribute to people in HPI quartile 1” Current safety measures - Coronavirus COVID-19 Response
In other words 40% of doses are going to 25% of the state population. I’m sure there is reluctance, and perhaps the allocation will change when there’s ample quantities available, but it absolutely isn’t pro rata to population. The justification given is that “Forty percent (40%) of COVID-19 cases and deaths occur in California’s lowest Healthy Places Index (HPI) quartile”.
But note that the HPI is a geographic designation not a population designation. It isn’t the poorest quartile of the population.
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Oversupplying HPI quartile 1 (basically the 25% poorest areas) may have been intended to allow them to “catch up”, since those areas had previously gotten the lowest percentage of people vaccinated (presumably believed to be due to some level of “vaccine tourism” by richer people from other areas going there to get vaccinated).
But if the lower rates of vaccination there are mainly due to vaccine refusal rather than access issues, then the situation or problem is different from the problem that they are attempting to solve.
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It’s not an attempt to “catch up”. This allocation has been there since the very beginning of the wider rollout beyond hospital workers (I believe it was announced Jan 25). It just wasn’t as obvious in the early days when eligibility was dramatically more restrictive and it was hard for anyone to find appointments.
The amount of time taken on various sites/message boards/social media to argue about lamination or not is driving me crazy! Not sure why we are so fixated on this! People are going to LOSE cards - laminated or not! There will be avenues to replace cards, secure lost information, etc. Just do your part and have more than ONE piece of cardstock to rely on!
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I have heard the same for NJ, but it didn’t seem to be true in Mass where my daughter lives.
Most of the forum demographic probably has no trouble keeping the card in a safe place and backing up the information (photo, medical record at primary care physician).
Might be more of an issue for people who move around frequently and do not have a primary care physician.
Lol yup. My FIL Already lost his between dose #1&2. Fortunately, he went to the same cvs and they made him a new one. I’ve got pictures of it now.
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Aren’t we lucky to be in that very privileged CC demographic. (rolling eyes)
The whole conversation of how to keep a card is a universal conversation - for all people. Literally, worldwide. What about people in underdeveloped countries? The homeless who don’t have a nice little lockbox in the bedroom to put their card? The elderly who live alone without family and lose things. Heck, my son who is a super smart guy but needs a Tile on everything to not misplace it!
As noted above, many places will replace your card.
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We keep my mom’s card safe for her as we don’t have confidence in her hanging on to much. We also shared the vaccine info with her MD at her appointment as mom is never sure which shots she got and didn’t get.
I actually think California’s initial decision to supply 40% to 25% was fine – wouldn’t have been my choice, but I get what the state was trying to do. But it seems the state underestimated vaccine refusal/reluctance/barriers in some of the low HPI areas, and then was unable to pivot to a different distribution system because they had tied reopening the state economy to the number of shots administered in the low HPI areas.
In any event, hopefully, rapidly increasing supply will ameliorate the situation.
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I get what they were trying to do, but given the very high infection rates in these areas, a large proportion of the population may have had some level of immunity. For example it is estimated that 35% of people in Kern county had been previously infected as of early March: California - County Infection Estimates | COVID-19 Projections Using Machine Learning
That surely adds to reluctance amongst those people to go to the trouble of getting vaccinated and certainly calls into question the rationale for prioritizing those areas over counties with fewer previously infected people (more “dry tinder”). You prioritize forestry clearance to prevent wildfires in areas that haven’t burned recently, not those that have.
If the 40% of infections being there represented 4% of the population previously infected vs 2% elsewhere then it might make sense. If it’s 40% previously infected there vs 20% elsewhere then the allocation logic works very differently if you need to get to say 70% for herd immunity and have enough doses to vaccinate 50% of the population (roughly where we are today).
Looks to me like this could provide some good research topics for a math PhD in allocation algorithms (what I used to do 30 years ago - my best man is still doing this for real today as a math professor in epidemic modeling).
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That same site lists 35.8% of Los Angeles County as having been infected, compared to 34.5% in Kern County.
Yes, the implication would be to send more doses to the Bay Area and coastal northern CA. However it would have looked bad politically to be prioritizing the rich people.
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Just stuffed my card in a drawer. Unless I decide to go to Maui, I am extremely confident that I will have zero use for it going forward.
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