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Thursday, February 11
Vaccine hopes crushed by crashed website Christina Ryrholm Hill Country Weekly Hundreds, if not thousands, of hopeful fingers were poised over keyboards minutes before 9 yesterday morning. Mine included. We had all received detailed instructions from the city by email, texts or social media platforms on what to do Wednesday in order to register for one of 500 doses of Moderna vaccine Kendall County will receive tomorrow. I qualified as I am in Tier 1B, a decade older than 65. It seemed simple - click on the registration form, answer a few questions, pick a time and hit the submit button. However, when I attempted to click on the registration form all that appeared was a white screen. I knew that it should have worked as I did a dry run yesterday. So, calmly, I tried to access the city website a couple of different ways. I, and I am sure hundreds of others, did what
comes naturally, we clicked …. And clicked …. And clicked …. for over ten minutes. I tried calling the city to verify that the site had crashed but no answer. Even knowing that the result would not change, I still went back to the city provided link and clicked … and clicked. About ten minutes later I received an email saying that, “Yes, the website has crashed. You can try this link to register for the vaccine.” I followed the instruction, answered the questions, picked out my time of 10:55, checked the conditions button (without reading to save time) and hit the submit button. Only to have an error message - that my selected time was not available. I quickly went to chose a later time, literally one second later, to learn that all slots for vaccine doses were filled. Just like that - no vaccine for me, and who knows how many others. At 9:52 I did get an email from the city saying that all slots had been filled; they were sorry for the
technical difficulties; that they expected “a surge of people but not before they even started”. I do not know what contingency plan they had in mind but it was not sufficient. Apparently they created a shortcut that was then sent to everyone that had requested COVID alerts. Texas has said that limiting the vaccine to county only residents is not permitted. San Antonio television stations announced five hundred doses would be available in Kendall County but only 63% of the 500 doses will be given to Kendall County residents tomorrow. And, as the allocation of doses is based on the county population age 17 and over, (30,000) by Friday Kendall County will be at around 16 per cent of the population (5000) vaccinated with at least the first dose and many with a second dose. It will be quite awhile before I will have my fingers again poised over the keyboard in anticipation of securing a spot to receive my vaccination.
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