So, first, I want to note that any trials I had trying to get my vaccine booster start from a place of privilege, when the global vaccine inequity means plenty of people haven't had access to the first dose.
Also, while I am still considered high risk for Covid, I am a telecommuter who lives in a city with robust services such that I am able to limit my people interactions. Although I do live somewhere with communal laundry.
But when I got my first two doses, I had more schedule flexibility than I do now, so while I had access to weekend appointments, I intentionally selected weekday morning ones, so the weekends could go to folks with less flexibility.
And now my current contract has less flexibility and is not conducive to planning two or three weeks out.
And the place where I got my first two doses, has apparently decided no one needs weekend doses anymore.
So I made an appointment for a Friday evening so I could recover on a weekend. And then I had to work so I cancelled it. (Also, can we talk about how most of these systems make cancelling appointments so hard?)
And I made another appointment for a Saturday three weeks later, which was the first I could find. And then I came down with something. Likely not Covid, but one of the symptoms they usually ask if you've had in the last few days, so I had to miss my appointment out of an abundance of caution. (I felt better the day of the appointment, of course. Caution is still good.)
And so I made another appointment. And that one worked. Finally.
Other people have noted that we had huge vaccine clinics in April and May and now we don't. I passed a long line at a vaccine clinic doing my errands last weekend, and I had kept an eye on those too as I was searching. But right now, in DC, the city run clinics move around, and have no appointments. So you have to have several hours and the time to get to wherever that day's clinics are. I live in a densely populated area, so there definitely were ones in my area, but not every day, and the announcements are made that day. So you get up, check on line and then know where you need to go.
DC does also have at home scheduling, and that is also an option.
As I said at the start, I did it and I know there are plenty of folks who still can't get one dose, so worry about boosting access is a privilege. But it feels like we've made this process harder instead of easier one year into vaccines being available. And that concerns me, because we still have plenty of vulnerable people in our community.
