National VaccineFinder

[Piso Mojado]

VaccineFinder is a collaborative attempt by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Boston Children's Hospital, and Castlight Health to create a website where people everywhere in the United States can see every location in their community offering COVID-19 vaccinations, how many shots each location has for the current day, and links to set up vaccination appointments.

As I am posting this, VaccineFinder only has full lists of vaccine providers in Alaska, Indiana, Iowa, and Tennessee. Its lists for those states include providers at hospitals, clinics, public health centers, doctor's offices, drug stores, and grocery store pharmacies. Obviously there is a lot of work to be done. Up to now, local vaccination websites have been swamped: for example, Massachusetts's Vaxfinder site crashed last Thursday when a million residents tried to create accounts.

If you live in Alaska, Indiana, Iowa, or Tennessee and want to be vaccinated, let us know how VaccineFinder works for you:

https://vaccinefinder.org/

I will be checking back to see if they manage to cover my state.

If you don't want vaccination, I wish you mazel tov. If you want to debate vaccination, please create your own thread. This thread is to see how well VaccineFinder works in four states, and to see if it manages to cover other states equally well. If people insist on turning it into a vaccination debate, I will ask the moderators to lock it.

 

[Lee D]

My wife was told about that site at the hospital she works at and got me signed up yesterday (called at 8am and I was poked at 11:30) for my first dose of the Moderna at a Hy-Vee pharmacy 30 minutes from here. It wouldn’t have happened otherwise, so I’m very happy the site exists.
Sore shoulder today, but otherwise no side effects.

 

[Dragon_Man]

In New Hampshire it redirects you to the states site. So no advantage to using it.

 

[Piso Mojado]

VaccineFinder has added Utah, Oklahoma and New York State (excluding NYC) to the original four states (Alaska, Indiana, Iowa, and Tennessee). Check it out if you live there! It is still useless in Illinois and the other non-supported states. A great idea which needs more adequate funding: at this rate it will be fully implemented in June 2022.

 

[The Amazing Virginian]

I tried it but it did not work for me in Virginia.

So as soon as I was eligible, I pregistered at the Commonweath's covid website. Only to find out later - and not through the website but by calling my county health authority - that my county (the most populous in the Commonwealth) was not participating in the Commonwealth's registration system and that I had to register through them instead. WTH? What a clusterf. I also tried registering through Harris Teeter, Walgreen, CVS and Walmart - all of those websites had MAJOR problems. And there were never any appointment times available anywhere in my county - or actually within 100 miles of where I live.

So I started thinking. I knew they were adding appointments every day or nearly every day. So then it just became a matter of trying to figure out when new appointments would drop . . . and finishing entering the info for my appointment into the web form before it "disappeared" from my "cart" (happened to me a couple of times). And suddenly it resembled a process with which I was familiar: the process by which folks here try to get access to GEC knives when they drop at GEC's retailing partners. LOL. I figured it wouldn't be during "normal" hours or I would have had some luck by then. So I decided to try random wee hours . . . midnight, 5 AM, 3 AM - BINGO! CVS was dropping their new appointments at 3 AM. Last Friday I snagged an appointment at CVS for yesterday.

After that . . . at CVS everything went extremely smoothly. I got my first jab of the Moderna vaccine yesterday. So far, no ill effects at all. Second appointment was automatically scheduled for late April, too.

I wish Virginia was clued in, because a single vaccinefinder site would have been a lot easier than checking four different websites on the regular throughout the day for days on end and navigating the horrible websites set up by the Commonwealth and the County. IMO, this is no way to run a railroad. Hopefully the process will improve.

 

[Piso Mojado]

I tried it but it did not work for me in Virginia.

I just checked and they've nerfed their first web page. They used to show which states they covered — Alaska, Indiana, Iowa, Tennessee, Utah, Oklahoma and New York State (excluding NYC) as of last week. There is no friendly warning anymore, and that does not bode well. I checked Illinois and it's still garbage.

I wish Virginia was clued in, because a single vaccinefinder site would have been a lot easier than checking four different websites on the regular throughout the day for days on end and navigating the horrible websites set up by the Commonwealth and the County. IMO, this is no way to run a railroad. Hopefully the process will improve.

If you're not in one of the seven blessed states, you need to do it the hard way unless someone local has done part of the work for you. In the Chicago area, 13 year-old Eli Coustan and his friends have created our best local vaccination finder.

https://www.ilvaccine.org/

What does it say about our government and our health industry when a bunch of 8th graders are doing their job better?

https://blockclubchicago.org/2021/0...ple-across-chicago-snag-vaccine-appointments/