Innoculated

So I followed the suggestion of my doctor and went to the vaccination clinic for the swine flu held in my county this morning. The State of Virginia has received a severely low amount of vaccinations than they originally expected and as such no private physicians, practices, or pharmacies have received the vaccination. To my knowledge this was the first clinic available in our county. They had only 12,000 some vaccines to give out and limited it only to pregnant women and children 6 months - 36 months. Since they wouldn't even give one to Ellie or Matt, I decided that only I would go. I knew that the lines would be horrendous and I didn't want to make Annie have to go through that or have Matt and Ellie come to help me out.

And it was pretty crazy. I've never seen anything like it. The line was amazingly long. I got to the government center about 20 minutes before the clinic opened and it took me 10-15 minutes to find parking. Then I parked myself in line. Fortunately I had a camping chair which turned out to be a huge blessing. I also had a bag full of snacks, water, a book, and my knitting.

After the first hour I had only moved about 20 feet. From then on, we moved pretty consistently. But I can't even express how long the line was. It was just full of switch backs and twists and turns starting beyond the massive parking lot, weaving through it, eventually circling around the entire building and finally actually entering the building. Thankfully, it only rained on us a little.

There were plenty of pregnant women, but I would say the majority were families with small children. I was surprised at how many whole families were there. I would have thought that one parent would have come with the eligible child and leave the rest of the family at home. But there were lots of folks who were in line - mom and dad with a few children, but only one of the children being vaccinated.

It was a pleasant line. Everyone helping out each other and being congenial. But I just kept thinking, wow, this is crazy. I mean, I don't want to play down the seriousness of the swine flu, but really aren't we being a little paranoid folks? Waiting three plus hours for a vaccine to get some piece of mind seems more like a placebo than an actual deterrent to sickness. Supposedly, the state of Virginia is going to have sufficient enough of vaccines by mid-November. Is three weeks really going to make a difference? Why not just wait until it is more readily available? I don't know. And who am I to criticize? Wasn't I one of the loonies in the line?

So I got my shot and once I got into the building it was all very fast. Plus it was "free." Though of course, I kept thinking that I'm paying for this anyway, through tax dollars. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch or a free vaccine. Considering the massive amount of staff they had running this thing, it was clear that some substantial funds were spent just to administer the vaccine, let alone the actual cost of said vaccine.

I tried to take some pictures to illustrate the long and lengthy lines. None of them really do it justice. But I'll post a few of them anyway. When I finally left the building 3.5 hours after I had come, there seemed to be no line at all. I don't know if people just stopped coming or if they had gone through so many vaccinations that they just started to turn people away. I wondered whether I shouldn't have just waited out the morning paranoia and shown up mid afternoon. Perhaps I should have. Oh well. What do you do?

The line ahead of me when I first arrived.

The line behind me

Do you see the building past the trees and the cars, that's where we were going.

More of the line as we made another turn.
And yet another turn.
Postscript - I read in the Post yesterday that by 1pm the crowds were gone and you could walk right up and get the vaccine (Wouldn't you know it?) I thought that might happen, but I was afraid that if I waited until the afternoon, they would be out. They have now opened five clinics per day throughout the county for pregnant women, children 6 months to 5 years old. We stopped by today to get the girls taken care of, but they were out. Maybe tomorrow.