Coyote Blog

Last week I volunteered, along with 100+ other people, for an 8-hour shift at the Phoenix area's largest vaccination station, located at State Farm Stadium (the oft-name-changing home of the Arizona Cardinals football team).  Someone really did it right.

I often criticize public efforts for their inefficiency and poor performance, but this one is certainly an exception.  Granted, it is being run as a public-private partnership and my gut feel is that the Blue Cross Blue Shield folks have a lot to do with the success, but partnering for expertise is a perfectly reasonable way to get a job done and the government seldom is willing to admit it needs help.

The entire operation uses one section of the stadium's massive flat parking lots.  They have created an assembly line for those being vaccinated to move through the process without ever leaving their car.  The whole setup has the feeling of a Disney ride or an assembly line.  Those being vaccinated are greeted at the first station and checked in against their reservation.  Their reservation number is written on grease pencil on their window.  They then proceed station by station to get their vaccine and to get checked for any negative reactions on the way out.  In between volunteers with ipads walk car to car in the queue for each station, asking screening questions, gathering data, or at the end making appointments for second vaccine.  The number on the windshield allows these volunteers (I was one) to quickly access the relevant portion of that visitor's records.  It is clear someone has load balanced the stations, because there might be 12 of one sort of station followed by 8 of another that cycle faster.  From front to back the process requires about 30 minutes, including the mandatory 15 minute wait for negative reactions.  Patients have an email waiting for them with their selected appointment time for a second shot before they even drive off the property.

The whole process never stops, running for 24 hours a day.  We volunteers get the training we need through a 15-30 minute overlap with the last person doing the job (most of us are on our feet with the iPads or with parking flags).  The biggest staffing bottleneck are the trained medical professionals needed at the vaccination station and at the end to monitor for negative reactions.  Thus all the rest of the process is designed to leverage these folks, to make sure they are doing only medical tasks -- a large force of volunteers without medical skills (eg me) do all the rest under the supervision of a surprisingly small permanent management team.  The medical folks for example at the actual vax station are not asking background questions or managing records -- this is all done with non-medical volunteers -- so they can focus on sticking needles in arms.  This is important because the medical professionals are the most limited resource and the hardest to keep deployed 24 hours a day.   I really have a lot of love for those folks because it is a long, long shift, rivaling any in a Chinese sweat shop.  Those of us non-medical volunteers just did it once or twice, these folks are doing it day after day.

The rest of the volunteers are frankly easy to get, despite it being a really long shift (especially the 10pm - 6am one), because folks who work a couple of shifts get the vaccine on the way out.  So soliciting volunteers mostly consists of running a sign up site and handling the deluge of traffic in the first 5 minutes after new spots open.  I will say it was a pretty amazing volunteering opportunity.  First, the number of well-organized volunteer efforts are, in my experience, really limited and these guys totally had their act together.   I worked at the end of the process, walking the line of cars waiting out their 15 minutes, scheduling appointments.  It was not unusual to have an older person crying and telling me they could finally go see their grandchildren after 12 months of isolation.

I thought a bit about whether to even bother, as I have never been very worried about COVID risk, but I have to travel a lot and I worry about whether the Biden Administration may put vaccine requirements on travel at some point.  Plus I work with about 800 folks over 60, so at the end of the day it made sense for me.  However, the second vaccine really has me in a quandy.  New reports have first dose effectiveness at 92+% vs two dose at 95%.  Are they really going to put this scarce resource in my arm for +03% effectiveness  (probably in the error bar of the studies)?  On the other hand, they have already scheduled me for x day and time for #2 and its part of the process that you agree to come back for the second.  I will think about it, but frankly I will be happy if the state decides to delay second doses for a while.