Massachusetts' vaccine website fiasco a big-time snafu!
Fubar: (Vulgarity upped) beyond recognition.
These two acronyms, popular in the military, especially during World War II, sum up all the frustrations with the state of Massachusetts’ absurdly cruel and user-unfriendly website for vaccinations.
The site lacks any kind of consistency and has turned getting a vaccine in the Bay State into a massive free-for-all that’s more reminiscent of trying to win the Powerball or Megabucks than attempting to get vaccinated against a pandemic that has altered our lives for a year now and has killed more than 520,000 Americans.
My latest experience on Thursday, March 4, when shots that had been added the previous week at 8 a.m. went live this week at 5 or 7 a.m., depending on whom you talked or listened to, was mirrored by thousands of frustrated state residents. The latest horror show was just one more sad chapter in this callous and incredibly inept attempt by the tone-deaf Massachusetts bureaucrats to do their job as public servants.
The reason for this week’s woes --- not released on the website until well after people had wasted time trying to get a shot – was that there were only precious few (12,000) first-time shots available due to the high volume of second shots. That’s understandable, but it nonetheless eliminated most of the mass sites ---- and it wasn’t well publicized ahead of time. As a result, people didn’t realize that until after spending time in vain to register.
Here are some things that are missing from this intimidating and depressing website experience:
* Registration: There’s currently no way for people to register for a shot without actually signing up for one. That approach is plain wrong and forces people to start all over again every time they try to sign up.
* Store people’s information: The website should allow people to electronically sign up, complete with insurance information, which would then be put into an electronic bank of sorts. All that would have to be done would be to generate an email and text to the person in search of shots, so that person could be notified when openings occur, and then be assigned a slot. That’s far preferable to what happens now: Mass. chaos in which we all must start anew. Makes no sense and creates needless anxiety ---- not to mention that it forces people to check the state and other websites (like CVS) almost 24-7 as there is no way to know exactly when new shots will drop, it seems.
* Hot line is inefficient: What’s the point of having a 211 hot line if you never get a call back? I called and registered on Feb. 26 after having two weeks of harrowing frustration on the website, and I have yet to hear back. It may be better than nothing, but barely.
* Return vaccines to local boards of health: As a Boston Globe story today (March 5) pointed out, for 20 years, the state of Massachusetts had been planning for a pandemic by relying on the local boards of health – and then the state abruptly yanked the vaccines from those trusted local sources. Makes no sense, and this pig-headed policy change could wind up adding to both the infection and death rates from COVID-19.
The bottom line is that while most of us who have been trying in vain to book appointments realize how limited the vaccine supply has been in Massachusetts, there still has to be a much better, more efficient and user-friendly way of managing the website.
The state hasn’t done that --- and in doing so, has failed the state’s residents, regardless of Gov. Charlie Baker’s arrogant denials of any fault.
The question remains: Why did Baker – the former CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care --- get rid of the local boards of health in favor of two newly formed mega health care businesses?
That --- and other questions –-- must be asked and answered.
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