I was very interested in it all before I was jabbed. Then I remained interested from a logistical and organisational viewpoint afterwards. And my DH was in group 10 so I was interested personally too.
As I mentioned my DH 49, called a local pharmacy at 5.30 this week to see if they had any spare or a reserve list and as he could get tgeee quickly and they had just one dose left they gave it to him.
My interest remains and I will stay on these boards. I still watch the daily 4pm figures and look at the national site to see if rollout is expanded and local Facebook pages to see what’s happening round here. I update local friends (several didn’t know they could boom before getting letters) and add knowledge to these boards which had sometimes helped people book or realise they are eligible.
I totally understand the frustration of upper 40s who felt very close to vaccination and now feel it’s a lottery. I remain interested in behavioural techniques to boost uptake and patterns of uptake and rollout to maximise efficiency and speed and have always understood that to achieve this, not everyone gets done in a perfect order. It’s entirely natural to think about it from ones own perspective and the sense of fairness or unfairness is often strong, especially as it’s an issue strongly on some people’s minds ....although not for lots who don’t know who is being currently jabbed or just haven’t got round to booking yet. It really isn’t the key focus for very many people still. That’s interesting in itself.
I will keep following and being interested. Let’s hope ‘official’ people are too as they consider rollout of booster shots and coverage of children too.
So far on a macro level we have massive success. At the same time there are currently individual disappointments and frustrations. I think that’s normal and to some degree, an element of that is unavoidable. Everyone can think of a way it could be done differently to make it fairer or actually ‘fairer’ for them. It is a broad brush thing and the little nuances are hard to build in.
It might open up again sooner than we think. The view of the process in 12 months, 5 years, 50 years is likely to be it was a big success. Most of us will remember going for a jab. We probably won’t recall if it was last week of March or 3rd of April after the event although of course it’s important now.
Hope those in upper 40s get called soon or track down those pharmacies or centres and their closing times so they might get some of the leftovers. Of course not everyone can be done this way, but those willing to move mountains might find it’s a way.