**I noticed some of my pics did not come through in the feed – while I try to fix this you might want to click over and read this on the blog as some of the pics are needed for this post**
Like many Australians, I have been trying to get the covid-19 vaccine for a while now. Only there’s just one tiny problem – I had a DVT in the past and thus my doctor does not want me to get Astra Zeneca which is the vaccine available to most Australians due to the possible blood clot complication. I have to get Pfizer.
Every day for a while now, I have logged in to the NSW goverment website, clicked through 7 pages of previously filled in forms to get to the page that tells me if I can have an appointment to get the Pfizer vaccine. No. I cannot. I’m surprised it doesn’t swear at me and tell me to f**k off and stop coming back every day because that would be very Australian.
Today I got a new message that I had not seen before. There are no appointments for the next 60 days.
First of all why oh why oh why do I have to click through 7 pages of my personal details to get to this page each and every time?
Second of all why aren’t there any other options in the drop down for me to at least try and get an appointment elsewhere?
And finally, how the f**k did we as a country get this vaccination rollout so terribly wrong? Even America is miles ahead of us now – as far as I know there anyone who wants a vaccine can get one.
My doctors clinic was not allowed to have Pfizer. I’m not sure why. I’m on a waiting list at another medical centre which was allowed to have it but they have no idea when they might have more vaccine. They estimate maybe August.
For those of you not up on the news and who don’t live in Australia, parts of Sydney are currently locked down. But what is deeply bizarre is ALL the shops are all still allowed to open even though people are only allowed to buy essentials.
And now many of those who work in retail in Sydney are having to go to their jobs even though there are no customers because the government is leaving it up to the business whether they stay open or not. What kind of lockdown do you call this?
In the meantime while we are not officially in a lockdown in regional NSW, we are now made to wear masks indoors which means all shops – and that includes my own shop. If anyone wants to come in to my own home business, both they and I have to wear a mask.
This after our government spent a lot of time telling us we did not need masks back in the early days of Covid here – those of us who wore masks *chose* to wear them because we believed in them but the majority of people around here did not wear them.
At some point the government suddenly decided using masks is good, and there have been times in Sydney where it was mandatory but never down here where I live.
And then there’s idiotic stuff like this –
Why wait? This was announced on Saturday – so Sunday, Monday no mask days, Tuesday Wednesday must mask days? Why not make it mandatory as of TODAY?
Everything around this current lockdown has been done so poorly. I have a friend who had gone to Sydney for training on the 21st of June. She wore a mask the whole day. She came back here and worked Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. At some point on that Saturday, a 14 day stay at home order was issued for anyone who had been in Sydney since the 21st of June – that they must stay at home for 14 days after the day they were in the greater Sydney area. Bit late notice on that one!
The NSW government sent me an email on the 30th of June to announce – as of July 12th it becomes mandatory for people to sign in at businesses. Whether they do so via the QR code or via a sheet of paper manually. My question is why the heck has it not been mandatory before now?
And who is going to police this? I’m certainly not intending to become the Covid “did you check in” police for my business. As a business owner I have many roles but that is never going to be one of them. I have made the decision to stop classes until this current outbreak is somewhat under control even though once again we have no cases locally.
Did you know that you have to check out, as well? Most of the people I have asked did not – and when they went to look they had a long list of places they were still checked in at. We only found out when we went to check in somewhere and found out we’d already been there for 6 days since the last time we were there!
None of this is anything I was expecting over a year into this pandemic. I was expecting we would all be vaccinated by now and Covid would be starting to become a distant memory.
While we are extremely well prepared for any lockdown in this household these days – and in fact did not have to venture out of the house for the first week of madness while everyone locally stripped the shelves of toilet paper again even though we are not locked down! – and we have enough toilet paper stocked to last us 6 months at least – it is really disappointing to find ourselves in this position.
I feel very let down by the authorities whose job it was to source the vaccinations and get this job done. I feel angry and disappointed that we are back in this place again. I don’t know if it is just me, but I feel like most of us did our part when this began – we did mask up even though the government said not to, we did take all the precautions, we did our job. But the government has not done theirs.
Leave me a comment and let me know how things are going in your neck of the woods – and if you are in Australia let me know how you are feeling about all of this. Have you managed to get vaccinated?
That is extremely disappointing and scary too. I thought nearly every country was doing better than the U.S. The difference is our currently easy access to vaccine, although it didn’t start out that way. I was vaccinated in March with Pfizer. At that time, it was difficult to get appointments. Now it isn’t. The Delta variant is sweeping through many places and we have WAY too many anti-science anti-Covid 19 vaxxers in my area; it’s worse in other states than here, but the numbers are starting to get worrisome again.
What a nightmare. I’ve been surprised by the news I’ve been reading about Australia’s handling of the pandemic, but I had no idea it was as awful as all this. So sad!
We are still masked except at home and outdoors but including public areas of buildings. We leave a shop, take our masks off, put them back on to enter our building then take them off once inside our apartment. At times everyone forgets but compliance is pretty good. At our local shopping areas even outside over 60% still stay masked, albeit often under their noses. It is not so hard in the winter.
If it wasn’t for Sydney, I expect we would be fully unmasked by now, but we are scared by what is happening there. During our lockdowns non essential retail businesses closed, including during a recent lockdown a few weeks ago. Why that hasn’t happened in Sydney amazes us. We pretty well knocked out COVID here in two weeks of lockdown. We also had a 5 km travel limit, not 10 like Sydney. Is your Premier beholden to big business?
The Federal Government has been equally disgraceful, constantly having to be dragged into action by State Governments.
I’ve heard more than once from respected medical people that there is no more chance of developing blood clots from AZ if you have had DVT. That includes my own doctor. I have my second AZ shot this coming week. The process was easy for me at my local clinic as a 1B category but there has been plenty of bureaucratic issues here for some.
I was impressed by Sydneysider’s Check In App usage but it was annoying to check out and we kept forgetting and I found it difficult to check the next time I checked in somewhere. We don’t check out here. One good feature of the NSW app was that you could add another person, which we didn’t have here but we now do.
The Victorian border to NSW will effectively close tonight and I feel a sense of relief.
“I’ve heard more than once from respected medical people that there is no more chance of developing blood clots from AZ if you have had DVT. That includes my own doctor.”
My doctor hasn’t allowed me to take any medication with even the slightest risk of blood clots at all since the DVT. Including one medication I took for years pre DVT! That was super annoying as there isn’t any other medication I can take for that same thing.
It is interesting that Gladys was so quick to lock down borders but not shops. Jewellery is not an essential item and those shops should not be open. I suspect tomorrow there will be an announcement on that front. It isn’t till it is a proper lockdown that people are going to take it seriously. Half a job Gladys!
You guys were doing so well at limiting the spread of covid – I’m so sorry to hear that the vaccine roll out is not going well. I had a similar issue as far as local shots went. I got notices for vaccines in Kansas City or St. Louis or West Plains – all 4 hours or more away from me. Walmart started doing vaccines and made it possible for anyone who wanted one to get one. The sad things here, in my neck of the woods, is that only 23% of my friends and neighbors are vaccinated with another 28% who have at least started the process. I live in an area with a high degree of “it’s a hoax” believers and those who are sure the vaccine will kill you. Larger cities are doing much better but covid is increasing in my area along with hospitalizations and deaths. I wish you all the best of luck at getting this sorted!
I feel ya! Although I’m lucky enough to be double vaccinated, I think the vaccine rollout in Australia has been an absolute shambles and there is no excuse for it – we have had so much time to get it right, I just don’t know how we got it so wrong! When I was in hotel quarantine, all the people I met online were double vaccinated except the Australians who were living in Australia! Gah! And don’t get me started on the lockdown. I think it’s been so lame and I feel like we wasted the first 3 weeks in lockdown lite. Top tip though, my friend is a doctor and says if you can’t register for a Pfizer appointment, you can try turning up at the vaccination centre late in the day and see if there are any jabs available. There are always people who don’t turn up and all vials have to be used and once you get your first jab, you will be in the system for the next one. If you don’t live too far from the centre, it might be worth a shot! (Excuse the pun!)