I largely agree with Scott Aaronson here.

Also: I think (optimistic) we have many things we could do this January that would greatly improve our current trajectory and (pessimistic) it will not be considered scandalous when we don't do many.

https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=5224 

A short list of things to try:

* Government leaders indemnify any credentialed healthcare provider or employer of same from liability resulting from good-faith attempt to administer a vaccine.
* Call Walgreens/CSVs, immediately. Tell them to prep to receive doses.

* Call Amazon/Google/Facebook, immediately. Tell them that they have seven days to cause a continuous line in front of the Walgreens/CVS with doses.

* If you are, I don't know, in the position of having emergency political authority, immediately declare an emergency or announce your intent to declare an emergency, and say "If there is a trivial amount of money or authority you need to act now, do it, I will cover for you."

* Immediately, and I mean immediately, institute the Israeli protocol: any distribution of a dose is better than no distribution of a dose. If you're 60 minutes from closing time and have doses expiring, do anything necessary to give them away. Tweet re: availability; whatever.

* (This is going to be a little controversial) If you received vaccine doses in phase 1, and did not administer 1k+ doses a day, you do not receive doses in phase 2. They get delivered to someone competent. (e.g. Walgreens.)

Corollary: If you received doses in phase 1, and did not administer doses on Christmas/Saturday/New Years, you do not receive doses in phase 2. They get delivered to someone competent.

And just broadly:

If you're in the critical path for the vaccine rollout in January, either a) nothing you are doing is more important than the vaccine rollout or b) you should immediately take yourself out of the critical path.

"We couldn't give away our doses because we are understaffed and have patients who will die if we don't treat them."

"Understood and no judgement. We will take those doses away and give them to someone not similarly constrained. Thank you for your cooperation; best of skill."

(I think an ongoing theme of my thoughts here is "Some peoples' feelings are likely going to be hurt by effective vaccine administration and, while being compassionate, we should prioritize number of doses delivered over maximizing emotional satisfaction at almost every margin.")

(If groveling apologies, resigning to take responsibility, or awarding medals is required to paperwork things over, let's make a note of that and get to it immediately after the nation is vaccinated.)

Not often that I will say "Civilization really needs better email marketing", but on these two pages, civilization really needs better email marketing.

https://www.walgreens.com/topic/promotion/covid-vaccine.jsp

https://www.cvs.com/content/coronavirus

I think I can predict the reasons why they didn't do it, but they're #%()#%(ing stupid reasons, and these two pages should have a ~5 question form + email / phone number capture so that you get a push notification of vaccine availability in your neighborhood.

e.g. "HIPAA compliance" is a #%(#)%)ing stupid reason; a properly functioning civilization would have had someone call the Department of Health and Human Services and get a No Action letter about, oh, 10 months ago.

"They can do that!?!"

a) #%(#(%)#0) yes they can do that.
b) Did anyone EVEN TRY.

"Easy for you to say, techie. I've bet you never even been a HIPAA compliance officer."

You lose, voice in my head, you lose.

(Granted that LLC delivered only a couple hundred thousand appointment notifications a year. You know, a nice small operation.)

"I'm having trouble even visualizing what this would look like."

Something like: https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/faq/286/are-appointment-reminders-allowed-under-hipaa-without-authorization/index.html

(I didn't cause that policy to be enacted but I very carefully documented my reliance upon it, you know, like a good HIPAA compliance officer does.)