NYS vaccination advice, for anyone who needs to hear it, at least based on this comorbidity dude's experience today. (A thread.)

The NYS site is overwhelmed and getting hammered. There do seem to be appointments available at state sites, but getting them through the system is hard, though not impossible 2/

You go through the basic prescreener here, and then you get a list of sites that MAY have available appointments. 3/

…https://am-i-eligible.covid19vaccine.health.ny.gov/ 

And then you mostly get to keep hitting refresh, because when you pick a site, it tells you "Due to high volume,
appointments can't be made at this time for this location.
Please try again later."

Keep refreshing. 4/

If you're patient and lucky, you'll get into the "virtual queue." It will let you wait for up to 59 minutes to book an appointment. I had to wait 55. Others have waited the whole hour only to be told nothing was available. 5/

If you're still lucky once you survive the queue, and you get to available appointments at your chosen site, start scrolling down to pick your date and time. Then you get a LONG series of forms to fill out - contact info, emergency contact info, demographic data... 6/

insurance info (HAVE YOUR INSURANCE CARD HANDY), and then you can finally confirm the appointment and breathe. But.... 7/

It's a terribly designed system (you listening, @RichAzzopardi and @melissadderosa ?) The info it wants to collect from your insurance card isn't what's actually on my insurance card. And I 100% guarantee they're just going to ask me for the card anyway when I get there. 8/

AND I can't even begin to imagine how someone is going to navigate this thing if they're not computer savvy. (There's a phone line, too, at 1-833-NYS-4VAX, but it's overloaded today.)

So what are your other options? 9/

There are several pharmacy chains with locations that are doing vaccines - Wegmans, Tops, CVS, RiteAid, Walgreens and some Costcos downstate. Most don't have available appointments right now. 10/

That will change once the allocations increase, I think. Walgreens seems to have the best system - they release appointments three days ahead, and the new ones seem to drop at midnight. 11/

If you are over 65 or helping someone who is, the Walgreens appointments may be your best bet. But if you're in this new comorbidity group and you're under 65, so far you're out of luck. Even though the state announced this decision with some advance notice for once... 12/

Walgreens hasn't updated its eligibility guidelines yet. At some point I'm sure they will. Nobody knows when that will be, and so the only thing to do for now is to keep trying... 13/

Which, again, requires a level of tech savvy and schedule/travel flexibility that not everyone has... ESPECIALLY the people who probably would benefit the most from getting the shot. This could have been executed so much better. (As always.) 14/

I don't know that I have any other answers beyond "keep refreshing and maybe try late at night," but I'm happy to try to answer questions. 15/15