Mass COVID vaccine distribution set for next month at Lehman High

City Manager Scott Sellers announced last night a mass COVID 19 vaccination event will be held between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Sunday, May 16, at Lehman High School during which the first dose of the Moderna vaccine will be administered.

Any Texas resident aged 16 and older may receive the vaccine. No appointments are required.

A spokesperson for the City said today those receiving the first dose of the vaccine on May 16 can receive the second dose on Sunday, June 13, at another mass vaccination program at Lehman.

Hays County: When they get it right ...

 Last month, I wrote a story about how Hays County officials totally botched its Covid vaccine distribution with a plan that made receiving the vaccine akin to winning the lottery. I had no idea these folks could do a 180 this quickly. But they did. Not only did they come up with a different plan, but they came up with one that was not only efficient in its concept, but also in its application.

So, in all fairness, I need to take back all those nasty things I wrote back on Jan. 30.

I must also admit I’m writing this seconds after returning from receiving the first of my two Pfizer vaccine doses. And, my heavens, was it smooth.

It began with a registration web page that was just that — a site on which a person could actually register to be in the que for a dose, not a place where you battled not only the odds for 30 minutes or less against thousands of others people scrambling for a few slots that were available on one particular day. If you can imagine a game of musical chairs in which there are 500 players and three chairs — that was what the first sign-up site was like.

So I registered and, low and behold, I received an email Friday, just couple of days after registering, notifying me I had an appointment to get my first of the two required shots at 5 p.m. today at the First Baptist Church in Wimberley.

Expecting the worse, I left nothing to chance. I left home at 3:30 p.m. for what is supposed to be the 25-minute drive to Wimberley — heaven forbid I should get a flat tire or something on the way there, be forced to abandon the car, at least temporarily, and hitchhike my way there. And, if I had to wait for any length of time, I brought along the book I’m currently reading, my iPod and some earbuds.

I received a healthy jolt of reassurance the moment I pulled into the church’s well-marked parking lot. I was greeted at the first checkpoint by none other than Mike Rubsam, the legendary former chair of Kyle’s Planning & Zoning Commission (among other distinctions), and I just know in my soul of souls that anything Rubsam is involved with should be a well-oiled machine. And I was not disappointed.

There was one minor hiccup. The person checking folks in at the entrance of the church, a nice-enough fellow armed with a tablet containing, I assumed, a list of all those with appointments on this particular day, said my name wasn’t on the list. I pulled out my phone and showed him the email I had received informing me of my appointment. He summoned another worker, another nice-enough young lady, who asked me to step inside to a desk. She took my Covid Consent Form, pulled up her appointment list on her laptop and immediately told me “I don’t know what he was thinking, but here you are.” She directed me into the church where I stood in a line containing all of three persons. And when I got to the head of that line, which seemed like it took, at most, 30 seconds, I was directed to table No. 7 where sat the person with the vaccine destined to find a home in my left arm. This person had a sense of humor I cherished (“Just relax, I’m about to place a GPS tracking device in your arm.”), she gave me the shot which seemed less than a simple pin-prick, and then I was escorted to one of the pews in the church where I was told to wait for 15 minutes to make sure there were no after-effects. And to make it even easier — right in front of me was this huge digital display of a clock to use to count off those 15 minutes. The people involved in this operation thought of everything to make this as simple, as painless, as easy as possible for the vaccine recipients.

In all, I was back home, preparing my dog’s evening meal, by 5 p.m. As for me, I’m having crow for dinner. 

A shout-out to everyone involved in this effort. Hays County — this time you did good, you did it right, and this someone nestled back in his office somewhere in Kyle is tipping his hat. I owe you this after what I wrote about you guys a little more than a week ago.

Hey Hays County! It’s so much easier to be competent!

Hays County’s Friday Covid-19 vaccine registration was a blatant — one could easily argue criminally negligent — display of bureaucratic ineptitude. It was so badly botched that I had to wonder whether Hays County officials sat around in a room somewhere the week before and discussed ways to make it as incompetent as possible before settling on the plan they unleashed at noon Friday.

I know. I know. I’m supposed to concentrating here on Kyle’s municipal government, but the City is complicit in this negligence because it actually promoted it on its own Facebook site.

For those who are not aware, Hays County announced those eligible for a vaccine could sign up for one, either via computer or by calling a special telephone number, beginning at noon Friday. But instead of conducting an orderly registration process, which is what should have happened, they ran it like one of those old radio shows where the announcer says “And the fifth caller will receive the grand prize of …”

However, instead of the grand prize being a dinner for two at the local Italian restaurant, Hays County was dishing out vaccines that could save your life. And that’s not something to play around with.

So, what happened was, 30 minutes after the Hays-County sponsored game of Russian Roulette began, it ended. “So sorry,” the county said. “We have our winners. No more calls please.”

Look. Handling something like this should be oh so easy. You set up a system that’s always open, an on-line site and/or a telephone number to call, where residents can enter their names, physical and e-mail addresses, birth dates, methods to check off any medical conditions they may have, preferences for the weekday and/or time of day they would prefer to receive the vaccine, and other contact information. Once that’s entered, the resident should receive, either by return e-mail or telephone call, the acknowledgment that they are now registered in the county’s database and what their current position is on the wait-list (and also allow these registrants to periodically return to the same on-line database to get updated information on their wait-list positions). Then, as vaccines become available, these persons are scheduled and are notified of their appointment date, time and place. That’s not rocket-science. It’s efficient and it’s orderly.

But it’s more than just efficient and orderly. The pandemic has added an extra layer of stress on the lives of many residents. Additional layers of stress should be avoided, whenever possible. But Hays County’s Friday debacle was overly stressful in too many ways to count. It’s one thing to keep getting a busy signal when you’re trying to be the fifth caller to the radio station, but it’s quite another when your health is at stake. Imagine a group of terrorists trying to break into your house and you only get a busy signal when you call 9-1-1. Hays County’s handling of its vaccine registration was exactly like not being able to access the emergency call center when you need it the most. And that’s what county officials should be ashamed of. And that’s what City officials were complicit with.

And the worst part of it is it would have been so much easier to do it the right way.