5 February 2021 — 0748 mst

FCHD: “A” for organization, “F” for small print

JABBED! Flathead Memo’s editor
gets his first dose of Covid-19 vaccine

The Flathead County health department’s Covid-19 vaccination clinic yesterday morning in the fairgrounds’ Expo building went smoothly and swiftly, but it was not a picnic for the weaker eyes of older citizens.

Flathead Memo’s KN95 masked editor and janitor receives the Pfizer vaccine.

The inoculation, administered through a small needle, was not terrorizing: a barely felt prick, then some discomfort as the liquid was forced into my upper arm. I was monitored 15 minutes for an allergic reaction, then released with a warning I might experience a sore arm, chills, or some other unpleasantness in the next 24 hours. So far, only mild soreness in my arm and I feel fine.

The event's stations were properly spaced. The room was clean, well lighted, and warm. It also had awful acoustics.

The process has five stages:

1. Check-in. Greeters match your name to the time slot you were assigned, hand you a yellow form with extremely small print, and lead you to a table where you fill out the form while silently cursing the fool who thought septuagenarians have strong eyes and like little letters.


2. Form filling. After completing the form, you raise your hand to summon the guide who escorts you to the data entry station.


3. Data entry. A clerk enters the data on the yellow form into the county’s database.





4. The jab. Once data entry is complete, you are led to the vaccination table where you get jabbed. If you were smart, you wore a short-sleeved shirt. After your arm is filled with vaccine, and, at least in my case, a colorful bandaid applied, you get a card with the time and date for your second appointment and are directed to the observation area.


5. Observation. Once you’re seated, you’re approached by a monitor who hands you a page on reporting adverse effects to the Centers for Disease Control, and explains what effects you might experience. My monitor was Dr. David Myerowitz, the physician who was ousted from the Flathead’s board of health because land developers were exasperated that he took his duties seriously. Myerowitz was wearing an elaborate black mask with what might have been exhalation valves, a type of mask on which the CDC frowns.

What I liked:

1. Open, logical, layout of the stations.


2. Polite, knowledgable, docents wearing safety yellow vests and nametags with large letters that made them easily readable. Large nametags are very helpful for oldsters; FCHD got this right.


3. No objections to photography. Instead, a docent took my photograph using my iPhone. He had steady hands and a good eye.

What annoyed me:

1. Forms, cards, and fact sheets, with print far too small to read comfortably. I suspect someone with young eyes and excess affection for penny pinching was trying to keep everything on one page to save paper. Note to FCHD: saving eyes is more important than saving paper.


2. Distribution of printed information that’s out-of-date and no longer true.

The county provided the vaccinated with a 4-page vaccine data handout printed on a single letter sized sheet of paper. It’s very hard to read. It’s also obsolete, replaced by Pfizer in December, 2020.

The pace of vaccination is far too slow

According to Andy Viano at the Flathead Beacon, Flathead County expects to receive approximately 1,200 doses of vaccine a week for the near future. According to infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, M.D., herd immunity requires vaccinating 70–90 percent of a population. The Flathead’s current population is approximately 105,600; herd immunity’s low end requires approximately 74,000 vaccinations. At 1,200 doses a week, that will require 14 or 15 months, by which time the dominant strain of the Sars Cov2 virus may be a mutation against which current vaccines are less effective.

The current bottleneck is vaccine production. But once production ramps up, when plenty replaces scarcity, a too deliberate approach to administering the vaccines will slow the process. Therefore, our federal, state, and local governments must be prepared to hold massive walk-in vaccination clinics where everyone has an equal priority for the vaccination.

Keep wearing that mask after you’re jabbed

The vaccines are not 100 percent effective. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines fail to protect one in 20. The more ways you protect yourself, the lower your odds of shaking hands with Mr. Covid. I’m laying in a year’s supply of surgical masks, trying to lay as many N95 or foreign equivalents (expensive and hard to find), have several sets of face shields, expect to be wearing masks in public a year from now, and hope that by the summer of 2022 going barefaced in public will be safe again.