santacruz skier
Angel Diva
Northstar (a Vail resort) has an ESTIMATED closing date of April 11. Same with Heavenly.... I have seen it extended in past years though.
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Vaccines and Ski Plans
- Thread starter SallyCat
- Start date
MissySki
Angel Diva
That’s horrible considering MA is supposedly going to have us in phase 3 general public in April..
I don’t blame you for being irked, those who literally cannot stay home and have exposure like you should be prioritized.
Christy
Angel Diva
That really sucks. You guys should be a priority. That's how it is here too though. They are hoping to have grocery workers vaccinated in April.
skibum4ever
Angel Diva
Keystone is also closing April 4, isn't it, @skibum4ever?
I don't know what direction which mountains face, but Copper long-timers told me that by mid-April Copper degrades fast, even with new snow. They said once the sun gets to a certain point, it just beats down on it. Maybe Keystone is the same way.
Yes, Keystone closes on April 4. We were actually considering a week in March and a week in April. Then we realized how early they were closing, so we changed our plans to 2 weeks in March.
newboots
Angel Diva
That is so wrong. And vaccinating front-line workers doesn't just protect those workers; it protects the public! In NY, teachers have been vaccinated, but many states haven't prioritized them. So in many states, teachers don't feel safe going back to the classroom. If only there were enough vaccines to go around!
Remember when we were all sharing our secret testing sites? I guess we are making progress against this scourge.
tinymoose
Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Teachers here in PA are in the same boat I am.... group 1B. The issue has been they expanded 1A to such a large number of people, it's effectively pushed everyone in 1B, 1C, and 2 (general population) so far down the line because it's going to take so long to get through 1A (which now includes anyone 65+ and a ton of very common high risk medical conditions).
Abbi
Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Well, I now know what everyone is complaining about with the MA vaccine scheduling website. It just keeps crashing for me.. Before 8am I saw a slot at Gillette for today, but by the time I input all of my dad’s information it was gone. Now it just crashes. Horrible that this is the best we’ve got
Anyone else having better luck?
I felt your pain this morning! I do have a test scheduled for about 4 o’clock on Thursday afternoon in downtown Providence. I saw this morning that there was one appointment for today (new since last night) left out here in the suburbs. By the time I logged in it was gone. I saw there were three openings downtown tomorrow. And that would move me up to days so I could get back to Vermont eventually. But those were gone by the time I signed in! And yes each time you have to enter the information from scratch. It’s not that I have to change the date, by now it’s just a point of interest. So I finally get what you all are going through. But obviously less since I do have an appointment. If I were trying to get an appointment for a relative under those conditions I would be insane!
MissySki
Angel Diva
There are a good number of states using the same site provider so you have probably had the same exact experience now as I believe MA and RI are. I gave up and decided to wait until the next round gets released instead of trying constantly because it was driving me crazy. It just stinks that while the big sites from the state supposedly update on a weekly cadence everything else is a black hole.. So I'm trying to check some smaller places closer to my dad periodically as well as the pharmacies, but gosh there should be some better way of doing this..
newboots
Angel Diva
I had been thinking, "It's just too many people for too few vaccines," but I read someone complaining that there are computer programs capable of handling huge numbers of people trying to get concert tickets at the same time. Is this true, tech folks? Are the numbers similar? and why are government websites always so often such duds?
marzNC
Angel Diva
Yes, there is software designed to handle large volumes of users. But has to be paired with appropriate hardware. Developing and tweaking such a system takes months or years, not weeks, even with a very well managed team of seasoned IT professionals.
Vail Resorts used Queue-It for the "waiting room" to limit the number of people who could make Epic reservations during early season. It was a complete fiasco in Australia in June 2020 since there was only a few weeks of lead time. The waiting time was well over 12 hours initially. In the fall for N. America things were better, but still tough in the first week from a software/hardware performance standpoint.
My professional speciality was data management of large databases used for research purposes. My working definition of "large" is when the process needs to be different. If collecting data from 10 people, a piece of paper can be enough. Probably not enough for 200 people. A computer database design and system that's good for 1000 people may break at 5000, or 50,000 or 1 million depending on it's design.
MissySki
Angel Diva
Last year Taylor Swift was only going to do 2 stadium concerts on her tour, one in the East and one in the West. There were MANY people from all over the country trying to get tickets, it was insane and you were in queues for hours and hours while people purchased tickets ahead of you. THAT was vastly more pleasant of an experience than the state site lol. At least all of your information was in Ticketmaster and you just left it up and running on your computer. You could see where you were in line and the estimated wait for your turn etc. I would take that now in a heartbeat over the constant crashing and having to reenter a ton of information and then crashing again. Funny how we finally got tickets for this concert and then it was cancelled/to be rescheduled because of Covid.
I guess I wonder, couldn't the government have tapped into some of these existing company's systems to use for this purpose? As I totally agree with @marzNC that it's not something that you put up overnight. I am also completely tech illiterate when it comes to these things also. However, is it that extremely difficult to be able to even save a profile so you can login and schedule appointments rather than entering so much each time?? I'd be way less frustrated with the site crashing if I didn't have to retype so much information every time..
Christy
Angel Diva
Building off of what Marz said, generally it's tough for government agencies to be flexible or responsive in this way. They are usually staffed at low levels, and in my experience anyway, they contract out for new projects or software, and the contracting process takes time (for good reason--you don't want government officials handing out contracts willy-nilly). The IT guys I've worked with as a fed make very little compared to their counterparts in the private sectors and have their hands full just maintaining existing systems. Obviously this may vary state by state, county by county, etc. Maybe there are some places that are well staffed and have lots of IT talent. Not here though and that's not the trend in government--the trend is fewer actual gov employees, more contractors employed as needs arise. So, it's harder to be flexible and meet needs in a timely manner.
Speaking of concerts: In WA, a tech guy made a website that uses the kind of bots that ticket scalpers do. It looks at every provider (pharmacies, hospitals, etc) offering shots and tells you what is available, so that people don't have to check a bazillion different websites themselves:
https://www.covidwa.com/
Note that it was a private sector guy that did this. And he says it wasn't so hard, that it only took a few days...that's still likely a few days that state IT employees probably didn't have (and would they have the tools and permissions?).
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattl...ne-hunters-are-trying-to-fix-a-broken-system/
marzNC
Angel Diva
Coordinating the efforts of volunteers is probably more of an effort than the technical programming. Plus no one is likely to complain or even realize if there are missing sites because CovidWA is much better than nothing.
https://www.covidwa.com/faq/
That's very similar to what happened in 2020 that led to websites like Flatten The Curve or rt.live or CovidActNow. All of those were filling a void. I remember seeing a data display website set up by a high schooler back in Spring 2020 based on Johns Hopkins data. Few website of that type will continue for the entire duration of the pandemic.
newboots
Angel Diva
All good points, @Christy - and the states got very little funding from the federal government to make it happen. Some states built better systems than others, but they weren't (by and large) sharing their software. The whole thing has been chaos, from the beginning, and we have reaped the sad results.
Someone out this way built something similar - a way to capture all the possible vaccine appointments and connect with one. I already had my appointment by the time it came out, but what an improvement!
Someone out this way built something similar - a way to capture all the possible vaccine appointments and connect with one. I already had my appointment by the time it came out, but what an improvement!
Tvan
Angel Diva
Connecticut announced sequencing of vaccine categories based on age. As per the updated guidelines, I’m eligible as of March 1 and DH as of March 22.
https://portal.ct.gov/Coronavirus/COVID-19-Vaccination---Phases
https://portal.ct.gov/Coronavirus/COVID-19-Vaccination---Phases
liquidfeet
Ski Diva Extraordinaire
I just snagged an appointment for my first vaccine! It's only a 40 minute drive from my house. I feel so much better.
Word of mouth from a friend informed me about the openings. She heard it on twitter. She was on twitter because she was showing me how to sign up for @vaccinetimes.
That friend got an appt, and I informed another friend who got one. This all happened in about 20 minutes time. I rechecked the availability at that point and it had shrunk quite a bit. Appt times are all probably gone by now, 40 minutes after I first heard.
This process is so wrong.
Word of mouth from a friend informed me about the openings. She heard it on twitter. She was on twitter because she was showing me how to sign up for @vaccinetimes.
That friend got an appt, and I informed another friend who got one. This all happened in about 20 minutes time. I rechecked the availability at that point and it had shrunk quite a bit. Appt times are all probably gone by now, 40 minutes after I first heard.
This process is so wrong.
