[birdiebill]

I tried last Wednesday on the Eventbrite site to get 2 "tickets" for the vaccination event last Thursday. Since I was not familiar with the site, even though I was on the website a minute or two after 8:00 am, I failed to get "tickets." I understand the reason since so many of us are over 65. My wife is over 70; I am over 75 and am compromised due to low white blood cell count. When the large number of people (perhaps in the thousands) are all trying to get "tickets" to an event with a capacity of 200-300, most are not going to be successful. I never even got to select tickets because they were all unavailable by 2 or 3 minutes after 8:00. However, I believe the Eventbrite "ticket" site is as fair as any site could be.

This morning I tried again. I could only attempt for Monday since I have a necessary medical procedure for Wednesday. I knew what I was doing this time. I was on the site at 8:00. I chose one of the three time slots; it allowed me to select 2 tickets; then it sent me to a new screen indicating it was searching for available "tickets". Apparently a lot of people were transferred to the same "Que". I waited ten minutes while the system kept checking, then was given a message that the event was "sold out." No luck once again.

One major issue, IMHO, is the county does not know very far in advance when they will receive an allotment of the vaccine or how many doses they will receive. Hard to plan to allocate appointments until they are certain they will have the vaccine doses. Supposedly a BIG VACCINE event is coming for Sumter County this week.


Neither time I tried surprised me due to knowing that many hundreds or thousands were trying at the same time; our thoughts were this is just like a lottery. You either are lucky and get through; or you don't. While we want the vaccine, especially due to my medical situation, we are patient enough to know that we will eventually get them. In the meantime we keep staying home except for essential trips to the grocery or to medical appointments or outside for exercise where we have no contact with anyone. We always are masked when essential shopping or medical appts. Patience is a virtue.