The Summit County Health Department needs to get its stuff together on Covid boosters

For those not aware, Utah Governor, Spencer Cox announced yesterday that all Utahns were at high risk for Covid-19 and thus anyone could get a booster shot. With that news, I registered online with Summit County for a booster shot and arrived at the Summit County Health Department for my 11 AM appointment today. After waiting an hour in the packed health department, I was ushered back to the nurse.

She gave me a funny look and asked what my profession was. I said, “software developer.” She said you don’t look like you have a high BMI. Do you have diabetes? I said no. She then asked why I was there to get a covid booster. I said, well, I really don’t want to be here. I had a bad experience with side effects for the Moderna shot but that I am in my kid’s hockey locker room with 15 kids and I just want to do everything I can to not get, or spread, Covid.

The nurse then explained that I couldn’t get a booster, even though the Governor had OK’d it yesterday. She said that Summit County needed to complete a health order and that if she gave me the vaccine that it could be malpractice. She said they had plenty of doses, but there was no way she could do it. She said they had a meeting this morning and that was the official rule. She was very nice about it, and I realize she probably would have given me my booster if she could have, but those were the rules. So I was polite and left.

But I am furious.

There is no excuse for the Summit County Health Department to have not had a signed health order ready to go as of 8 AM this morning. It makes me wonder whether they will have anything signed today. It is Friday, after all. Will they get to it next week? Well, it is a holiday week. So, I wouldn’t count on it.

This is such a charged issue. The Governor, who is Republican says “vaccine boosters for everyone.” Summit County, which is Democrat-run, can’t be bothered to be ready. What sort of bizarro world am I living in?

The real problem is that I don’t really want to get a booster. When I received my second vaccine dose I was in bed for the next day, wearing socks on my hands, because the chills were so bad. Yet, I sucked it up, because of risk factors in my life. Hockey locker rooms are really small. One of my son’s teammates came down with Covid this week. I don’t want to get or spread Covid in the locker room if I can help it. Oh and I’m also spending time with my wife’s aging parents over the next ten days. I don’t know what extra protection a few days of a booster could give me, but I assume it’s something.

It’s just unconscionable that Summit County wasn’t ready to give boosters to anyone who wanted one on day one. For the record, I am pro-vaccine for me. I am pro-choice for you. I just wanted to get a booster and protect myself and those people around me.

Summit County robbed me of that choice. Maybe someday in the future, I’ll try again to get that booster shot. Until that point, what the Health Department did to me today, and potentially others made us all less safe.