If you’re like me, you may only have been to Gillette on an occasional game day and aren’t that familiar with how to get there, how long it takes or which of the myriad parking lots you should enter.
I can’t help you with the first part, except to say I left myself plenty of time to sit idly waiting for my 3 p.m. appointment.
As I arrived, my first moment of panic was when I came across two huge LED signs, one pointing visitors toward the EAST vaccine site, the other indicating the WEST vaccine site. I immediately pulled over, got out my phone, and checked to see if I was given a directive about which site or lot I was supposed to go to. Nothing. I chose WEST. (New appointments now include instructions on this.)
The parking itself was relatively simple, but like me, a lot of people were early, so hundreds of car engines were purring. The instructions say to come to the door 10 minutes before your appointment.
As you approach, there’s a sign saying, “Have your license and insurance card out.” Then there is a handy countdown clock telling you exactly how many minutes you have until you can get into the official line for the vaccine.
Once in, you show proof of your appointment, and up the escalator you go. As soon as you get upstairs, they tell you that you don’t need your insurance card. OK. There’s a traffic cop directing you to the next open “shot” table. I estimated at least 40 tables.
You don’t have a choice as to which vaccine you receive. (Gillette only has the Moderna vaccine.) They do give you a card afterward telling you which you received. You are given a risk assessment and then told to go the 15-minute wait room. There you scan a QR code and sign up for your second vaccine. If you don’t have a phone with you, there are a series of laptops set up where you get in line to sign up for the second shot.
Meanwhile, a hall monitor wanders around telling you that you don’t need to put insurance info into the application form for the second shot. However, every time I tried to bypass that step, I was told I needed to include my insurance info. Rather than get out my card, I just put in a whole bunch of random numbers, and bingo, I was done. While the sign up took almost 15 minutes, I was given a date for my second shot exactly four weeks later.
All in all, it was extremely efficient. But I suspect many of you will feel the same way I did. There was something Orwellian about the mass vaccination site — a line of aging, almost all white, masked mannequins looking straight ahead, standing six feet apart, no small talk. This morning I got a notice from my health care provider telling me hospitals are again distributing the vaccine. That would have been a preferred option, and I hope it will be for thousands more who can’t just pick up and drive to Gillette.
