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“YOYO Society”, You’re On Your Own…Supervisors get an F in vaccine rollout

Community Rights, Coronavirus, Health, News, Opinion / January 9, 2023

Opinion: “YOYO Society”: “You’re on your own”….Supervisors get an F in vaccine rollout

“Millions of doses sit unused in cold storage. In Sonoma County, I’m stymied trying to get my 96-year-old mother vaccinated.”

Everyday a new excuse….Why did we hire 2 new vaccine czars a few weeks ago and have had NO results? The buck stops with you. We need full transparency and the truth not chaos.

Why has Marin vaccinated most of their 65 years and older ?  Sonoma County has the 5th highest paid supervisors in the state and we deserve better.  

Todays Letters to the Editor

EDITOR: Our senior population is riding a wave of disorganization and misinformation regarding COVID-19 vaccinations in Sonoma County.

My 88-year-old mom has resided here since 1978. She is not connected with any affiliated senior organizations in the community. She is a Kaiser patient, and we have been proactive since early January, calling Kaiser and county health multiple times, trying to schedule a vaccination appointment. Each organization told her to wait patiently to be contacted. She has never been contacted.

County officials keep reporting that primary health providers like Kaiser are actively distributing vaccine to seniors. For Kaiser, that is not true. On Jan. 19, I was able, online, to book the earliest Kaiser appointment in Sonoma County, for Feb. 26 in Petaluma. Santa Rosa was not even scheduling appointments.

Without some conscientious individual forwarding the OptumServe link to social media, my mom would be waiting another four weeks to get her vaccine.

Many of us have been scrambling and relaying information to friends for weeks in an attempt to get our elderly relatives and friends vaccinated. Our senior population deserves a concerted effort to protect them, not this chaotic melee.

L. F. Windsor

California: Dead last

EDITOR: California ranks 50th among the states in percentage of delivered COVID-19 vaccines that have been injected. Dead last. West Virginia ranks first. Growing up in California, West Virginia was belittled in schoolyard humor. Now hillbillies can snicker at California’s pretensions of superiority.

The late state historian Kevin Starr described in “Golden Dreams” how the California of my youth created a utopian world-class multiversity, constructed an interconnected freeway and road system that was the envy of the world and built the most ambitious water storage and distribution system in history.

Today, California can’t figure out how to inject patients with vaccines during a ghastly pandemic. Millions of doses sit unused in cold storage. In Sonoma County, I’m stymied trying to get my 96-year-old mother vaccinated.

Two thousand years ago, Emperor Nero fiddled while imperial Rome burned. Today, Gov. Gavin Newsom schmoozes with high and mighty lobbyists at the world’s most expensive restaurants and seems more interested in savoring his privileged life than governing. My home state embarrasses me.

C. H.

Santa Rosa