…with apologies to Vittorio Di Sica
The day dawned gray and wet…perfect for getting our third COVID vaccine.
But first, the back-story…
Two weeks before, as Carol was walking through town, a friend approached her and said the town doctor was having a COVID vaccine clinic that day. Carol immediately walked to the doctor’s office and sat outside, waiting to ask if she could get a booster. Hours went by. Nobody from the office emerged, other than to call the name of the next vaccine candidate and immediately disappear inside again.
Finally, one of the clinic workers stepped outside for a smoke, and Carol asked him if someone not registered with the national health system could get a booster shot at that day’s clinic. She was told, no shot without a prior appointment. Appointments can only be made on-line at the health system website. It was Catch-22.
However, the worker added, there’s a vaccination clinic in nearby Montepulciano where you can walk in and get a shot, appointment or not.
Carol checked that clinic’s website and found that on Tuesday’s it offered Pfizer vaccines and boosters in the mornings. The national Ministry of Health also noted that, for the protection of the entire community, anybody who walked in…regardless of citizenship or residency status…qualified for the vaccine.
That sounded promising. So, on the next Tuesday, a day much nicer than today, Carol and Roger boarded the bus for Montepulciano…14Km east of Pienza. We went to the vaccine clinic, only to find it was closed. The posted schedule said the clinic is open Tuesdays…just not that particular Tuesday.
That was a week ago. Today, we tried again.
The vaccine clinic is located in an abandoned nightclub. We arrived moments after the 9:00am opening time and found…
…a short line, made up of people waiting to get inside for their a appointments.
We had no appointment, so we took a number.
Still, we waited just a few minutes. They called our number. We were about to confront the formidable Italian bureaucracy.
That same nurse took our residency documents and our CDC COVID-Vaccination cards, then handed us a 6 page form to fill out.
Bureaucratic Step 2: Another employee checked our form and asked if it was OK to get the booster shot in our left shoulders.
That was it! We had imagined it would be so much worse.
Privacy and Roger’s aversion to needles prevented photos of us getting our shots.
Suffice it to show the bandage afterwards…
…and the label from the vial of vaccine added to our COVID cards.
Boy! Was that easier than we expected!
Postscript:
You probably recall that Italy was the first country devastated by the CoronaVirus. That experience has shaped the response to vaccines very differently than in the United States. The inability to get vaccines into Italian arms toppled the Giuseppe Conti government and installed Mario Draghi as Prime Minister.
While vaccines became Available in the USA in January of 2021, it was late April before they were available in much of Italy. Despite the late start, 73% of Italians have received both doses of Covid vaccines….while in the USA that number is 59%. In Toscana, 97% of adults have been vaccinated…while in Washington state that number is 64%.
Perhaps that’s because the current Minister of Health is Roberto Speranza (his last name translates into English as “Hope”)
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