The COVID-19 vaccine has just been made available to Kansas adult residents as of March 29 and in Missouri they will follow suit on April 9. That means most, if not all, JCCC’s students will be able to access the vaccine. However due to limited supply, it is still intensely competitive to access these vaccines. Nekpen Amayo, a full time JCCC student, was able to obtain hers early, and found out by accident during her yearly physician check-up.
(Amayo) “He (doctor) was telling me that since you qualify you can go ahead and get your shot today. I was like Oh my God, I was not expecting it to be this soon because I know there is a waiting list for it. So, I was like it is now or never and I decided to go ahead and do it that same day. “
(Amayo) “I don’t like needles in general, I don’t usually get sick. I am very thankful, knock-on–wood, that I don’t have to get sick.”
(Amayo) “After seeing the death rates and the amount of people who are getting sick, even people at my job catching Covid. It really got too scary for me. I was telling myself I would rather be safe than sorry. My anxiety has definitely more down now than when it started. When It first started, I was washing my hands consistently and sanitizing my hands so much to the point that they were peeling. Not saying I’m not taking those measures now, but It’s definitely calmed down. With Covid, I’m still very cautious because I know even with this vaccine, it doesn’t mean you can’t get it. You’re just less likely to die.”
Although you can still access the Covid-19 vaccine through traditional routes like through a family physician or through a pharmacy. There is still more demand than supply. That’s where Peter Carnesciali comes in. He coded a vaccine bot that live Tweets availability in a wide variety of pharmacies in the Kansas and Missouri Area.
(Carnesciali) “I’m a software engineer as my job. So, this was a side project for me. I found myself refreshing their (pharmacies) website multiple times a day to see when appointments go up and what it looks like when they do. So, then I realized instead of me refreshing it all time, I could just have a bot refresh it and text me when they’re available. So, I can save my time and not refresh all day. Then I told my friends about that and they wanted me to have the bot text them also. So, then I started thinking instead of having it text a whole bunch of people, why not make it into a twitter account and why not make it public? It’s on twitter it’s @kcvaccinewatch and a lot of people turn on tweet notifications because they go pretty fast once they’re up. When you see an appointment, you can grab it and sign up and it tweets back to the original tweet when the appointments are all gone.”
Carnesciali informed me that a week’s worth of vaccine slots can get filled in as quickly as seven minutes. This is Ga Ji Wang reporting for the Campus Ledger.