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One does not simply...
So. $SPOUSE tested positive for COVID yesterday. Been mildly sick for a couple of days, but tests were all negative up until yesterday. So fine, she’s quarantined in the bedroom, weather’s been nice, windows have been opened so the house isn’t a miasma of cooties - we’ll deal with this. Family member reminds us - “Hey, maybe you should see about getting a prescription for Paxlovid!” “Great idea!,” we say. Heh heh heh. Little did we know…
A few minutes of Googling later, we find that @CVSPharmacy@twitter.com is the only place that has a clear page saying “Hey! We have Paxlovid. Our pharmacists can prescribe it! Fill out this form, we’ll call you, you can do it all over the phone and internet!” So we fill out the form. Set up an appointment at 3:30pm to get a callback. Wait patiently until 5:00pm - still no callback. Try calling the pharmacy directly, end up on hold for well over 45 minutes, finally give up. Decide to try calling HyVee pharmacy, who also claims to have it. “Yep, we have it. But we have to have a positive test result from a test taken in store … and we’re all outta tests. You can try going to urgent care.” Sigh. Ok, let’s try filling out the form on the CVS site again. (I haven’t mentioned that we’ve tried filling out this form multiple times already in the interim, only for it to fail near the end of the process with an error.)
Finally get through the process again, and schedule a callback for 6:30pm … which comes and goes with no callback. After waiting another couple hours, we decide to check Teladoc, who our insurance is partnered with. “Our clinicians cannot prescribe anti-viral medications.” Ok, that’s a dead end. By now, she’s tired and brain-fogged, and decides to just sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night she can’t sleep anymore, so fills out the CVS form again, for a different CVS location, for a 9:30am callback. She actually gets a text message confirmation this time! Progress!
9am rolls around, her phone rings. It’s a pharmacy employee from the location she was expecting a 9:30 call from, but their basic message is “Yeah, I’m supposed to call you for something, but I don’t even know what this is, and we definitely don’t do that here. Maybe try a location with a Minute Clinic? I’ll refund the charge. (!)” What about the other times we never even got a callback? “You’ll have to call the 1-800 number.” Sigh. I’m not even going to go into that experience, but suffice it to say it was terrible and unproductive and that there will likely be chargebacks occurring.
So, once more into the breach - let’s try scheduling a callback from a location with a Minute Clinic. A 10am callback is scheduled - and hooray, we actually get a callback! From someone knowledgeable, even! Who is knowledgeable enough to tell us that “CVS pharmacies in the KC area doesn’t offer the callback service” (!!). “You’ll have to set up a Minute Clinic appointment and actually come in to the Minute Clinic.” (!!!)
So what you’re saying is that the only way for a huge number of people to maybe get a scrip for Paxlovid is to take their COVID-spewing bodies IN TO urgent care or Minute Clinic, probably getting other people sick in the process, and also that it’s fine to charge people and never provide them the services. The only thing I can take away from this process is that the US medical system has not only decided that COVID doesn’t exist, but that if it does exist, it’s profitable, and they should double down on getting as many people sick as possible with it, as many times as possible. Yay capitalism!
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Let's Make America Great Again
This song by Frank Turner (and really the album overall) is my whole mood, as of late:
Well I know I’m just an ignorant Englishman / But I’d like to make America great again / So if you’ll forgive my accent and the cheek of it / Here’s some suggestions from the special relationship
Let’s make America great again / By making racists ashamed again / Let’s make compassion in fashion again / Let’s make America great again
Well I’ve been fortunate to go ‘round the continent / From California through the midwest and Providence / And I’ve mostly only encountered common sense / Hospitality and warmth from Americans / But I wish it was a bit less significant / The program and the name of the President / Because it seems to me the truth is self-evident / You fought our king to be independent
Make America great again / By making racists ashamed again / Let’s make compassion in fashion again / Let’s make America great again
Ellis Island take me in / Everyone can start again / In the shining city on the hill / Where nobody can be illegal
Let’s make America great again / By making racists ashamed again / Let’s make compassion in fashion again / Let’s make America great again
Let’s be a friend to our oldest friends / And call them out when they’re faltering / Remind them of their best selves and then / We’ll make America great again
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I really hate feeling held hostage by the fact that while the Fediverse is cool and useful, it’s a.) just a bit too complicated for a lot of people, and b.) people are just too entrenched in Twitter/FB/Insta for a wholesale migration to happen. I’m glad to see that a number of people I follow on the birbsite are making their way over here, at least tentatively, but I suspect in a couple weeks traffic will drop off again and it will be like a dead mall again. crosses fingers that Musk keeps effing up and people keep heading over here.
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Thanks to (@toddgrotenhuis) for pointing out micro.blog which is exactly the kind of low-tech but high-tech blog solution I’ve been looking for. The Mastodon integration is exactly the kind of solution I’ve been wanting. Hoping it’s a low-friction solution to get me writing things a little more frequently instead of doomscrolling and retweeting endlessly. crossed fingers (I am sad that @jferg was already taken, though.)
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Hello. There’s not much here yet, but I’m working on it. This seems to be exactly the speed of blogging system that I need.
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