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KING 5: Hundreds rush to get COVID-19 vaccine in Seattle overnight after freezer failure

A total of 1,650 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine at risk of expiring Thursday night were quickly administered to more than a thousand people at UW and Swedish clinics.

SEATTLE — Hundreds of people rushed to Seattle University and University of Washington clinics late Thursday night to try and receive a COVID-19 vaccine before the doses expired.

Spokespeople for both Swedish and UW said that a freezer storing Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine broke at Kaiser Permanente, leaving 1,650 doses of the vaccine at risk of expiring.

Swedish and UW split the doses and began administering them.

"Teams worked vigilantly and in close partnership through the night and early morning to ensure all doses were used and no vaccination lost,” a Kaiser Permanente Washington representative said.

Swedish posted an urgent message on social media around 11 p.m. Thursday saying it had hundreds of appointments available from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. to use the vaccines before they expired by the morning. Hundreds of people answered the call and showed up in their pajamas and robes to receive their first dose of the vaccine.

Swedish Medical Center COO Kevin Brooks said the available appointments were filled within 35-40 minutes.

“We got a call from a partner hospital that they had a fridge malfunction and they needed to vaccinate 880 people,” said Brooks. “I pulled our team together, our vaccine team at Swedish, and we huddled on Microsoft Teams and came up with a plan, and 30 minutes later we came on site.”

I got the call at 22:00 and I was on-site by 22:40. We were fully operational barely 30 minutes later.

What an incredible experience. So glad I get to be part of it.

I’ve been working at this clinic since January 11th as a volunteer and patient registration lead. Long days leave us feeling pretty wiped out, but the sense of community and shared purpose is amazing, and the excitement patients express at receiving their vaccine doses is so wonderful to see.

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of links to media coverage, mostly local, in chronological order. I’ll add to the list as I see new coverage pop up. Links open in new windows.

• KING 5 TV: Community COVID-19 vaccine clinic opens in Seattle (Jan 16)
  Swedish Hospital partnered with Seattle University to open a clinic on the school’s campus.
  
  
• KIRO 7 TV: New Swedish community COVID-19 vaccination clinic up and running at Seattle University (Jan 16)
  The unique partnership between Swedish and Seattle U was dreamed up just two weeks ago. The clinic is operated and managed by Swedish, while Seattle University hosts the location and parking.
  
  
• The Seattle Times: As Washington state aims to vaccinate millions against COVID-19, thousands sign up to help (Jan 23)
  In Seattle University’s Campion Ballroom, which in non-pandemic times is used as a large conference room and event space, more than 2,000 people a day are being vaccinated against COVID-19 through a clinic operated by Swedish Health Services.
  
  
• KING 5 TV: Hundreds rush to get COVID-19 vaccine in Seattle overnight after freezer failure (Jan 29)
  A total of 1,650 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine at risk of expiring Thursday night were quickly administered to more than a thousand people at UW and Swedish clinics.
  
  
• The Washington Post: A failed freezer forced an overnight dash to give out more than 1,600 doses of the coronavirus vaccine (Jan 30)
  National coverage of our Thu 01/29 late-night vaccination clinic

Jan. 6, 2021, was always on the country’s radar.

Two runoff elections that would determine control of the Senate still had not been decided as Tuesday became Wednesday. A joint session of Congress convened to certify Joe Biden’s electoral-vote win while thousands gathered on the Mall in support of President Trump, who continued to falsely claim that the election was stolen from him.

[The four-hour insurrection: How a Trump mob halted American democracy]

As the scene in D.C. continued to darken, smaller demonstrations across the nation also flared, forcing officials in several statehouses to evacuate.

This is how the day unfolded.

See the full detailed timeline. [$$]

Healy’s analysis of GOP expectations vs. reality in the January 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol. Snips:

I don’t know what happened. But here’s my current theory of what the White House thought was going to happen. I don’t have any more information than you do, and here I’m not concerned with the broader question of how the country came to this end. I am just trying to make sense of what happened on Wednesday. [...]

The plan for Wednesday was to have Trump go down and rile up the MAGA crowd, have them march up to the Capitol steps, and look like a big mass of people demanding something be done. Thanks to some preparatory cleansing of the DoD leadership last month (again, in outline pretty clear evidence that they intended to subvert the election), the White House had made sure there wouldn’t be much to stop the crowd from getting real close and making a lot of noise. The optics would be good. And the cops on duty wouldn’t go too hard on their MAGA buddies in any case. [...]

Once the ructions were underway, and the objections from Hawley and Cruz and others were being debated, Trump would call some Senators to push them to object or generally delay or whatever. At a minimum, anything to derail the process. And as a best outcome—well, this bit is one of those ?????? Underpants Gnomes stages that features in all half-thought-out Trumpy plans—between the direct pressure from Trump and the noise from the masses gathered outside (just look at those TV pictures!), there would be some big shift as Senators realized their base was against them and they’d vote to reject the Electoral votes and send everything back to the States. Or there would be chaos on the Senate floor and someone like Cruz would hope to capitalize on it to reach some quasi-legitimate “Compromise of 2021”. Or something. I’m not saying this makes much sense in terms of things that definitely had to happen. It’s more that they saw potential to seize the initiative in some real-time moment of uncertainty with the house divided and the crowd outside.

The crowd outside. [...] [B]ecause this was an event that Trump was going to be at himself, the idea was probably that from the crowd’s point of view it’d go more like a regular rally, as opposed to something like Charlottesville or the Michigan Statehouse. That is, from the White House’s point of view, the crowd was not actually supposed to get inside the Capitol. The MAGA/Q contingent are the useful marks in all this. They believe all the crap they’re fed. But obviously they’re not going to get into the building. It’s the US Capitol for God’s sake! The very idea that the rush of events would propel them right into the chambers was not something the White House wanted to happen, or thought was going to happen.

Of course, before the rally some of the actually dangerous Q-marinated nutters absolutely did want to get inside the building, find Pence, and Pelosi, and the rest, and literally take them hostage and string them up. They talked about this a lot on their message boards. The White House was probably well aware of these ideas.

Read the whole thing here. Well worth the time.