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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

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Unsettled sky @SpaceNeedle @SeattleCenter . . #weather #sky #clouds #spaceneedle #seattlecenter

A post shared by Don (@donnunn) on Nov 15, 2019 at 3:20pm PST

Brunch at Skillet Diner in Capitol Hill today, a send-off of sorts for a friend who’s leaving Seattle for Florida to take a job offer and move closer to his family.

I ordered Serious Toast, which from the menu description sounded delicious:

Molasses custard soaked thick cut brioche, raspberry jam, local pit ham, powdered sugar, two eggs your way

About 15 minutes later our brunch items arrived and I’m not sure I’ll ever recover from my first time seeing the reality of Serious Toast:

I guess I always assumed stevia was “in the raw”.

On our way to Bainbridge Island for a leisurely afternoon of wine-tasting and lunch.

The weird thing is, it wasn’t until a full day later we thought to wonder where the balloon shop is.

But what a way to go!

We had this at Skillet Diner on Capitol Hill. Table for four and we didn’t manage to finish it, oy....

HELLO YOU BEAUTIFUL WEEKEND

In no particular order.

• I don’t particularly like working from home.
• Flexie. The keyboard is not your resting place.
• Drinking one’s own canned beverages? Feh.
• Alamo!
• These kitchen-table chairs UTTERLY BLOW for anything more than about 25 continuous minutes of use.
• Seriously, Flex, go the hell away!
• Yay whatever music I want to play, at whatever volume.
• Remote access is simultaneously
• cool
• mind-boggling, even if you know at least the basics of the technology involved
• irritatingly slow
• Annie: The claws are not required for standing on my leg, ow ow ow ow ow
• This neighborhood is almost freakishly quiet on weekdays.
• The sofa, it calls to me....
• GODDAMNED CATS

When I couldn’t work from home, in the days when my job didn’t offer it (retail is hard to do except at the store) and before the technology was fully baked (hail the days of Citrix on Decker Lake Lane!), I wanted to work from home all the time.

Now I can work from home pretty much whenever I want and I avoid it. I like keeping my home and my workplace distinct and physically separate, too easy to lose work/life balance otherwise. And no cats at the office, which makes it orders of magnitude more productive. Or at least far less cat-hair–covered.

Is this what it means to gain perspective, or (gasp!) to become an adult?

Friends playing live music. Doesn’t get much better.

Elliott Bay Brewing Company to the rescue!

When bad jostles happen to good beer mugs.

Game starts and everyone abandons the pub :-(

Club-level seat for my first game of the Mariners’ 2013 season.

Here’s from the top of section 234:

And here from my seat 9 on row 1.

First pint of the season of Pyramid’s Curve Ball blonde ale.

Cheers!

The tap runs dry and the sign gets pushed to a corner.

We attended the sentencing hearing for the perpetrator of a burglary in October. Needed a bit of a break afterward.

France vs. Washington state in 10 ounces of liquid goodness.

Finally, a 4th with not a cloud in the sky.

And an appropriate summer cocktail! :-)

Chandler’s Crabhouse’s Havana Raspberry cocktail

Dinner mit usual wimmins. ;-)

Stuffed mushrooms with Jewells and Kat

The phone, she is broke :-(

We joined friends for a matinee of The Producers in Issaquah. I was getting into the car on our way to the theatre when I bobbled the phone in my left hand and it clattered to the driveway for the fourth time I can remember, and this time it gave the unmistakable psht! sound of the glass giving up the fight.

Yay AppleCare+ — we’re waiting now at the Apple Store, University Village for warranty service. Should be all good in the next hour or so.

On the Seattle Times homepage just now, a dour expression for so much lovin’:

The first pint of Curve Ball this year. Aaahhhhh....

Cheers!

*And* beer. Heaven!

Buttface Amber at The Ram to finish the work week.

Aaahhhhhh....

Section 152, nearly opposite our section 108 seats for Thursday night's game.

Nice to have an international colleague visit and then a few days later an invite from local friends with season tix.

Nonprofit homebuilder Habitat for Humanity sees the national foreclosure crisis as an opportunity.

Habitat’s Seattle/South King County chapter recently purchased two foreclosed single-family homes in Kent’s East Hill neighborhood and is in the process of buying another. Instead of the typical building a new home from the ground up, Habitat crews have spent all winter refurbishing them, getting them ready for occupancy.

via Seattle Times; I added links

Another way Habitat for Humanity provides decent, affordable housing where it’s needed. Glad at least one good thing can come out of this national financial crisis.

Just... ewww.

And Easter is two months away, for crying out loud!

Alehouse restroom. Flashing back to the hospital gift shop in 2004, all those old-lady volunteers.

Which is not to say the old-lady volunteers were in the alehouse restroom with me—nothing so scandalous.

No, one of them was named Stella. And every time I saw her, I’d do the “Streetcar” bit. And she’d smile tolerantly and encourage me to return to the cash register lesson.

Set the Way-Back Machine to today, 06:50ish.

I’m waiting at the 4th & Pike bus stop for the Sound Transit 545 to Redmond. I’m holding my freshly prepared (and still a smidge too hot to drink) small skinny vanilla latte from the Seattle’s Best down the street, watching the traffic roll past.

A good many vehicles pass that location in the usually five or six minutes I have to wait for the 545. Fair number of buses, many private vehicles and business trucks/vans/whatever.

One truck catches my eye. Smallish tanker truck, it looks like the type that might deliver heating oil in the suburbs. The company name emblazoned on its side:

BAKER COMMODITIES INC.

In no way remarkable, no idea why it catches my eye.

So then my brain goes into overdrive in something like the following sequence of thoughts, which probably requires all of 10 seconds start to finish:

1. I wonder what they sell.
2. I should look them up when I get to work.¹
3. Commodities. Oil, grain, coal, copper, ....
4. “Commodity” and “commode” are similar words. Same root? I should check that.²
5. “Commode”—toilet.
6. Toilet—potty.
7. “Get off the pot” hee hee.
8. BAM earworm of “Beauty School Dropout” from Grease.
9. Dammit!

1. No idea why I didn’t just whip out my iPhone right at that moment. ↩
2. Yes. ↩

Can you tell I got dressed in the dark?

I present in its unmodified entirety the severe-weather alert I saw for Seattle just now:

... SNOW POTENTIAL THIS WEEKEND AND IN THE WEEK TO COME... A COLD AND SHOWERY AIR MASS WILL SPREAD ACROSS WESTERN WASHINGTON THIS WEEKEND. SNOW LEVELS WILL FALL TO 1000 FEET ON SATURDAY AND THEN TO NEAR SEA LEVEL OR JUST A COUPLE HUNDRED FEET ON SUNDAY MORNING. IN SHOWERY PATTERNS... SNOW ACCUMULATIONS CAN BE HIGHLY LOCALIZED... DEPENDING ON ELEVATION AND HOW CONVERGENCE ZONES DECIDE TO FORM. LOCATIONS FROM SEATTLE NORTH TO THE ISLANDS AND SKAGIT COUNTY WOULD BE THE MOST LIKELY PLACES TO SEE ACCUMULATING SNOW... BUT ANYWHERE STANDS A CHANCE. LOCATIONS THAT GET SNOW COULD GET A FEW INCHES... WHILE MANY OTHER LOCATIONS WILL JUST GET FLURRIES OR LEFT OUT ALTOGETHER. THE CHARACTER OF THE EVENT WILL BE SIMILAR TO THE ONE THAT HAPPENED ON DECEMBER 29TH... THOUGH THE EXACT LOCATION OF THE HEAVIER SNOWS COULD VERY WELL BE DIFFERENT. MONDAY AND TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK WILL BE COLD AND DRY. STARTING WEDNESDAY THROUGH THE END OF NEXT WEEK... THERE IS THE POTENTIAL FOR A WIDESPREAD HEAVY SNOW EVENT SOMEWHERE IN WESTERN WASHINGTON. GREAT UNCERTAINTY INHERENTLY EXISTS IN A FORECAST WITH THIS MUCH LEAD TIME... AND IT IS POSSIBLE THAT A HEAVY SNOW SITUATION WILL NOT HAPPEN. CHECK BACK LATE THIS WEEKEND OR BY MONDAY FOR THE LATEST ON THIS POTENTIAL HIGH-IMPACT EVENT. IF THE POTENTIAL STILL EXISTS AT THAT TIME... THEN THE DRY WEATHER ON MONDAY AND TUESDAY WOULD AFFORD AN EXCELLENT OPPORTUNITY TO PREPARE.

“Mornings aren’t pretty”—truer words never spoken, though I didn’t sleep long enough to get a really grand case of bedhead. But I kinda feel like Mickey looks.

And it can’t be pure coincidence that one French press = one giant coffee cup, right? No, it must be a greater statement of the proper order of the universe.

In order: People, beers, and cans of enchilada sauce to ring in the new year.

Best wishes for 2011.

After the jump, photos from my balcony half a mile away from the Space Needle’s New Year fireworks show. Excellent weather this year, clear and cold with practically no wind—and the smoke from the fireworks moved west of the Needle so we had an unobstructed view of the whole show.

On the second hand (a set and a run), instead of, say, on an actually USEFUL hand like the final (3 runs)???

I decided, on the final hand, to try for three runs of diamonds. Here’s to that second joker :-D

Game final score: Don 190, Julie Anne 400

Not the game-winner, but it looks good so far.

Three hands in (of seven total) and I’m batting a thousand.

Annie and Flex have been following the sun’s slow march across the living room.

Julie Anne really outdid herself this year.