Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Once upon a time, a person could believe that Santa Claus descended through chimneys, hot dogs were good for us, and that American competence was the real deal.

This country endured a civil war and found a way to form a more perfect—if still imperfect—union. It took blows such as the ones inflicted at Pearl Harbor and on 9/11, united to fight back, and rallied to win different and difficult struggles. It suffered a public health threat, especially to its children, and Dr. Jonas Salk created a vaccine that freed it from polio, because it quickly got into arms and later onto tongues in sugary cubes.

Whatever happened to that America?

During this coronavirus year, people of a certain age have been transported back to those deadly polio days and reminded of the coming of the vaccine that freed us children from restricted lives, before we even knew what a lockdown was.

We now know.

COVID-19 has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and forced us to keep our distance from one another, even those we love. It has changed the meaning of the question that long ago was the signature signoff of the Lone Ranger television program. When our modest and nameless hero rode away into the distance on his trusty steed, Silver, and with his faithful companion, Tonto, someone was always asking: “Who was that Masked Man?”

Now, we are all masked men, women, and children. And most of us are neither shy heroes nor in the business of robbing banks. (I did once have a neighbor in Sacramento, California, who we came to learn, indeed, was in that business.) We wear our masks and, now, even double masks to protect ourselves and others from the virus.

The masks are important but a pain in the . . . facial area. That’s why many of us were excited down to our toes when those with the intelligence and skill to create vaccines to address the potentially deadly consequences of COVID-19 did so in record time. It looked as if we might be home free. Of course, we should have known better.

This has also become the America where a president pooh-poohs the virus and tells his countrymen that it will magically go away, where he fights with and hogties his medical experts, and refuses to set the example of wearing a mask and ends up with COVID-19. The ignorance and incompetence which bloomed from this has come home to roost.

In the land of the free, home of the brave, and nest of incompetence, we cannot seem to figure out how to rapidly produce and distribute the vaccine to those who will vaccinate the rest of us desperate souls. The number of those who need and want the vaccine overwhelms the sign-up and delivery mechanisms of providers. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, has just this week announced he is stepping back from and up in his company that has become provider of everything in America to everyone in America. Maybe he could try to solve this problem. Or, Bill Gates, who left Microsoft, to give himself to becoming this wonderful philanthropic world-saver on multiple fronts. Or, even Al Gore, who “invented the internet.” Someone. Anyone. Please fix this mess.

I have spent much of the week trying to schedule and receive a COVID-19 vaccination. If Mama and Daddy had timed my birth a better, I would have been wallowing in my dumbfounding incompetence at obtaining the vaccine a week earlier. I turn 75 this month but had to wait until the 70-and-older crowd became eligible to join the vax race.

After many sign-up failures and a series of no-vaccine-available notices (try again if you do not die first), I became discouraged and whined to my friend Art Krummel who suggested, in effect, that I put on my big-boy—old man?—pants and persevere. Easy for Arthur to say. I got the impression that his wife Charlene, retired reporter/editor who was an absolute bulldog and a damned fine and funny writer, was Ms. Patience. She never gave in and never gave up and coached her friends, including me, on process.

Art had found his vaccination at a Marc’s Pharmacy in Mentor, Ohio, a drive that took him from the Akron suburb of Tallmadge to Mentor (head north and break before going into Lake Erie). Following Char’s advice I focused on Marc’s and eventually got onto the scheduling site for the Wooster store’s pharmacy 37 miles from my home. Shockingly, it seemed to work where most of the sites have glitches. Be careful about the conclusions to which you jump. When I believed I had everything filled out, I thought I performed the final step correctly. I obviously had not. I kept waiting for the confirmation number and an email. When it had not arrived by the next morning, I telephoned the store, and ended up in an endless phone-message loop.

When I pressed zero to speak with a person, the loop began again, then again, and then . . . well, you get the idea. This was not reassuring but I had the time and the day so I made the bucolic drive on the partially snow-covered road to Wooster. In the meantime, Bob Springer, former Akron Beacon Journal editorial department colleague, posted on Facebook a story about his Marc’s experience to which I could relate. His adult daughter, Anna, who lives in Portland, worried about her father and mother Barbara Hipsman Springer, had been “searching high and low for any open vaccination appointments” for her parents. She eventually found one in Salem, about an hour south of the Springer home. Barb didn’t think she needed the help but Bob accepted.

Turned out the Marc’s Salem page was a test, and someone from Marc’s called Bob and others who had signed up to cancel the appointments and ended up offering both Bob and Barb appointments in nearby Stow. “It’s like a window of light just entered my cranium,” Bob wrote. My cranium apparently is a much darker place than Bob’s.

When I got to Marc’s in Wooster at the appointed hour, a pharmacy aide informed me I was not on the list. Why did this not surprise me? The pharmacist then came to explain further the problems they had experienced with their sign-up system and that I was not alone in my sorry-we-have-no-shot-for-you situation; go home and start over. She was very nice and apologized for the fact that I had driven almost 40 miles only to be turned away. When I got home my wife Jackie’s first question was: Did you get the shot? She almost smiled. While I was gone, she had continued to search for vaccine  appointments and found two at Walgreen’s in North Canton, where she used to be public relations director at the Hoover Company. (Hoover died, which we were trying to avoid for a while longer.) She, too, had had difficulty with an online sign-up system. But when she called the store to explain the problem, she not only found that the pharmacy staff would take her call but was willing and eager to help her make two appointments—even though the website indicated this could not be done over the telephone. We were to receive online confirmations for next-day appointments. We’re still awaiting.

Again, she called the store. And again, where the online system had failed, Walgreen’s people did not. They confirmed our information and said they were expecting us. There would be no surprises this time, and we had never looked so forward to being stuck, even if it felt anticlimactic.

Is this a great (incompetent) country or what?