How to Become Someone’s Vaccine Angel
The U.S. receives millions of vaccines every day with three COVID-19 vaccines, even as the disease continues to spread, with 68,000 new cases reported Wednesday. At this stage of the pandemic, there is inequality: the sharp number of new infections every day signals that the pandemic is far from over, but new hope has emerged in the form of a dizzying proliferation of vaccines.
As medical experts have warned in recent days, the virus will continue to spread (and perhaps new variants will continue to emerge ) until enough people are vaccinated for the United States to achieve herd immunity , which means time is of the essence. Because of this, you may want to consider contributing to vaccinations in your state. The good news is, you don’t need medical knowledge or formal training to help. If you want to help in this gigantic national effort, there are many groups and organizations that can offer you work in various fields. Learn more about how you can participate.
Working with national organizations
Even without a medical background, you can still volunteer at vaccination sites in various fields. Healthcare professionals work with the flood of people hungry for the vaccine and a return to normalcy, which means other volunteers need to deal with parking controls, data entry, general logistics and any other needs that might arise.
Organizations like Vaccine Fairy will be tasked with helping you book vaccine appointments for those in need. In addition, Vaccine Hunter will direct you to a series of Facebook pages run by volunteers working to vaccinate people in their regions. Most likely there is a page serving yours.
Vaccine Hunter is a pretty comprehensive resource as it brings together all kinds of organizations across the country that accept volunteers. You should reach out to a resource that serves your community, but it pays off when you join the ranks of people helping this titanic endeavor.
Find vaccine angel organizations on social media.
Because there are so many communities that are not medically served, and because government websites are notoriously fragile and usually shut down completely when they are overloaded with traffic, volunteers serve the cause like vaccine angels. These are volunteers who make appointments with people who may have problems booking their own vaccinations. Angels make appointments, travel arrangements, and generally do whatever is necessary to make it easier to vaccinate the disadvantaged. This is as noble as the reasons for the hellish landscape of 2021.
Once again, the most comprehensive aggregator of vaccine angel capabilities is Vaccine Hunter, which compiles groups into a list organized by state and sometimes by city or city. You can also find groups in your area by simply Google “Vaccine Angel Groups” on Facebook. Such groups originated in California , Ohio , western Michigan, and many other places.
In addition to state governments, which may still need administrative and logistical support, various states also have more formal medical organizations that attract volunteers. As always, take the initiative and seek out these organizations, as winning the race to equitably distribute vaccines is our fastest way out of this mess that we all find ourselves in.