[Steltek]

Not even close to true. Demand is so high here, MA was only able to offer vaccines to the general public starting this week. If you were lucky enough to even be eligible last week, you needed to use bots to find an appointment.

Compare that to Texas, where shots are going begging at freaking Walmart. It's extremely infuriating. MA's vaccination rate is solely limited by available doses and meanwhile vaccines are expiring unused on the shelf in other states. We could have hit herd immunity by now if we were given the chance.

[throwaway0a5e]

Demand is high because all the low risk people in healthcare (and all the other industries that got priority) got in line right away and are/were competing with the high risk people and seniors.

Basically we dumped a ton of volume into the vaccination funnel from the get go (because we were vaccinating such a wide range of people so early on because of the employment based qualification criteria) so while there was a backup we were always running the "actually vaccinating people" part of the system at full tilt. Other states poured a comparative trickle into the funnel. While there was no backup up top you didn't have the bottom of the vaccine pipeline running at 100%.

[alamortsubite]

Vaccinating healthcare workers first makes perfect sense when you're dealing with a virus that has the potential to overwhelm your healthcare capacity.

[throwaway0a5e]

Nobody said it didn't make sense. People just don't like explanations other than Masshole Exceptionalism for why MA has the best vaccination rate.

[Steltek]

But early eligibility != required to do your job. The vaccine system was only as "full tilt" as we had doses available. We had capacity for substantially more shots in arms but there was nothing to give. That said, I do agree with the State's priorities. As much as it pains me personally, retail is higher than my comfy WFH butt.