To get vaccinated against coronavirus last weekend, Frances H. Goldman, 90, has traveled an extraordinary distance: six miles. On foot.
It was snowing too much to drive at 8 am on Sunday, when Mrs. Goldman picked up her hiking poles, dusted off her snow boots and left her home in Seattle’s View Ridge neighborhood. She headed for the Burke-Gilman trail on the outskirts of the city, where she made her way along a set of old railroad tracks, heading south. Then she crossed the residential streets of Laurelhurst to reach Seattle Children’s Hospital.
It was a smooth walk, said Goldman. People were scarce. She spotted Lake Washington amid falling snow. It would have been more difficult, she said, if she hadn’t replaced a bad hip in the past year.
At the hospital, about three miles and an hour from home, she got the vaccine. Then she wrapped up again and went back where she had come from.
It was an extraordinary effort – but that was not all. Mrs. Goldman, who became eligible for a vaccine last month, had already tried everything she could to secure an appointment. She had made repeated phone calls and unsuccessful visits to websites of local pharmacies, hospitals and government health departments. She enlisted a daughter in New York and a friend in Arizona to help her find an appointment.
Finally, on Friday, a visit to the Seattle Children’s Hospital website yielded results.
“Look, a whole list of times has come up,” she said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “I couldn’t believe my eyes. I went and grabbed my glasses to make sure I was looking right. “
Then came the snow, which would end up falling more than 25 centimeters on one of the most snowy weekends on record in Seattle. Afraid of driving on rough, unplowed roads, Mrs. Goldman decided to go to the hospital on foot. She did a walk test part of the way on Saturday to get a sense of how long the trip could take.
And on Sunday, she walked to the hospital to get the vaccine. The Seattle Times reported on its walk on Monday.
The consultation went well, she said. And that had a special meaning for Mrs. Goldman because she could remember the joy of national celebrations in 1955, when another major vaccine was developed.
“I remember when the polio vaccine was launched,” said Goldman. She was a young mother at the time, and polio was making tens of thousands of children sick, sometimes leading to paralysis or death, and she remembers taking her children to get the vaccine at a school in Cincinnati, where she lived.
The vaccine was launched “it was done in a very organized way and made a big difference in the way people could live in the summer – not only because people didn’t get sick, but they also didn’t have to live with the threat of getting sick. “
This time, Mrs. Goldman was disappointed with the distribution of the vaccine. “There is no excuse for it to be done the way it was,” she said. “It was disorganized. Completely disorganized. “
Seattle is just one of many places in the United States where residents have been struggling to get access to the vaccine.
“There is simply not enough vaccine in the state and in the country,” said Sharon Bogan, a spokesman for the Seattle and King County public health department. “Even in the best of circumstances, we knew it would take time. We know that eligible residents, such as Ms. Goldman, are having trouble accessing appointments due to limited vaccine supplies. “
And while similar stories have occurred across the country, vaccine distribution is slowly improving in the United States. President Biden said this week that all Americans who want a vaccine against Covid-19 should be able to get it by the end of July, but he also warned that distribution logistics will continue to struggle.
In King County, health officials struggling with limited supplies have been working to deliver the vaccine equally, according to Ms. Bogan. “We are focusing our efforts on eligible high-risk people who are not connected to a doctor or healthcare system and establishing locations to reach older adults in communities that have been disproportionately impacted by Covid-19,” she said.
Ms. Goldman is scheduled to receive her second dose of the vaccine next month. She plans to drive.
And when this is all over, she hopes to welcome people into her home again, resume her volunteer work at a nearby arboretum and hug her new great-grandchild, whom she has so far avoided touching.
For now, she is getting a lot of phone calls – her long walk has been covered by several local and national news outlets. The attention, she said, has not bothered her until now.
“I hope it inspires people to take their pictures,” she said. “I think it is important for the whole country.”
Sheelagh McNeill contributed to the research.