Seattle City Wire

COVID-19 Seattle's podcast hosts, KIRO radio voice Dave Ross and reporter Aaron Granillo, conclude their year-long segment of discussion on a damaging pandemic on the mad dash's fitting note about getting vaccinated.

After a year of uncertainty, the rollout of COVID vaccines predicts a return to normalcy. The promise is wearing thin, however, as Granillo talked about the frustration many are facing, including himself, to get vaccine appointments.

"I'm dealing with it with my mother and my grandmother. I look daily on the COVID vaccination finder website the state has, it's impossible right now, it seems like. It's almost like a crapshoot where you kinda have to be online at the right time to even have a shot," Granillo said in the podcast before letting go of a chuckle. "No pun intended."

The reality is the demand for the vaccine currently outweighs the supply for states like Washington, putting mandatory qualifications on who can receive them.

Ross followed the criticisms of the insufficient supply with commentary about the vaccine not reaching its peak by being as common as the flu shot.

"It's not gonna be an effective program until the vaccine is in every corner pharmacy, just like you get the flu vaccine," he said.

Topics of school reopenings and unemployed individuals returning to work were touched upon in tandem with vaccine availability.

Despite the new federal administration making strides to make the vaccine more readily available to more citizens, the data is impersonal to the public.

"I hear them reciting all sorts of numbers, 10 million, 100 million, something in 100 days, but until it gets to your neighborhood, it doesn't benefit you," Ross said to podcast listeners. "So basically, it has to be everywhere I think for the nation to appreciate that this represents a change from what happened before," Ross said.