“I’ll have a spicy chicken sandwich, side of waffle fries, and a large dose of AstraZeneca.”
It’s no secret that as a country we’re doing just about as well rolling out the COVID-19 vaccine as we did reacting to the virus itself. According to figures obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USA Today reports that as of January 26th, only 6% of the US population has received at least one of two COVID-19 shots, with just 1% of people having received both doses (mostly essential workers). 47% of shots distributed still haven’t been used, which puts them at risk of expiration.
Considering there’s also talk of a more contagious variant of the virus in the United States, this is clearly bad news.
The Biden administration recently laid out plans to administer over 100 million shots over his first 100 days. If we hope to meet that goal we’re going to start thinking outside of the box and calling on the pros — exactly what Mount Pleasant South Carolina Mayor Will Haynie did last week when a technical glitch had traffic gridlocked at a vaccine-drive thru site.
According to Fox 13, When Mayor Haynie was notified that traffic had backed up for an hour at a vaccination site at Seacoast Church, he reached out to local Chick-fil-A manager Jerry Walkowiak for additional help. Before Mayor Haynie arrived at the site, Walkowiak was already on-site putting his Chick-fil-A crowd managing skills to work, speeding up wait times by checking drivers’ paperwork in advance, and directing them to a spot to wait for vaccination.
Soon, Walkowiak’s skills had chopped the vaccination site’s wait time from an hour to just 15 minutes. In the rain, no less!
Haynie told Fox he plans to use Walkowiak and Chick-fil-A at future distribution sites — a relief for un-vaccinated South Carolinians but also a reminder that America’s health care infrastructure is in need of a serious overhaul.