AutHAMn Leaves

@literalHam

they/them

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They/them

AutHAMn Leaves @literalHam10/16/2023, 7:41 PM

my vaccine conspiracy theory is that pfizer or moderna has paid kickbacks to one or more of the big pharmacies to intentionally bungle and delay the novavax rollout. its just so suspicious how much of a shitshow this has been when these pharmacies have had months to prepare and should be used to the cycle of new boosters by now. feels like weaponized incompetence. after all, we couldnt possibly allow a superior product to compete fairly, could we?

[editing to make it clear that the "shitshow" and "weaponized incompetence" i think is hapening is all occuring at the level of C-Suite decision-making. Store workers are doing their level best and are, in my conspiratorial thinking, being intentionally kept in the dark wrt the Novavax vaccine compared with Pfizer and Moderna]

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lunar fox @lunarfox2210/16/2023, 8:01 PM

as someone who works at a walgreens (albeit not in the pharmacy but i see what they have to deal with) i will say that the answer is

pharmacies got burned through during the pandemic and what the companies running them learned was not "oh we put pharmacists and patients at risk with bad practices"

it was "we were over-staffing by 50%"

If they're anything like mine, most pharmacies in the US have barely anyone working there and they are all so desperately behind on everything that ordering and managing the new vaccine is at the bottom of their priorities. When patients are screaming at them in the window or on the phone, they aren't asking why they don't have the new covid vaccine yet, but they are asking why their medications aren't ready, and the answer for both is that they are hundreds of scrips behind and someone just called out.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were kickbacks, I'm just saying I can believe very much that pharmacies would do this to themselves all on their own without having to collude with manufacturers simply to cut labor costs.

AutHAMn Leaves @literalHam10/16/2023, 9:07 PM

oh yes totally totally. i was unspecific when i said "shitshow" and "weaponized incompetence" but all of the barriers im coming up against are decisons happening well above the individual pharmacists, or even store management. like, deciding which stores get how many vaccines and when, not communicating with stores about supplies, not updating the web portals to incude novavax as an option when they do have vaccines, and then telling the federal government that all their stores have Novavax supplies when none or very few of them do. 2 weeks ago a search on vaccines.gov for novavax in my area and my parents' area (in another state) was all Walgreens stores, but when my mom and i called around and nobody had any idea what we were talking about. Now the Walgreens have all been removed from novavax searches but the same thing is happening with a dozen local CVS stores. i called the 4 closest ones vaccines.gov told me had novavax and none of them had it or had any idea when they would get it.

and yet, when the moderna and pfizer boosters were approved by the FDA they were already in CVS stores and the website was updated, appointments were available that specified the updated vaccine, and i know many many people who got an updated booster that first week with very few of this kind of problems. it seems like there are C-Suite level decisions to simply not treat novavax the same as moderna and pfizer, to not implement procedures and communications that are otherwise automatic for when new moderna and pfizer vaccines come out.

but yeah i have so much patience for actual pharmacists rn, its literal hell over there, and everyone has been honestly saint-adjacent in taking the time to find out if i would be able to get novavax at their store.

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