Some take road trip across state for a shot
Amid much confusion, Chicagoans willing to travel for early access
QUINCY — The last time this riverfront city saw a major surprise influx of visitors, it was because of a big riverboat and a swollen Mississippi.
“The river was too high, and they couldn’t get under a bridge and were kind of forced to turn around,” said Mayor Kyle Moore. “And then they found us as a port of call, and it was wonderful.”
But even that unexpected landfall in 2018 brought nothing like the medical windfall the town has seen this winter and early spring.
“Besides that, where we had 200 visitors kind of dropped at our doorstep, this has been the most that we’ve had,” he said, meaning the mass COVID-19 vaccination run by the Adams County Health Department. “We did a wine fest on the river. We’ve done some things around hunting. And you do see upticks, but it’s never a rush like this is, where, one, it was unexpected, and, two, it’s constant.”
The rush is happening at the cavernous Oakley Lindsay Center
“It feels incredible. I really hope more people can come down.” — Ryan Richert, who works in public relations in Chicago, on the vaccination site in Quincy
downtown, a mass vaccination site that has had a steady supply of vaccine and available appointments, run with an efficiency one suburban Chicagoan compared to a Portillo’s drive-thru.
And even though Quincy is about 300 miles from the Loop, it’s been a popular destination for people from Chicago and the suburbs eager to get the pandemic protection the vaccines provide as quickly as possible.
“We did it!” said Kiki Kapral, a talent agent from Lakeview, raising her arms in triumph as she exited the convention hall.
Inside, after getting the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the only one-anddone formulation of the three currently approved in the U.S., “I got a little tearyeyed,” she said. “It’s been a long year, and I’m happy I can protect my family and community and co-workers.”
“It feels incredible,” said her friend Ryan Richert, who works in public relations in Chicago. “I really hope more people can come down.”
Even more incredible was the news Susan Field and Matt Pudnos got on Saturday. The married couple, both 28, drove down together from Chicago for Pudnos’ appointment, made through the Adams County health site.
She waited in the car while he got his shot. “Four and a half hours is a little bit much, but I can do anything once,” said Pudnos, an advertising copywriter. He said he had brought every official document he owns with him, mindful of past bad experiences at driver’s service facilities.
But it turned out his driver’s license and QR code for the appointment were ID enough. Better yet, talking to a reporter and county health official as he left the building, he learned that Adams County’s was one of the sites that, just the day before, the state had opened up to any adult who could land an appointment, regardless of health status or the industry they work in.
He called Field. “There’s a chance we can get you in,” he said. He was silent for a moment.
“I don’t think you can print what she just said,” Pudnos said.
As Field hustled in, registered at the intake desk and sat down at a socially distanced folding table inside the hall, waiting for a nurse to come by and inoculate her, she said it was a huge relief.
“I thought I was going to have to wait three weeks at least,” she said. Then, she realized the fuller implication of being able to get the shot right away: “Oh, I don’t have to do the search for a place!”
It’s that dreaded quest for the vaccine that has led Chicagoans to discover the Quincy site — and others with available appointments elsewhere in the state — via word of mouth and through avid social media collectives. Especially active is the Chicago Vaccine Hunters group on Facebook, which trades not just vaccination logistics but also tips on places to eat and stay in Quincy.
The long drive — or Amtrak ride on the Illinois Zephyr, or plane trip via Cape Air out of O’Hare International Airport — to acquire the precious juice was a drawback, group members agreed. But the fact the Quincy site has had through much of March a steady supply of J&J vaccine, meaning no return trip would be necessary, made the mileage less painful.
Rob Hart, a photographer from Oak Park, posted on the site about how easy it was to get his shot in Quincy. “The vaccination site was more efficient than a Portillo’s drive-thru,” he said in an interview.
He and his girlfriend stayed the night and visited Mark Twain’s hometown of Hannibal, Missouri, across the river and just a little south (and the intended port for that 2018 riverboat). “It ended up being a great experience in a way,” Hart said. “You put some honky-tonk music on, and you drive down to southern Illinois and have a great time. I figured I’d rather spend five hours in a car each way than five hours behind a computer getting frustrated,” trying to book an appointment in the Chicago area.
“Since I haven’t really left the house in a year, driving five hours didn’t seem like that big of a deal,” said Julia Toepler, an Albany Park resident who, like Hart, got her vaccination in Quincy the weekend before last and then shared the news on the Vaccine Hunters group.
She drove down with her partner and their dog, and they stayed the night, eating pizza delivered to the back patio of Quincy Brewing Co., located in a quaintly rehabbed old building a block north of the town square.
“The town had this cute little historic district and good-looking restaurants,” she said. “And it was my first time seeing the Mississippi, which is exciting.”
Stats on how many Julia Toeplers there have been are hard to come by. The state does not break down who gets vaccinated where by region, and Adams County health authorities said they did not have a detailed breakdown either.
But the anecdotal evidence is strong. Person after person exiting the Quincy vaccination site Saturday was from the Chicago area, and the Facebook group contains scores of testimonials from people who obtained their shots in the southwestern Illinois city of 40,000.
“To give you an idea,” Mayor Moore said, “last weekend we put 2,000 visitors packets at the (vaccination) site, and all 2,000 were pretty much taken.”
“As we see registrations coming in, they’re certainly coming in from various areas of the state,” said Jerrod Welch, the county’s public health administrator.
Adams County leads the state with more than 31 % of its population fully vaccinated, according to state health statistics published Tuesday, almost double the rate of Cook and DuPage counties. Just over 20,000 county residents have been vaccinated, while the county health department says it had administered 50,000 vaccine doses in all as of the weekend.
Welch estimated the county has administered about 13,000 J&J doses since early March, most of them to noncounty residents.
“I wish this could happen in a lot more places, and we could all get pushed to that end goal a little bit quicker,” Welch said.
Another downstate town that has been popular with Chicago vaccine travelers is Danville, about two and a half hours drive south. Chicago Vaccine Hunters members were posting this past weekend about being able to get inoculated at a walk-up site in the Village Mall.
“Although we’re focusing on our population, it’s really open to Illinois residents the last couple of weeks,” said Douglas Toole, the public health administrator for Vermilion County, where Danville is located. His department as well as two local hospitals have been running vaccination sties.
“I’d like to think our clinics are so well-run and our county is so picturesque that people enjoy taking a two and a half hour drive here,” he said. “We definitely want to get shots in arms, but we’d never planned to be a mass vaccination site for the state. We’re happy to use the resources, but this’ll probably be a short-term thing.”
Seen one way, the fact that Chicagoans are willing to drive so far is evidence of the oft-criticized Hunger Games nature of the vaccination program, where those with computer savvy, and the time and resources to be able to travel have an edge over others.
Seen through another lens, though, it’s what Kapral, the Chicago talent agent, described: a way for people in the Chicago area with options to make local slots available for those with fewer options.
Either way, it’s a symptom of the unequal distribution of the vaccines statewide, as documented in a March 19 Tribune story. Places like Adams County, that story explained, were getting far more doses than other places, when the shipments were adjusted for population differences. The state said it prized locations that it deemed faster at vaccination, but it has since pushed more doses to places with lower vaccination rates, such as many collar counties.
Even then, there’s a wide gulf between counties: Some have open slots and, like Adams, are now able to open up vaccinations to anyone 16 and older, while others are still rationing those coveted slots based on age, health and occupation.
All of this, it should be noted, is likely in flux even now. Vaccine availability is increasing state and nationwide, although it can all come with a heavy dose of confusion.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker has said that, starting April 12, anyone 16 and older can get a shot anywhere in Illinois — except for Chicago, which controls its own shots, and which is not expecting to start vaccinating those 16 and older until May 1, except for those living in certain hard-hit ZIP codes in the city.
Further clouding the picture, albeit with seemingly good news, President Joe Biden said this week that he expects 90% of Americans to be eligible for vaccines by April 19, as vaccination sites will by then be located within 5 miles of 90% of Americans.
And back in Quincy, Adams County was doing its vaccinations Tuesday and Wednesday with the Pfizer-BioNTech formulation, which requires a second dose several weeks after the first. It also has fewer mass vaccination days on the schedule in coming weeks than in the past, but there is a day of Johnson&Johnson doses scheduled for April 6, with the appointments filling up much more quickly than the Pfizer ones did this week.
One of the things that will surely mean is still more vaccine tourists in town.
“We’ve absolutely noticed a lot of people from up north coming down,” said Tieraney Craig, a co-owner of Quincy Brewing.
Said Gabe McClean, an owner of The Abbey restaurant, “Business has been better than normal. Maybe that’s what it’s from.”
McClean’s brother Rod runs a sister restaurant, Kelley’s Tavern.
“People want to get vaccinated, and they’re going wherever they can to get it,” Rod McClean said. “What would I recommend ‘em to do in Quincy? We’re kind of known for our architectural homes and the riverfront. And come to Kelley’s restaurant for our cheese soup and cinnamon rolls.”
“Since I haven’t really left the house in a year, driving five hours didn’t seem like that big of a deal.” — Julia Toepler, an Albany Park resident who got her vaccination in Quincy the weekend before last and then shared the news on the Vaccine Hunters group