Be a hero, help our seniors get vaccinated

Picture this.

You’ve got a pandemic raging across the country. There is a vaccination, but the only way to sign up for it is by swimming across a 100-yard channel.

There, on the other side, is everything you need. But you can’t swim, you don’t know anyone who has a boat and your chances of succeeding without help are a solid zero percent. You call everyone you can think of who might be able to help; but, in the end, everybody tells you the same thing: “Sink or swim. Sorry.”

Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Yet that’s the situation millions of senior citizens feel like they’re in today. Only, in this case, that deep-water channel is called “the internet.”

Daily, the Enterprise-Record is getting phone calls from senior citizens desperate for help in their earnest attempts to receive the vaccination for a virus that has killed almost a half-million Americans, a majority of them in their age bracket. All we can tell them is what we know — that to get an appointment for a vaccination, they need to go online and navigate the web maze and fill out a form.

Daily, we’re told “but I don’t own a computer and I’ve never even used one. I don’t have any family nearby and there’s nobody to help.”

This is not their fault. Not in the least. Our senior citizens — members of “The Greatest Generation” who survived a depression and won a World War and put our country on the path to its greatest economic boom in the years to come — should never have been put in this situation.

But they are, and they need our help.

If you’ve ever tried to help an elderly parent or grandparent with anything having to do with a computer or the internet, you know exactly what we’re talking about. Terms like “web site” and “email” and “Facebook” are as commonplace to many of us as apple pie and baseball. But for a generation that was raised on hard labor and typewriters, those mere concepts — much less how they actually work — are something very difficult, if not impossible, to grasp.

Throw in the fact their lives may be on the line, and perhaps you can begin to appreciate their sense of hopelessness.

Locally, there is a phone number for help: 530-5523050. That’s the Butte County Public Health call center and it’s staffed between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Help is available at that number for filling out the form; but, a valid email address is still needed for an appointment.

Many senior citizens do not have an email address or even understand the concept. This is where the help is needed — and if you know someone struggling with this, you can step up and be a hero by offering the use of your email, which is how they’ll be notified of an appointment.

Obviously, there’s a big need for heroes here. We hear it in the voices of people who call us every day. Following are excerpts from two voice messages left on the editor’s phone this week:

“I’m 85 and was born and reared here in Chico. I spent all day yesterday trying to find out where my husband, who is also 85, and I can get a shot. Our doctor’s offices are not giving them. I spent all day yesterday, from 7:30 in the morning trying to find out and I finally gave up at 9 o’clock last night.”

Another said “I’m confused as to who to call and what to do to make an appointment to get my shot. … I’m 87 and I’m not real good on the computer. Is there somebody I can call?”

Those are two voices out of thousands.

When we’ve spoken with people in this situation, they’ve all told us the same thing: “I need a phone number where somebody will answer, or I need to know where I can walk in to talk with somebody who will help me.”

Those don’t seem like unreasonable requests to us, and it’s sad that this hasn’t been made a priority. In an age where our government is talking about how to spend trillions of dollars for pandemic relief, and sending billions around the globe to anyone who seems to ask, it is stunning to realize the needs of our most-vulnerable citizens are not being met, regardless of how loudly those voices call for help. Instead, they’re told to log on, go to a certain website and fill out an online form for an appointment.

Let us translate that final sentence for those who, through no fault of their own, didn’t understand a single word of it: Sink or swim.

Don’t let our seniors drown. If you know somebody who needs your help, be a hero.