Show HN: Open Covid-19 Vaccine Appointments | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Open Covid-19 Vaccine Appointments

getmyvaccine.org

44 pointsekatzenstein41 comments

Probably not a surprise, but this likely violates Walgreens ToS:

> nor will you use or exploit the Services in any way other than as expressly permitted by these Terms; > .. > deploy or utilize any automated method of collecting content from our site, such as robots, crawlers, and scraping mechanisms

Look at all the open slots in moosup, ct: https://getmyvaccine.org/zips/02886

These slots may not get filled.

> Probably not a surprise, but this likely violates Walgreens ToS:

Does that matter though?

Scraping LinkedIn's website was against the Terms of Service but LinkedIn lost in court.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiQ_Labs_v._LinkedIn

I would personally err on the side of adhering to terms that a company asks. But although IANAL, it does seem likely that since the scraping is for the public good that even if this did go to court (unlikely), that the court would not rule in favor of Walgreens.

Walgreens sucks at scheduling vaccines, so we scraped it to make slot-filling easier.

Hey, this is awesome. Is there anyway to know which vaccine you’re getting scheduled for? For example, I’d rather get a Moderna vaccine than Pfizer due to the superior efficacy against strain variants.

In Delaware, Walgreens does Moderna. Not sure if Walgreens uses only Moderna nationwide. There would likely be more info on their site.

They appear to be using Pfizer in at least some locations in Illinois, FWIW.

Moderna vaccine than Pfizer due to the superior efficacy against strain variants

Is this known?

https://time.com/5933340/moderna-covid-19-vaccine-new-strain...

That doesn't compare them.

It’s what I’m using to make my own personal decision, as I need to get a vaccine regardless.

Okay, but you should probably be more careful how you describe the information. For instance, you could state that you want the Moderna vaccine because of what they've said about effectiveness against emerging strains.

It's likely that the antibodies produced in response to the Pfizer vaccine have similar cross reactivity as the Moderna vaccine (because they cause production of the same spike protein, which is what the immune system reacts to).

And of course, Pfizer is also studying the situation:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-works-a...

Noted.

This is great! Thanks for putting this together.

Thanks!

This is great. Just used it to book my appointment at a Walgreens across town. Thanks!

nice!

please double check to make sure that you're eligible in your state. for most states you have to be at least 65 and older if you're not an essential worker.

Yes, I reviewed the requirements in my state first before booking: https://www.walgreens.com/images/adaptive/findcare/covid19/V...

awesome!

I see that there are walgreens in my area, but when I do it by zip I am getting

"We couldn't find any Walgreens/Duane Reade immunization locations in your area."

I'm assuming that means the vaccine isn't happening there? I only ask because I'm making a script to hit your website every hour and shoot me a text if something becomes available. But nothing will ever be available because it's not a vaccine site, correct?

Just to add, I've tried like 90026 and a couple other zips that have walgeens, but I'm getting the same result as above.

replied in the comment above. thanks for the note

It's all state-by-state, store-by-store. It's possible that those walgreens are not administering vaccines yet, or the state hasn't rolled out a program with walgreens.

Also, the app was built and launched in the last few days, so if you can confirm that those walgreens are indeed offering vaccines, and show up when going through the registration process on the website, please let me know and I'll look into it.

In don’t know your zip but I’m deeply concerned that my neighborhood which is predominantly more vulnerable has no sites available.

Zip code is a bit too granular. You should add a distance radius, or something broader like a county. I would gladly travel 50+ miles to get a vaccination.

Good point...thought about doing a typeahead for nearer zip codes if the zip code searched doesn't show up results. Counties are interesting idea, but the bucketing needs to be simplified to lat/lng for data ingestion, which is why zip codes were chosen, arguably the most intuitive thing that's "close enough" to a lat/lng coord.

Dunno what search backend you’re using, but if it’s ElasticSearch this can be done pretty quickly with a Gaussian decay filter. That takes in lat/lng directly, and adjusts the ordering of results.

That’d also give the nifty feature of finding the closest available vaccine, even if it’s a hundred miles away (not a walk in the park, but I’d drive that far personally)

Cool idea, thanks for the tip.

Sweet. I was starting to put one together myself as there is an immense need. I felt it as a first responder looking for a vaccine slot. Finally got one (vaccine), but it wasn’t easy. So many different providers. So much scraping.

All the best, thanks for doing this.

Absolutely, and thanks for the kind words. Had to setup nearly all of this scraping just to get a vaccine slot for a family member. Building the site was almost trivial after that.

Timely: https://apple.news/AAoRa9PkARZyCjIe6FE8uGQ

Drop me an email? Would love to catch up / collab. Add Netscape.net to my username.

will do cheers

Sent you a response (from a different email.) :)

If you get this to work with the Calvax. wbsite I will love you forever. Right now it takes several minutes PER VACCINATION LOCATION to check if they have appointments available and if) which vaccine they're using

can you send more details? not familiar with the Calvax process

For the county I've gone through the process with, the county periodically adds new links to the calvax website on their home page. Each link is a different day/location.

When you follow the link, you have to fill out your name, address, insurance, employment status, email, phone #, etc. Then you have to answer around 20 medical questions (some of the ones I remember: pregnant? Breastfeeding? Cancer? Had covid before? Allergies? Is this your 1st or 2nd dose? If 2nd, which vaccine did you have before?)

Then there's a confirmation page where you're supposed to verify the info you typed in (but if you take the time to actually verify you reduce the odds of getting an appointment)

Then there's a page where you scribble your signature with a mouse

If you gotten that far without getting booted out by the Cloud flare rate limiting or getting a Heroku error, you're finally allowed to see if the location has available appointments, and see if they are using the flavor of vaccine that you need.

Ouch, that sounds terrible. I took a look at the calvax page and didn't see any clinic links. Sorry you have to go through that nonsense

And at the final step it shows no appointments available even though the LA County link that takes you to the calvax link says there are appointments available.

Calvax doesn’t remember your info either. I have now answered the same questions about 10 times.

Calvax has no contact information to report the issue.

I tried to fill it out for both of my parents in different browser tabs and sometimes their info would get mixed up (janky session management?). Fun stuff, I hope you have more luck in the future with appointments

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