Health – True Wind Technology https://www.truewindtechnology.com Not Just Another WordPress Website Wed, 12 May 2021 14:13:15 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8 https://www.truewindtechnology.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/cropped-twtNiceLogo-1-32x32.png Health – True Wind Technology https://www.truewindtechnology.com 32 32 Vaccine Appointment Searching with Puppeteer and Twilio https://www.truewindtechnology.com/vaccine-appointment-searching-with-puppeteer-and-twilio/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=vaccine-appointment-searching-with-puppeteer-and-twilio Wed, 12 May 2021 14:01:56 +0000 https://www.truewindtechnology.com/?p=1785 Read More

]]> Earlier this Spring (2021), a friend of mine involved in K-12 education wanted to get his first vaccination appointment, and found himself repeatedly checking the UNC health care system's page to see a notice that said that no appointments were available yet. He was in the middle of teaching himself Python, so he wrote a simple scraper that checked that page every 5 minutes and - when the notice was no longer there - blasted Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" through his house to let him know to run up and snag an appointment.

Not to be outdone, I decided to write something similar using Node.js: Using Puppeteer to scrape the site, I checked this page regularly, and if vaccination appointments were available, it would dig deeper, looking at available appointment sites and comparing their addresses to my location to see what the Google API said the driving distance was. If it was within a certain threshold (for example 1 hour), it would use the Twilio API to send me a text message with a direct link to the registration page. Below is the repository containing the code. Fortunately this is no longer necessary in North Carolina: anyone can get vaccinated at this point, and the tool is no longer useful.

https://github.com/jetweedy/vaxapp

]]> How to Get Vaccinated in NC https://www.truewindtechnology.com/get-vaccinated-nc/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=get-vaccinated-nc Fri, 12 Mar 2021 14:10:02 +0000 https://www.truewindtechnology.com/?p=1717 Read More

]]> Figure out which Group you're in:

https://findmygroup.nc.gov/

Sign up for the Duke waiting list:

https://www.dukehealth.org/covid-19-update/join-waiting-list

They will contact you with openings. This is how I got a Jannsen (Johnson and Johnson) vaccine.

Check the UNC Appointments Regularly:

https://www.unchealthcare.org/coronavirus/vaccines/phase-1b-covid-19-vaccine/

There will often be a message on there staying "We’re very sorry, but all vaccine appointments have been scheduled", but when there's not, you answer a brief questionnaire and then see which vaccines are available and where. The slots get snatched up quickly, and sometimes they're hours away.

Check Walgreens Regularly:

https://www.walgreens.com/findcare/vaccination/covid-19/location-screening

They do it by zip code, so you might have to enter a number of zip codes before you find something near you. If you're willing to drive a ways, try a variety of nearby codes.

A Note on the Experience

Other people’s experiences may differ, but I was not grilled on my “eligibility” for Phase 3b. I just filled out the answers to the survey when trying to find an appointment online, and then when I got to the appointment, all they did was confirm my identity (photo ID, name, birthday, allergies) and give me some general info on the vaccine before they jabbed me. In general, don’t feel “afraid” to make an appointment. If you answer the questions reasonably, step through and get your appointment, you’re not going to get in “trouble” for signing up in the wrong phase. It’s just a way of helping people line up in an orderly fashion, not a punitive system that will be audited and scrutinized. Read the questions, try to be honest about your situation, and get it as soon as you can!

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