Flu Shot Appointment Rant

[Carolyn Marie]

I thought I've seen it all in terms of stupid bureaucracy,  but today I discovered a new level of ridiculous nonsense from the health care powers-that-be.  It involves my annual flu shot.  No, not the Covid-19 stuff, just the regular old annual flu jab.

 

I think I've avoided this over the years b/c I usually get my jab at my medical clinic.  But they urged me to get it at the pharmacy next door, Rite Aid in this case.  So I went on the web site to schedule it.  Of course there was a form to fill out.  Got through most of it with no problems.  But then I got to the personal info.  There in electronic black and white, it asked me in a drop down menu to state my "assigned sex at birth."  There were two choices, male and female.  No "declined to state," no "other" choice, nada.  There was a tiny question mark thingy so I clicked on that, and it said that the information was required by the CDC.  No other explanation.  No option.  Either I completed the question, or no flu shot.

 

Que the obligatory storm of vulgarity at my computer screen.  Obviously this requirement would out me to the pharmacy staff and anyone else with access to the form. Or I could just lie on the form. Not a good set of choices.

 

I ranted on Twitter with copies to the CDC.gov and RiteAid.com.  I don't expect any answers, but perhaps if it's retweeted enough times I'll get someone's attention.  Whoever thought this up didn't think it through.  That person(s) has another think coming.  Find me a damned good reason, or get rid of that question.  If "female" is good enough for my driver's license and my passport and Social Security, it ought to be good enough for the CDC.

 

Thanks for reading.  Rant over.

 

Carolyn Marie

 

 

 

 

[VickySGV]

In two days I have an Optometry appointment at my HMO's campus, and the Flu Shot Crew will be guarding the door to the Eye Doctors office and will grab me and jab me, but I hear your frustration big time.  My Birth Certificate now says I was assigned female at birth though, tough binary bytes to them.

[MirandaB]

Are there different flu shots for each assigned gender? 

[Jani]

I went the same electronic route this year rather than just walk in.  I saw that question and just answered Female.  I don't pretend to understand the reason for the question.  To me it was a "move on, nothing to see here" moment.

 

Jani

[VickySGV]

5 hours ago, RhondaS said:

Are there different flu shots for each assigned gender? 

 

As a retired government employee I see @Carolyn Marie's point all too well that this is a bureaucratic statistics thing that our citizenry via elected officials watchdogs government agencies with.  Statistics do not lie until a Politician gets their hands on the numbers. To my enduring shame I actually helped create a few statistics gathering systems which are uniform and unyielding for a good reason.

 

I made the mistake of making one system flexible in its first draft and it became a non-statistical monster in the first 10 days.  I had given 5 statements of outcomes of a public contact, and included a 6th that was for extremely special circumstances that had needed a short description.  Almost nobody used the five general outcome choices, and the ones using the 6th OTHER category wrote descriptions that exceeded the space in the program so they never really described what the outcome had been, and they were mad that they could not tell the story their way, and that we (I was a manager at the time) were looking over their backs and not validating their existence.  When I eliminated the "other" category the next month it turned out the five choices to check off were the ones I could use for statistical purposes.  I retired 10 years ago, and the system is still working. 

 

Happily, I did not have to put a check box for "gender" back then, but  CDC is medical stats that have not caught up with the times and the gender spectrum is beyond its computers now, but you have to choose the box or you cannot get out of the system which is the nature of computers and programmers.  . 

[Carolyn Marie]

I just imagine a CDC clerk somewhere tallying how many men get the shot vs. how many women.  Why that matters I couldn't guess.  But no one thought about "us," and what the question might mean to "us," when they included the mandate.  They need to think it through, and whether the tallying is worth it.

 

Carolyn Marie

[Astrid]

 

1 hour ago, VickySGV said:

...  CDC is medical stats that have not caught up with the times

 

The CDC has not caught up with the times, big time.  I had hopes that several of these issues would begin to be addressed, and that an administrator who can make changes would be appointed, but I'm not seeing it.  For me, these issues include:

• Understanding the difference between Gender, Attraction, and Sex. Hello?  Doctors and healthcare administrators should at least have read a bit on this important topic, but many clearly haven't.
• Removing (rather than expanding) choices in most forms that ask for your "Sex:".  Don't assume that Sex and Gender are the same (see above point) and binary, thereby forcing us into uncomfortable choices.  
• Changing databases such that "Sex", if present, is always an optional field, not a required field.  Yes, I understand that changing database schemas can be difficult and introduce problems.  But frankly, this country's databases, which are full of millions of entries about people's sex, are inaccurate and untrustworthy about this particular "statistic" already. So, reports about statistical differences between men and women are, as much as many people might think are straightforward, not as clear-cut as that -- and totally omit how factors like being trans or non-binary may or may not correlate with the findings. And these reports are used as the basis for important decisions all the time.

As @Carolyn Marie said, "rant over" -- but the struggle will continue.  It may take decades, but sometimes important things do.  

 

Astrid

[Heather Nicole]

2 hours ago, Astrid said:

Understanding the difference between Gender, Attraction, and Sex. Hello?  Doctors and healthcare administrators should at least have read a bit on this important topic, but many clearly haven't.

 

Around where I am, Cleveland Clinic's electronic system is impressively ahead of the curve on this. They have four separate items: Legal Sex, Sex Assigned At Birth, Gender Identity, and Sexual Orientation. Each of those has a small variety of options, most of them including an "other" and/or "choose not to say". I guess it makes sense they should be good about that, since they do have a decicated LGBT Health Center.

[April-Showers]

well, remember you are talking about an agency which seems to be leading this country right now with a doctor who changes his tune more times than an orchestra. an agency which tells us the covid virus did not come from a lab when there is ample proof that it did. so we have a virus that was created in a China lab AND we are wearing masks that are manufactured in....wait for it.........China. think about that coincidence. as my granddad used to say....you can't fix stupid. thank you.  

[Carolyn Marie]

 

1 hour ago, April-Showers said:

well, remember you are talking about an agency which seems to be leading this country right now with a doctor who changes his tune more times than an orchestra. an agency which tells us the covid virus did not come from a lab when there is ample proof that it did. so we have a virus that was created in a China lab AND we are wearing masks that are manufactured in....wait for it.........China. think about that coincidence. as my granddad used to say....you can't fix stupid. thank you.  

 

Last time I checked, this thread was not posted in the politics section.  Lets please keep politics out of it.  Thank you.

 

Carolyn Marie