There is absolutely no better argument against the existence of vast, complicated government conspiracies… than the simple fact that it’s difficult to sometimes understand how government operates at all. Complicated conspiracies? Even the simple stuff gets completely mis-managed. .. and this isn’t based on slamming any particular party. It’s all of them. The governments of the future will no doubt find ways to disappoint us… but today, it’s the NDP.

A few hours after me posting my sincere wish that the Province of B.C not botch up the vaccine distribution any further… that they should have planned ahead, that they should know what’s coming, that there should be a complete, holistic deployment plan…

… the government posted that as of Wednesday, people aged 55 to 65 in Metro Vancouver can call their local pharmacy and book an appointment for an AstraZeneca shot. The one good thing was to see how much interest there was in it… but, boy… what a mess. First of all, people started calling in right away. Whether it’s toilet paper or salt for icy roads, we Vancouverites seem to forget the rules with respect to following queues and limits. Pharmacies were flooded with calls, and many of them were not prepared. At all. Many were not prepared to start booking appointments, and accused the callers of using leaked info that’s not yet public… notwithstanding it was already proudly proclaimed on the government’s own website.

Many were incapable of booking appointments, and that shouldn’t have happened. But also, many *did* take appointments, and that shouldn’t have happened either… at least not until today. By the time Wednesday rolled around, all vaccination appointment slots we spoken for… all before even the first one should’ve been booked.

Needless to say, there were many upset people. I guess we’ve learned to expect busy signals from overloaded phone systems, but pulling out the rug from under people’s feet like that?

I remember waiting 12 hours in line for concert tickets… I was first in line. Ten seconds after tickets went on sale, I asked for 4 front-row-center tickets… and was told that the first 3 rows were all already sold out entirely. What a crock.

Actually, a better example… a 5km cross-country race back in grade 10 when I was in perhaps the best shape of my life and was looking forward to setting a personal best. There were a lot of people running, so we were told to stagger ourselves in likely groupings so as to not get in each other’s way… as much as possible, anyway. The elite runners at the front, those who were going to walk most of the way at the back, and so on.

So here we are, hundreds of us… with 500 yards of open road ahead, and then 3km of trails in the forest where you’re not easily passing anyone.

The started has his dinky little starter gun… “Ready! Set!” . The gun didn’t go off, but that didn’t stop half the crowd from starting to run. If he’d yelled “GO!” and the gun didn’t go off, maybe ok. But he didn’t. The was no start, and half the people, myself included, were waiting for a re-start. But there wasn’t one. He just waved his hands and said, “Just go! Go!” – and we’re all like “But that’s not fair, they’ve already…” and he’s like “Just Go!”

So there I was, stuck behind a wall of slower runners, my chances of running any sort of half-decent race completely shattered. What a crock.

Do it right. Or don’t do it at all. Or, as we all know, if you don’t do it right the first time, you’ll probably have to do it again the second or third time.

We do not have re-starts with this pandemic. There is no second or third show added where there will be plenty of tickets available… and we are at the mercy of our ticket distributor/race starter/provincial government to get this right.

Today… more than 1,000 new cases in the province… for the first time ever. Today… when the province went over 100,000 cases. Today… we need them to get it right.

So far, they seem to find innovative ways to get it wrong. What a crock.