Links to ‘viral’ vaccine appointments are a big deal and Dallas should have seen it coming

The City of Dallas fiasco at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center on Saturday – with cars stretched for blocks in an endless row and older residents reportedly forced to relieve themselves by the side of the road – is an Aesop fable for the COVID-19 era.

Just a few weeks ago, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson rebuked Dallas County officials – the city’s public health partners – for the messy rollout of the Fair Park vaccination center. The county had suddenly admitted walk-ups over the age of 75 after canceling hundreds of unauthorized appointments booked through an unsecured registration link. Johnson was outraged and wanted us to know.

“It’s unclear how or why that kind of outage was possible and why the county had no safeguards for it,” Johnson wrote on January 17.

Still, the same thing happened under his wing when he managed the city’s first vaccination distribution. City officials sent appointment invites to 10,000 people for 5,000 doses, in anticipation of no-shows and turndowns. Instead, the invite link was, unsurprisingly, widely shared, despite a useless warning that it shouldn’t be. As a result, 17,000 desperate souls eager to be vaccinated clicked on it.

The loophole added to the chaos at the convention center on Saturday, when many seniors sat in cars for hours and at least one man said he needed to relieve himself on the street.

On Monday, Johnson found himself having to apologize to a slew of reporters. We take no pleasure in his troubles, but perhaps a dose of humility will inspire better leadership from a mayor who often chooses antagonism or rivalry with fellow leaders when this crisis requires our leaders to work together in every possible way.

Rocky Vaz, the city’s emergency management coordinator, told us that city officials needed to act quickly as soon as the state announced that Dallas would be getting its own stock of vaccine. The city chose ready-to-use planning software used by other vaccine providers.

“We realized very quickly that there is no security, similar to what happened in the province, but we had no choice because we had to start vaccinating people,” he said.

The city underestimated how many people would share the link, Vaz said, and even when city staff frantically canceled unauthorized appointments, more appointments poured in.

The state is asking hub providers to use their full dose allocations every week, and we understand that the urgent task of vaccinating people requires improvisation. But the city’s willingness to risk the same planning mistakes as Dallas County is yet another blow to the crumbling of public confidence. Several people who thought they had confirmed appointments said they were confused and ‘broken’. A man whose 85-year-old mother was waiting in line in vain on Saturday told WFAA-TV (Channel 8) that his mother will stay home and not try again.

Since Johnson was urging the state to give Dallas his own vaccination assignment, he should have planned this. Sharing appointment links ‘virally’ is a common problem. Houston hospitals detailed the problem to reporters in early January. If officials in Dallas had called Houston Methodist Hospital, perhaps the city, like us, would have learned that on the first day of sending vaccine invitations via text message, the schedule link was shared 1,000 times in 15 minutes. Courtenay Bruce, system quality program director, told us how Houston Methodist used technological maneuvers and additional language to make the problem “almost non-existent.”

Recalled Monday of his criticism of the county, Johnson told reporters that the city was up and running shortly, although the county, as the public health authority, had “almost a year” to plan a vaccine. We had hoped to hear a strong promise to work with the city’s partners to restore public confidence.

Still, we are pleased that the city is partnering with Methodist Health System for the next round of vaccinations. Showing the humility to ask for help is the moral of this story.