{"id":34033,"date":"2021-05-20T15:06:21","date_gmt":"2021-05-20T20:06:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=34033"},"modified":"2021-06-11T13:57:44","modified_gmt":"2021-06-11T18:57:44","slug":"history-in-the-making-thousands-of-volunteers-turn-out-for-oklahomas-covid-19-vaccine-effort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2021\/05\/20\/history-in-the-making-thousands-of-volunteers-turn-out-for-oklahomas-covid-19-vaccine-effort\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;History in the making:&#8221; Thousands of volunteers turn out for Oklahoma&#8217;s COVID-19 vaccine effort"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 100%; height: 170px; margin-bottom: 20px; border-radius: 10px; overflow:hidden;\"><iframe style=\"width: 100%; height: 170px;\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\" seamless src=\"https:\/\/player.captivate.fm\/episode\/144abcd5-ec12-4f81-bba4-7fd150472aed\"><\/iframe><\/div><p>Vaccines on a shelf won\u2019t usher the end of a pandemic, and getting them into arms takes work.<\/p><p>Oklahoma has administered nearly 3 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine. Like all other states, it has done so free of charge to residents. That is possible largely because thousands of volunteers pitched into the effort.<\/p><p>Diana Schaeffer retired as a public health nurse in October, as case counts began surging. She knew first-hand how exhausting the pandemic response would be for health department workers across the state; she was chief of nursing at the State Department of Health for 14 years.<\/p><p>\u201cWhen the vaccines come out, I see this is hope \u2014 a lifeline, so to speak. And I thought, \u2018I&#8217;ve got to do something to help.\u2019\u201d<\/p><p>She worked with the Oklahoma City-County health department to start administering shots. She said that it\u2019s rare \u2014 in volunteering or in any line of work \u2014 to immediately see the difference you\u2019re getting to make.<\/p><p>\u201cIt was also interesting to see how relieved they were after they got that shot, even though, yes, we had the jokes of, \u2018When will this chip activate?\u2019 and all the other nonsense, you know,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I&#8217;d play along with them. I said, Oh, \u2018It&#8217;ll be in about three or four hours.\u2019 I said, \u2018Then, we\u2019ll be able to track you.\u2019 But a lot of them were relieved.\u201d<\/p><p>Other volunteers went through the Medical Reserve Corps, a national initiative. Dominique Baradaran is Oklahoma County\u2019s Medical Reserve Corps volunteer and planning coordinator.<\/p><p>\u201cThe Medical Reserve Corps was formed after 9\/11 in response to 9\/11,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was to basically have a volunteer base of people that are credentialed and background checked so that if something happened, you know, we can call upon these individuals and we know that they&#8217;re medically trained.\u201d<\/p><p>The program operates statewide in Oklahoma, and has been around for a little under a decade. It usually activates after natural disasters, or serves public health initiatives like flu shots or the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon.<\/p><p>The state rolled out Points of Dispensing Sites, or PODS, this winter, serving only a few hundred people at a time. In the early stages, only health care workers qualified. As more residents eligibility broadened, the clinics began catering to thousands of people a day. Baradaran says volunteers were critical.<\/p><p>&#8220;We literally could not do our PODS without them,&#8221; she said. &#8220;We just don&#8217;t have the manpower to do it.&#8221;<\/p><p>She says that registration shot up in the pandemic\u2019s wake.<\/p><p>\u201cIn Oklahoma County, we have a little over 3,900 volunteers,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd that&#8217;s just Oklahoma County. Statewide, we have about 9,000 volunteers that are registered. But before COVID \u2014 or before the vaccination PODS more media attention \u2014 I probably had about two thousand volunteers.\u201d<\/p><p>One of the existing volunteers, who started just before the pandemic was retired Tulsa dermatologist, Dr. Douglas Vaughn.<\/p><p>\u201cOf course, I had no idea it would be pandemic related at that time, but I thought anywhere they needed some help, you know, I might be able to spend a few days with them,\u201d he said. \u201cI had some experience with volunteering during the flood over in the Sand Springs Town and Country neighborhood.\u201d<\/p><p>The corps recruits both health workers and non-health workers. Vaughn said that although he spent much of the time actually giving shots, duty called in a few different ways.<\/p><p>\u201cI even served as a bathroom monitor to make sure people didn&#8217;t have a problem getting in and out of the bathroom after they had an injection,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we did parking and we did crowd control and things. I mean, we didn&#8217;t come out with our stethoscope around our neck and the white coat on.\u201d<\/p><p>Tracey Zeeck was a non-medical volunteer in Oklahoma City. She said that desire to pitch in after something awful feels familiar.<\/p><p>\u201cIt had the same feeling after the bombing in Oklahoma City,\u201d she said. \u201cYou know, we just all kind of volunteered. We set up a store in the Myriad out of all the free stuff people delivered to Oklahoma, and we organized that into a little shop one day. And then one time we drove around the perimeter overnight handing out food with the Jewish Federation. Just different things that you do, like, \u2018There&#8217;s stuff that needs to be done. Let&#8217;s all go down and do it.\u2019\u201d<\/p><p>Each of the volunteers said something in the same vein: it was healing to see and feel hope for the first time in a long time.<\/p><p>Schaeffer said that after a year of isolating, the clinics offered a first opportunity to reconnect.<br \/>\n\u201cYou\u2019re up close and personal with these people,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd this is at a time when you mask and keep six feet away. They&#8217;re sitting right next to me in my face, which they have to be. And that&#8217;s the closest I had been to strangers in quite a while, one right after the other. And they walk away from my little station with a vaccine in their arm and they\u2019re probably going to be OK. Whereas maybe otherwise they wouldn&#8217;t.\u201d<br \/>\nVaughn said the excitement was palpable.<\/p><p>\u201cI think the enthusiasm of some of the patients \u2014 wanting to take selfies with the vaccinator and things like that \u2014 just showed them how joyous many people were to finally see some hope in such a dire situation,\u201d he said. &#8220;And it was just an honor to be part of that history making, in my opinion.&#8221;<\/p><p>Zeeck said that after a harrowing year when it seemed no one could get on the same page, volunteering at the clinics ushered in a needed sense of community.<\/p><p>\u201cBeing in a place where you&#8217;re seeing every race and every religion and every income level and every part of the city, and they&#8217;re all together and they&#8217;re all smiling in line, waiting to get this wonderful thing that&#8217;s going to get them back on their feet or getting back to work or getting back to health or whatever that the thing was for them,\u201d she said. \u201cEveryone shared a common hope and it made me feel so good to participate in that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vaccines on a shelf won\u2019t usher the end of a pandemic, and getting them into arms takes work.Oklahoma has administered nearly 3 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine. Like all other states, it has done so free of charge to residents. That is possible largely because thousands of volunteers pitched into the effort.Diana Schaeffer retired as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":213,"featured_media":34034,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34033"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34033"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34075,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34033\/revisions\/34075"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}