Elderly find getting vaccine harder than getting Hamilton tickets

For many older Americans - and the adult children who look after them - securing an appointment to get the COVID-19 vaccine has been anything but easy.

From confusing registration websites and vaccine shortages, to contradictory information from the government and longshot lotteries, they fear it could be months before they are inoculated.

Conway G.

Gittens reports

(SOT) TIMOTHY CALLAHAN, TRYING TO GET VACCINE FOR 88-YEAR-OLD MOTHER, SAYING: "I call it an impossible maze." (SOT) NAOMI BARRY-PEREZ, TRYING TO GET VACCINE FOR 75-YEAR-OLD MOTHER, SAYING: "It's just been really haphazard." (SOT) KATIE CALLAHAN DURCAN, TRYING TO GET VACCINE FOR 88-YEAR-OLD MOTHER, SAYING: "It just shouldn't be this hard." Timothy Callahan and his sister Katie Callahan Durcan have learned that just because their 88-year-old mother is one of America's elderly at the front of the line for the COVID-19 vaccine, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy for her to get it.

Family members across the country are finding the process of getting their elderly loved ones signed up too complex due to a patchwork of state-by-state, city-by-city protocols.

It's been so difficult to get an appointment that some, like Naomi Barry-Perez, who's trying to get her 75-year-old mother vaccinated, are comparing it to scoring a hard-to-get ticket for the Broadway smash “Hamilton” before the health crisis forced it to go dark.

"Couldn't find the right button until about 6:05, and at that point I was number 13,000 in line - so five minutes after it opened.

And I thought to myself, this is worse than [getting tickets to] 'Hamilton!'" (LAUGHS) But not everyone sees the humor in it all.

With the U.S. death toll topping 440,000 in the U.S. and inoculation bottlenecks popping up across the country, some are left to worry as they scramble to get their parents a vaccination spot.

(SOT) KATIE CALLAHAN DURCAN, TRYING TO GET VACCINE FOR 88-YEAR-OLD MOTHER, SAYING: "Soonest appointment I could get for her was April 10th in Binghamton, New York, which is a four hour drive." In Washington, D.C., volunteers at Foggy Bottom West End Village help by driving the elderly to their vaccination appointments, but as Executive Director Denise Snyder has learned - an appointment isn’t always an appointment.

"That site started sending out messages to the folks who'd signed up saying, we don't have as many doses as we thought we did, so we have to cancel your appointment." Despite the setbacks, 79-year-old Janet Farbstein is heading in for her second vaccination appointment... and looking forward to life getting back to normal...one day soon.