Rant #2,974: World Shut Your Mouth

Yes, I overslept again today, but today, at least, you really have to excuse me for doing so, because I have so much to weigh on my brain today that I guess it made me sleep the night away.
 
You see, I have to reconcile utter stupidity with the reality of the situation at hand, and once you try to do that, you have a weight on your brain that is too heavy for anyone to get their arms around.
 
As you know from a post last week, my wife was having immense trouble with our own personal doctor’s office, who were unwilling/unable/too inept to ensure that the information that they had related to her COVID-19 shots was entered into the state system correctly.
 
There was a chance that her name was spelled incorrectly, among other things, and they beat her around the bush as she tried to get them to make sure that everything was correct.
 
And since her information might not have been correctly entered, that led us to believe that our son’s information was not correctly entered as well.
 
My wife and I just happened to have a doctor’s appointment earlier this week, so we went, and we told the doctor everything that happened and had not happened, and that my wife was put through the ringer trying to find all of this out.
 
He apologized, said he would speak with this staff about their behavior, and we went about our examinations.
 
He then located and brought into the room we were in the office manager—the elusive person who my wife sought to speak with, and the person who enters in all of this information on the New York State database—to speak with us.
 
She also apologized, and then looked up my wife and son’s information—
 
And we were correct—there was something wrong about it, but that is where the story gets so convoluted that it put me to sleep today well beyond my normal wakeup time.
 
Upon further review, while most of the information on the two of them was entered in correctly, there was one major discrepancy with my wife, and two with my son.
 
One of them was the exact same discrepancy.
 
The one that was different was that on my son’s card, it does not include his middle initial, but in the database, it does.
 
This all sounds minor, but it is not accurate at all, and if some governmental body or some other entity needed to cross-check his name, it would not be able to do so correctly.
 
That is bad enough, but the other discrepancy, the one that they shared, is even worse—making the state’s database completely incorrect and making the two entries … well… wrong.
 
We live in Nassau County, and we live in the exact same town as the doctor’s office is in—the same town, the same zip code, and the same county.
 
However, rather than have the correct county—Nassau—listed as part of their information, my wife and son have the neighboring county—Suffolk—listed as the county on their entries.
 
This is just plain wrong, and goes against any other piece of documentation they might have to prove who they are and where they live.
 
After our doctor also showed bemusement at this, we questioned the office manager, who said to us that the information, was, in fact correct.
 
“How can it be correct if we both live in Nassau County and got our shots in Nassau County?” my wife asked.
 
“No, I understand that, but it is still correct,” the office manager said.
 
“How can it be correct?” I asked. “Both my wife and son and this office where they got the shots are in Nassau County.”
 
“No, you don’t understand,” the office manager replied.
 
And then, we were hit with this—
 
“This practice has four offices, one here, two elsewhere in Nassau County, but our main office is in Bay Shore, which is in Suffolk County, so we have to go by where our main office is, and that is in Suffolk County, so that it why your two entries have Suffolk County listed as the county.”
 
“But that’s just plain wrong,” I said. We live in Nassau County, and my wife and my son got their shots in Nassau County. That throws the state’s entire database off, and it simply isn’t correct.”
 
“That is how it is,” the office manager said, and that was that.
 
So now we know that even though we live in Nassau County and this doctor’s office is in Nassau County, according ot New York State, my wife and son both live in Suffolk County and the two of them received their shots in Suffolk County.
 
This is bad enough, but it makes any information and statistics culled from that database null and void … because you can bet that my wife and son weren’t the only people to be “mis-countyed,” so to speak, and how many other doctor’s offices do this nonsense like ours does?

And again, it goes against any documentation we have as to their identities, where they live, etc.

And you wonder why people don't believe a word when we are told about anything having to do with the pandemic!

I guess we could contact the state health department about this, but like any other governmental agency, that is akin the calling the President of the United States to set upon a one-on-one meeting.

 
And you wonder why I overslept today!
 
This is a bizarro world for sure, and if you needed any proof of that, I think I just provided that to you.