#NY really makes you jump through hoops to get COVID vaccine

Remember when you tried to score two orchestra seats to “Hamilton” and gave up after seeing the first availability was six months out? Well, those days of getting shut out of New York’s hottest ticket are back — that is, if you’re vying for a COVID-19 vaccine.

On Jan. 11, New York started rolling out stocks of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to various groups, including grocery workers, first responders, state troopers, transit employees, court officers, interventionist therapists and those like me who are over 65.

All sorts of interactive Web sites, portals, dashboards, locators and hot lines have been set up by everyone from government agencies to pharmacies and hospitals, ostensibly to allow us eligibles to make our own ­appointments. If the pandemic hasn’t yet driven you insane, navigating any of these pathways to nowhere should do the job.

Using a site hosted by Ryan Health, I was able to self-schedule a first-dose vaccine at a new facility in Washington Heights five miles from my Upper West Side apartment. How lucky! A text instantly arrived confirming my appointment, even sharing the name of the doctor who would inject me. I had to beg off an afternoon’s load of work but knew there was no substitute for immunity.

When I arrived at the empty clinic, the gatekeeper attendants told me they had run out of vaccine, then admitted they were only administering tests and never had the vaccine in the first place. They advised me to try a nearby pharmacy. The sketchy drugstore proprietor chortled through his mask and told me the Ryan site was misinformed. How could an algorithm be so cruel?

Don’t expect to reach vaccine givers by phone, unless you enjoy leaving automated call-back messages that are never returned.

And online, the required prompts, ­asterisks and confusing drop-down menus will lead to bouts of screaming: Are you a migrant worker? A seasonal worker? Do you have your verification code? Your password? What question did you not answer that is repeatedly preventing you from proceeding to the next page — the one about living in congregate housing? Or the one about which sex you were ­“assigned at birth”?

Even though I pay royally for health insurance, I quickly learned it’s best to declare having no insurance; the vaccines are free, and you’ll just have to fill in precise data about your policy ID and type of coverage. Skipping that step will save critical minutes you could be using to refresh your application for the 20th time.

New York’s Department of Health showed open appointments at the Javits Center. I marched through the multipart questionnaire, answering no after no as to whether I was a funeral director or coroner, or worked with bodily fluids, or ever had an allergic reaction to a prior vaccine. The questions kept coming, but I finally certified that all my responses were true and was granted entrance to the prized appointment page, where, of course, there were no time slots through February.

If someone like me, accustomed to online banking and patient portals, found navigating all these sites and chasing after elusive, perhaps phantom, appointments a daunting exercise, imagine the frustration of thousands of qualifying New Yorkers who haven’t been able to start the process, or who understandably give up after the first or even fifth run through the system.

Finally, my wife discovered that more slots open up immediately after midnight, as locations receive new allotments for the following days. That’s how we ultimately secured an appointment at the Wadleigh High School in Harlem.

When I arrived, the proctors ­informed everyone that the system wasn’t yet functioning. “We repeat, no one has been inoculated!” they announced, moving through the queue, which stretched around the block and beyond. Who knew that simply waiting my turn for the vaccine would be the most stressed I’d been since the pandemic began?

Eventually, I got the blessed shot. I pray I have the fortitude to make it through the second dose.

Congress is considering granting health providers and others extra liability protection from civil litigation over delays and snafus in vaccine deployment. That seems fair, in light of the ­extraordinary logistical challenges involved in mounting a vaccination campaign on such a rapid time table. I’m not looking to sue anyone for the ringer I was put through for throwing away my shot. But pistols at 20 paces sounds tempting.

Allan Ripp runs a press-relations firm in New York.