My experience trying to get a monkey pox vaccination as a gay man in Houston

So given that the WHO and CDC are all highly encouraging men who have sex with other men to get the monkey pox vaccine, I contacted the Houston Health Department. After a long wait, I finally spoke with someone who told me that since I live in Spring, I would have to call Harris County’s Health Department instead. So I call Harris County’s Health Department and was told that even though I’m part of the high risk population that is approved to get the vaccine, because my part of Spring is just inside Montgomery County, they cannot give me a vaccine and tell me that I must contact Montgomery County’s health department.

I call and leave a voicemail for the Montgomery County Health Department’s epidemiologist and wait 2 hours for a call back. He then informs me that they are only giving their vaccines out to people who have been with someone who already tested positive, unlike Harris County.

I then get a call back from the Houston Health Department and they leave a voicemail asking me to call them back. So I do and wait another hour on hold. I am then told yet again that I must call Harris County because even though Spring belongs to Houston, it’s not Houston Houston. I explain the whole ordeal to the lady I spoke with and she apologized but said there wasn’t anything she could do since Spring isn’t Houston Houston.

It’s amazing to me that one of the largest metros in the country had such a disjointed approach to treating this epidemic as it is starting and that they think invisible County lines are going to stop it’s spread if they aren’t working in lockstep.