Vaccinetime Twitter Account, Which Helped Many Find Appointments In Mass., Shuts Down For Good
BOSTON (CBS) -- By day, he's a software developer at Ginkgo Bioworks. By night, Dan Cahoon was helping countless people in Massachusetts get vaccinated after seeing his friends and family struggle to find appointments.
"I thought it would be better if instead something could tell them that there's an appointment available right when it becomes available, and then they don't have to spend all that time just clicking and refreshing," said Cahoon.
So the Harvard alum created the Vaccinetime Twitter account to do just that, quickly gaining popularity after launching in February.
"At the maximum, there were 91,000 followers. And so hopefully, at least some of them were helped," said Cahoon.
That included Gregory Wong of Worcester, who said, "once I found that account on Twitter, after that, I was able to book 20-plus high-risk relatives pretty much with ease."
And Robin LeWinter of Brookline.
"I would not have been able to help so many people without his site. I know I wouldn't have. And he didn't have to do it. And it was just a really kind community service," said LeWinter.
For Cahoon, he realized over time how much of an impact it was having.
"It was drawing off of expertise I already had. And then after doing it for a little bit, I thought, 'Oh, now there's lots of people following, I can really make a big difference here if I continue pushing it and continuing making it better,'" said Cahoon.
On Wednesday night, the final tweet from Vaccinetime explains that vaccines are readily available in the state and the account is no longer needed.
"To me, [the last tweet] really signals that we're getting to the end of this," said Cahoon. And we can hopefully get back to normal pretty soon."
