Procedure for Center Location Double Check
A person who has confirmed their vaccination site address on three separate platforms continues to check the address a fourth time the morning of the appointment.
Procedure for Center Location Double Check A Counterfactual Analysis of Address Verification Behavior
The Situation
A person has received a vaccine appointment confirmation. The confirmation contains an address. The person has looked up the address on a mapping application. The mapping application has confirmed the address exists and can be reached. The person has also asked a friend who has been to the same location whether the address is correct.
The address is correct.
What Would Have Happened Without the Double Check
The person would have arrived at the correct address. The appointment would have proceeded. The address was not going to change.
This is the counterfactual. It does not affect behavior.
Why the Check Happened
The appointment carries a significance that does not permit casual navigation behavior. Arriving at the wrong location is not a minor inconvenience in this context. It is a missed appointment during a period when appointments are difficult to obtain. The stakes have elevated a routine act into a verification procedure.
The verification procedure is now, technically, a procedure.
Consequence One
The person checks the address again the morning of the appointment. This check is the fourth. It confirms the same address as the previous three checks. The address has not changed. The address was not at risk of changing. The person did not believe it would change when they checked.
They checked anyway.
Consequence Two
The fourth check reveals that the mapping application estimates a travel time that is two minutes longer than the previous estimate, due to traffic conditions that developed overnight. The person recalculates their departure time. They leave earlier than originally planned.
This is the only outcome of the fourth check that had any practical effect. The address was not the new information. The traffic was.
Consequence Three
The person arrives eleven minutes early. They wait outside. They are not the only person waiting. Several people are waiting. They are all early. The center is not yet open.
The group stands in a configuration that is clearly a line but has not been formally announced as one.
The Absurd Rule
Confirmation does not reduce checking. It extends the conditions under which checking feels appropriate. Having confirmed an address makes you the kind of person who checks addresses, which means you check addresses at the next available opportunity.
The procedure is self-perpetuating.
The Contradiction
The double check procedure exists to reduce uncertainty. The check cannot reduce uncertainty below a threshold established by the stakes of the appointment. The stakes create a floor. No number of successful checks reaches below the floor.
This is not a criticism of the person performing the check. It is a description of how uncertainty behaves when something matters.