Welcome, everybody, to vaccine roulette, a crazy, new game that requires great endurance, an epic tolerance for failure and, above all, luck.

Maybe you’ll be lucky enough to get stuck in a snowstorm near a carload of health care workers who happen to be carrying a few doses of the COVID-19 vaccine that’s set to expire and needs to be used ASAP. That’s how a few people in Oregon scored their shot the other day.

Or maybe after your vain attempts to sign up for a vaccine at those big pharmacy conglomerates, you’ll be the surprise winner of a hospital’s vaccine lottery. A couple of Chicago people I know have scored that way.

Or maybe you’ll be lucky enough to have a friend who discovers through other friends that a different Chicago hospital is opening vaccine appointments to non-patients. Maybe, if you hurry, you can call and, after half an hour on hold, get an appointment for a shot in March.

That’s how I, as a member of vaccine group 1b, just got my appointment at Rush University Medical Center, after hours of losing the virus roulette game on assorted websites. I made the appointment gratefully, but painfully aware of how many people are still stuck.

To be fair: It’s important to acknowledge that getting the vaccine to millions of Americans is a vast, daunting operation. A certain amount of confusion is inevitable. Patience is necessary.

But finding a vaccine appointment is testing the patience of saints. Almost everyone I know has a story by now.

Try early in the morning, someone says. No, try late at night. No, try on Fridays. No, Mondays work best.

In virus roulette, there are no obvious, fixed rules, and even the tech savvy are stymied.

Pamela Halloran, who lives in Chicago’s western suburbs, has been trying to get a vaccine for her 87-year-old mother, who has dementia. The futility, she says, reminds her of the time she tried to get tickets to the Dave Matthews Band for her son. And in the face of constant futility, she has decided to calm down.

“Why stress?” she says. “We’ve come this far.”

That’s the healthiest way to play virus roulette. Remember how far we’ve come in this pandemic, how much stress we’ve endured. The vaccine is getting closer for all of us. With some luck, its distribution will become less of a gamble.

In the meantime, we can keep washing our hands, wearing our masks, keeping our distance and crossing our fingers.

Mary Schmich is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune and winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for commentary.