COVID-Free At Last
Last Saturday I had my second dose of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine and after only about an hour’s worth of chills and slightly elevated temperature, I have been fit as a fiddle. The event of the vaccination, which I did in the idyllic burg of La Jolla was really a non-event. I parked in a nice parking structure, walked on serene pathways following big COVID Vaccination signs to a large and airy building where I was greeted by far too many support staff showing me my why and there to answer questions, and then I sat sown while one woman looked me up on the UCSD Health system while a young man gave me the injection just above the tattoo on my left shoulder. I literally didn’t feel a thing. Since my appointment in their system technically showed as a first dose, I had my CDC vaccination card with me and that overcame any hurdles of misinformation and I was allowed to go into the obligatory 15-minute waiting room to make sure I was not having any serious reaction to the injection. When that ended uneventfully, I simply walked out into the sunshine and down the garden path back to the parking garage, got into my Tesla X and silently exited to drive home in whisper quiet. I just wish that that could have been the same experience for 330 million other Americans, or perhaps 7.8 billion other human beings on the planet or, at very least, the 501,000 reported people in the U.S. who have now died in the last year from this monstrous virus and its related ill effects.
I will feel much more free of this demon virus once Kim gets her second Pfizer vaccine on Sunday and once each of my three children and two grandchildren get their turn at the needle. It is amazing to me how focused we have become about something so seemingly routine as a vaccination. I was too young to feel the national pain of polio when I was given the Salk Vaccine and then the Sabin-on-Sunday Vaccination. The Vaccination mark from my small pox vaccination was given to me when I was too young to remember. I have had other vaccinations, including the old single Shingles vaccination, but I now have both the new double Shingles Vaccination and a Tetanus booster vaccination on my schedule for the next several months in the healthcare system’s attempt to keep me well. The recent Washington Post piece about the history of pandemics helped to put this all into perspective. Graphically, the Coronavirus Pandemic now makes the hit parade of infamy in was that SARS and Swine Flu do not. And yet, it is not on a scale of HIV/AIDS, the Spanish Flu pandemic or 1918, Smallpox and the big one, the Plague (in all its iterations from 1520 to 1855).
Despite the relatively small “bubble” of the Coronavirus pandemic (so far), I think it is fair to say that this is only the second pandemic to visit the shores of the United States in its two-hundred-fifty years. We have a ways to go to reach the scale of the 1918 flu, but we have been spoiled as a modern nation into thinking that pandemics are things that can’t reach us the way others have suffered in the past. In the beginning of all of this last year people (especially Trump) were saying that it is no worse than the normal flu. Needless to say, we now know that to be very untrue with deaths from COVID exceeding 500,000 in a year versus a normal flu year of 30-40,000. What won’t be so very different is that once we have all been vaccinated, it is estimated that infection and hospitalization rates will still be very much like the ordinary flu. What that says is that we will NOT be totally free of this flu in the future, but with rates of infection and hospitalization being similar to the ordinary flu, that’s what it will effectively be…an ordinary flu. We will probably still get our annual flu shot with all the latest protective additions and perhaps even including Coronavirus, or perhaps a specific Coronavirus booster.
It is now being predicted that life may return to “normal” by mid-summer in that we may all, more or less, be vaccinated and thus be protected enough to resume gathering, hugging and traveling. But wait, will we really go on our way and ever be truly unchanged by this pandemic? I think not. We have been traumatized as a species and I suspect that we needed that to awaken us to the epidemiological reality of an 8 billion-person world with constantly changing viral spread and mutation. I read a National Geographic piece not long ago about virus and how they have always been with us and indeed are pretty much a necessary part of life. What we had perhaps forgotten was how ineffective modern science can be in certain circumstances and in the relatively short run (1-2 years being short-run in viral terms). We have, indeed, moved at warp speed to solve this viral problem and the determination and production of a viable and effective vaccine has been quite impactful, but look at how deadly this has all still been. And look at how relatively indiscriminate this has been. Our wealthier and “cleaner” lifestyles did not do much to protect us. That is the real indiscriminate part that shocked most of us. Plagues are for the less fortunate, right? Well maybe so in the Middle Ages, but not so much in modern times.
I can’t yet figure out whether I am the same or different from others in my thinking on what life going forward will be like. To begin with, I do not feel I have ever missed or will miss large mass gathering events and parties. I am one of those people who likes to go out once in a while for a meal out, but is not such a foodie that I have to taste the latest products of the chef de cuisine of the moment. I am, however, who wants to be able to see and hug friends and family with abandon and without regard to infection. If I was told I could never again go a stadium, I would say, good. If I was told I had to limit my restaurant-going to once a week, I would say, fine. If I was told I have to wear a mask when meeting with groups of people or strangers in public, I would say that’s less than convenient, but OK. If I was told that I can only take one international and one extended domestic travel per year, I would say that would suffice. But I gotta be able to see my kids, grandkids, friends and other family much more than we are able to do so now. I guess we all draw the lines where we feel we must.
I recognize that I am probably less gregarious than many. I am also more on the downslope of life than the upswing. I have spent a lifetime traveling and seeing the world, and while I have some wanderlust still left in me, I think I can address that Jones with only a partial lifting of the current pandemic-like constraints we are living within today. I guess this pandemic is a lot like a near-death experience. It makes you step back and reassess your priorities in life and sort out exactly what matters to you and what doesn’t. I feel like I know what I can live with and without. I do not understand people who insist on overlaying esoteric concepts of personal freedom over the personal rubric of needs and wants. I do not need to not wear a mask because it is my right not to. That’s just silly and selfish. I want to not have to wear a mask with friends and family and want the freedom and comfort (as in sense of safety) to take that route.
What I think I am ultimately saying is that I am willing to be a little free at last and do not need to be totally free at last. I wish others would find their own sense of these limits for the greater good. Balancing what is best for me and what is best for society at large is a responsibility I take seriously and hope that others will do so as well.