Vaxxed Up
It’s that time of year again as we head into the Fourth Quarter. There are lots of things that start up at this time of year, but arguably the most important thing to pay attention to is that its time to update all our vaccinations. This year has been a little different than in the past. The last few years its been about getting that damn COVID vaccine and the booster as soon as its ready and available. We all went to great lengths to get at it wherever and however we could get it. Being over 65 I was considered a priority recipient, so I had less trouble than others. For example, Kim was not yet 65 so we had to use a friend of a friend and go up to a Los Angeles suburb and have her get a vaccination at somebody’s house like she was getting an illegal abortion or something. I had a friend who got nailed in the press for jumping ahead of the line by making political contributions of significance. Everybody was scrambling for vaccines and getting them as soon as they could get their hands on them. We all started our wondering if we should have Moderna, Pfizer or J&J. Then J&J fell out of bed statistically and we all wanted Moderna or Pfizer. It was like growing up between a Chevy and Ford feud with no easy resolution but plenty of opinions and occasional facts. When it got time for our first boosters we all succumbed to the debate about whether it was better to stay on brand or mix it up. I, for one, just took what I got and ended up with an opening salvo of Moderna with a chaser of Pfizer. The reports after the fact implied that it was lucky for me since that was thought to be the best way to go…who knows.
We all know some anti-vaxers, but their reasons undoubtedly varied. Some had some legitimate medical concerns. Some were into Eastern medicine and thought the whole concept of vaccinations was simply too non-organic to be good for them. And then there were the politically motivated folks who stood strong with their MAGA crowd and spent their time thinking of alternatives including bleach and God knows what else. You tried very hard not to have to hang around with anti-vaxers, not really because of who they were or what their ideology, but because the last thing you wanted was to get tagged by a bad COVID bug thanks to someone else deciding you were either being silly or overly cautious getting vaccinated. There was too much at stake and we were mostly all working hard to be as scientifically safe as we could be.
I don’t know when I started getting my annual flu vaccine, but I think it was sometime about ten years ago, more or less when I entered my 60s. Before that I remember thinking that a flu was just a bad cold and that it didn’t really kill people unless they were old and infirmed. But vaccinations in general have always been a part of our lives as Americans, at least according to my recollection. We all mostly grew up with a dime-sized mark on our upper arm from our small pox vaccination when we were kids. That was something we all took for granted. Everyone needed that protection…it was just common sense. THe last outbreak of small pox happened in the U.S. in 1949 and by 1972 they stopped giving every kid a small pox vaccination and in 1980 the World Health Organization declared the disease eradicated. None of my kids have small pox vaccination scars on their arms like we all did in my generation. The other big vaccination initiative everyone knows about was for polio. When I was born it was the most feared childhood disease in the world since kids who contracted the disease would have to be irreversibly consigned to iron lungs for the rest of their lives. In fact, the last iron lung user is now 77 and he has been in the damn thing for 70 years. In 1955 Jonas Salk gave us the poliovirus vaccination shot, which many of us got. Then in 1960, Albert Sabin gave us an oral vaccine and scads of American school children lined up for their Sabin on Sunday poliovirus vaccine slug.
Then, we went into a hiatus it seems when we would occasionally get a tetanus shot or something like yellow fever vaccine if we were traveling to some weird foreign land. But even by 1985, when I started traveling to the emerging markets of the world with regularity, the most i ever had to do was take some chloroquinine to ward off malaria when I had to go to places like West Africa. But by then, I had lived for six years in the tropics and traveled a good deal all over the place and while I had done a sew very special visits to the Center for Tropical Disease Studies in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, those were mostly for various strains of Montezuma’s Revenge than anything else. The attention to vaccinations was pretty mild amongst us Americans. I recall thinking that Asians who wore masks to ward off things like bird flu or some such thing were rarities.
And then came COVID in early 2020 and everything changed. In fact, I’m not sure that before COVID, I was even aware that there had been an influenza pandemic in 1918. Now we all know that and it is not lost on us that we might have more pandemics and the need for more vaccines as our 8 billion worldwide residents move on towards 10 billion over the next few decades. None of us takes the wearing of masks as a joke any more. In fact, I bet most people are like me and keep a supply of N95 and other fancier masks at the ready still.
Today Kim and I went to our local Walgreen’s Drug Store for our annual vaccinations. This year the game seems to be mostly a timing issue since these vaccinations are deemed to only be effective protection for so many months. That means that you have to decide whether you are more worried about an early exposure to the virus or a late exposure some time in the spring. We decided that the beginning of October was a good time for us so we made an appointment to get as many vaccinations as was being recommended by the CDC. We are big believers in this household in the CDC and the value of listening to the best science available. The current recommendations are for people of our age to get our annual COVID booster, so that was top of the list. Then there was the good old annual flu vaccination which is always based on the CDC’s estimate of what strains of the flu are most prevalent and likely. Then there is the new deep respiratory RSV vaccination, and for good measure, they have added the pneumonia vaccination to the roster. Assuming you have already had the new shingles double-shot vaccination, you are then good to go. We have both had the new shingles vaccine, so we were expecting to each get the four other vaccinations all today (no one said they conflicted with one another or that it was unadvisable).
When we got to the pharmacy, things changed. When they learned that Kim had recently had a bout of COVID about a month ago, she was told not to get that vaccination for several months yet. So, she got flu, pneumonia and RSV. When I stepped up to the plate I was told that they did not recommend getting COVID and RSV at the same time. Despite hearing otherwise, I’m a big believer in going with local knowledge, so I dropped the RSV for now and went with COVID, flu and pneumonia for my cocktail of the day. I can go back for RSV in a few weeks. Apparently the pneumonia vaccination is like the double-shot shingles in that once you get it you don’t need it ever again (at least that is the current best thinking). I told the nurse to stab me with all three in the left arm and she only wanted to do two in that arm and one in the right arm. OK, so be it. By the way, no one even knows or asks anymore which brand of COVID they get. Maybe branding no longer matters. I just hope I didn’t get the J&J one….. This evening, neither of my arms feels tender in the least, so like all the other vaccinations I have ever gotten, they don’t seem to have much impact on me. Kim says her arms are a bit sore. The good news we are both 75% vaxxed-up for now. Thank God for that and let’s hope the creek don’t rise.