The Vaccine

Jockeying for a COVID vaccine appointment brings back memories of the last time I joined a crowd in pursuit of public health.

It was the swine flu era, in the 1970s. Along with my mother, whose baseline anxiety made her an ever-conscientious patient, I reported for my shot to the gym at a local college. We shuffled along long, slow lines, showing our IDs, signing the informed consent forms.

We are on the cusp of something. The weather outside says so with its mellow almost-warmth, the green grass coaxed out of latency, buds starting to form on trees that should be dormant. At an hour that should be frosty, birds are already singing to the just-risen sun, and the sky reveals a careless blue. This could be March, that month of dramatic change, time to think of planting things, of growing. 

I am outside in a sweatshirt, repairing a fence, snuggling our animals, letting my lungs fill with this peaceful morning. I putter and delay, finding projects to occupy my attention, holding tight to this moment.

When I return indoors, the newspaper screams of painful reality: sedition, pandemic, security, racism. It reminds me of the fortune I woke to: I am vaccinated but the world is not. I have space around me but the world does not. I have freedoms that much of the world does not. 

We talk instead of things to do: roses to cut back, mowing to be done, painting, cleaning. Thinking. I have found myself more introvert than not, these last ten months of pandemic. Helpless to change the political pageantry, the degradation of national

“All of our service representatives are busy. Please try your call again later.”

On the first day that our local health system allowed medical staff to call in to schedule vaccine appointments, the demand quickly overwhelmed the phone lines. The plan was to open up scheduling by phone starting at 8:00 a.m., and I called as soon I could, only to be greeted by the message above after a few rings. I continued calling the rest of that morning, and eventually the line didn’t even ring before going straight to the recording. We later learned that the call center received over 5,000 calls in the first hour—no wonder I couldn’t get through! 

Is it my imagination, or is everyone talking about silver linings these days? By now I’ve heard the phrase spoken so many times in so many different contexts that I’ve begun to expect it as an explanation whenever people mention a COVID-related restriction in their lives. In the midst of despair, misfortune, or even just plain frustration, they find something positive that offers them comfort. I truly admire such vision. Where they see soft, white clouds floating overhead, I see grey ones, spiked with danger—a herd of elephants stampeding across a leaden sky.

But now the vaccine has come along, and even I am beginning to feel optimistic. Reading the eligibility requirements in my state’s plan for phased distribution last month, I saw right away that I did not fall into Phase 1A. Next would be Phase 1B, including (among others) those at increased risk for serious illness. Fortunately, I thought, I suffer from none of the underlying health conditions described in that category.

Or at least I didn’t think I did.

Breaking my vow that I would not check my work email during my desperately needed vacation, I peeked at my phone. Sometimes, anxiety about the unknown is worse than reality. Scanning my messages, one subject line made me pause: “Your COVID Vaccination Date.” I clicked and read further. I was assigned a day, time, and place to receive the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. Oddly, I felt nothing. No excitement, trepidation, relief, sense of history-in-the-making. Nothing.

It’s tricky—the balance between deserving, needing, and entitled. Who gets the vaccine first? Who gets it last? What part of the decision is privilege. What part experimental.

I am a noncompromised age-qualifying mental health counselor who has worked remotely, from the confines of my home. I am not a high-risk-by-exposure candidate, unless I want to be. I have remained masked and distant throughout the pandemic. What are my response and responsibility to having an invitation to be at the front of the line?

Excitement. A little bit of fear. Some confidence, too. But most of all, fellowship.

Around me, spaced a careful six feet apart, are tables along with other scrub-clad men and women who work in the hospital, each of us perched on the edge of our seats, listening to a masked nurse explaining vaccination procedure. 

There is no doubt this is a momentous occasion, an opportunity for protection against an unruly pandemic. But it is also a reminder how many of us have been facing down this demon, gliding silently past one another, expressions unreadable as we carry on about our work. We are doctors and nurses and scrub techs and lab techs and cleaners and food service, and we are all, every day, in this fight together. Why is that so easy to forget?

When I chose medicine, I believed I had picked an uncontroversial way to help people. I did not anticipate the waves of science deniers, the people who wanted nothing to do with facts, or the misinformation campaigns that would sweep across social media. (What was social media?) Those voices can be loud, the arguments draining. Some days I forget how many of us are still here,

I developed my fear of needles as a kindergartener in the early 1950s. With my classmates, I waited in a slow-moving line to receive the Salk polio vaccine. When I later complained to my parents about a sore arm, they commiserated—but also assured me that the soreness would pass, while polio would be forever. I thus learned that vaccines are vital to my well-being.

That being said, the COVID-19 vaccine still causes me some anxiety. The speed with which it was developed—and the lack of knowledge about its long-term effects—worries me. Yet as I sit in my living room, the same setting in which I have sat for the past ten months of isolation, I realize that I have limited choices: to be vaccinated and, hopefully, become immune to COVID, or not to be vaccinated and, sadly, continue to live a life of isolation and vulnerability.