Getting the Shot
I’m getting the jab—the new COVID vaccine along with the flu shot. I feel fortunate that I am able to do so and still have the choice to do so. Two friends and lots of people I know are all coming down with COVID-19 lately. Luckily, they are all OK so far.
It wasn’t like that in 2020, when a diagnosis could mean death. I lost three friends in early 2020 in New York City to COVID. None deserved to die, and it was all the worse knowing there were no vaccines or treatment that early in the pandemic. And no funerals.
This has changed. The vaccine we have now and the anti-viral Paxlovid have been gamechangers that have extended life for people infected with the virus.
Pause and remember the days of March 2020 when there was neither option. We lived in fear—of going out, of going to the grocery store, of other human beings. When my boss forced my colleagues and me to shut our workplace down, I could hardly believe it. She said it would be two weeks; it lasted more than two years—through my retirement. I may have disbelieved the pandemic was serious at the beginning, but there it was, with a face as blank and pitiless as the sun, to borrow a line from WB Yeats.
Horrible things utterly out of my control have happened a few times in my life. Two violent crimes that randomly found me in childhood, 9/11, the insurrection in DC, and the pandemic. Right now, we are facing the dismantling of democracy, and climate change is coming for us way sooner than we thought it would.
When such walloping, disorienting twists of fate come at us seemingly out of nowhere, my reaction can sometimes be dissociation. Can I trust what I’m seeing or feeling? Is this really happening? You bet your life it is, to quote Tori Amos’s song, “Cornflake Girl.” Such was the case with the pandemic. And while I can’t control a pandemic, I can mitigate my risk. And now, in the fall of 2023, the virus continues to mutate and people continue to get sick. Those who have had COVID and those who have been vaccinated are less likely to die or get severely sick. These are facts based on all the information I have seen with my own eyes and read. I tend to trust facts more than opinion. Or conspiracy theories.
I’m in an age group that puts me at risk of getting severe disease should I be infected. For myself, I’d be crazy not to take available preventive measures. I’ve been lucky so far—COVID and I have not yet met. But I’m not naïve or stupid enough to believe we never will. There are fewer and fewer people who haven’t had at least one iteration of this virus.
My odds of survival improve if I get the vaccine, so that’s what I am doing. It’s really a simple matter of survival for me. I hope everyone who is able, can do the same. Check the risks, learn the science, and decide for yourself and your loved ones. Hang onto your hat. The rough beast is still slouching towards Bethlehem. And, circling back to Yeats, let’s hope the center holds. ▼
Beth Shockley is a retired senior writer/editor living in Dover with her wife and furbabies.