Covid Vaccine — 1 of 2

So, on Saturday, I ended up getting my first COVID vaccine shot.

I actually ended up driving an hour out of town for it. Last Thursday I became eligible to sign up, but I was kind of stumped for when to book because our second car was in the shop. Normally (or what passes as “normal” in these Covid times…), that wouldn’t really be an issue what with working from home these days, but I need a car to get to the vaccination site if I did it during the workday. On Friday, when I went to book and as luck would have it, there was one opening about an hour out of town that I could do the very next day; it was the only opening in the next week! So I jumped on it.

The drive out ended up being in the rain. It’s kind of ridiculous to have to drive an hour, but on the other hand, it’s done and it didn’t hurt to get out of the house.

I got the Pfizer shot (although the appointment was selected based entirely on when it was). As for side effects, they’ve been pretty minimal: I had a sore shoulder (where I was given the injection) for a couple of days. It was a weird sort of not-quite “bruise”: it was felt tender to the touch, but it didn’t really limit my movement the same ways a normal bruise often does. I have been told that the follow up short is worse, but we’ll deal with that when it happens.

For follow up, they say our second shot will be available in about 16 weeks, which seems an incredibly long time. On one hand, with vaccines going out, and more and more people being vaccinated, things should start opening up, hopefully because the Covid case count should start falling. But 16 weeks…that’s four months — May, June, July, August — we’ll almost be done the summer by the time that comes. And there still isn’t a shot approved for the young ones yet, for the kids under 12. Will this ever really go away until something is approved for the kids? I don’t know. For now, in-person schooling has been cancelled (“for the next two weeks”) to try and keep the case count down.

Overall, I’ll take this bit of hope. Hopefully, more reasons to hope follow soon!