Last Saturday I had the first of two vaccinations against COVID-19, courtesy of Moderna and the National Guard. Every day since I’ve received a text from the Centers for Disease Control, asking me to check in and tell them how I’m feeling.
When I follow the daily link they send, I’m greeted by three emoji: a green smiley to tell them I’m fine, a yellow dude looking mildly disgruntled, and a red face that’s definitely seen happier days. After choosing an expression for the day, I answer several questions. Are there symptoms I may be exhibiting that are a side-effect of the vaccination—pain at the injection site, chills or a fever, nausea, vomiting, or bodily aches and pains? Are the side effects interfering with my ability to carry on? Is there anything else I’d like to tell the CDC about my condition?
So far I’ve told them I’m feeling good. My shoulder ached the day of the vaccination and one day after, but at most it was a mild discomfort. I didn’t have any issues sleeping on that side. I really only noticed when I poked myself. But while it’s been all green smiley faces for the CDC, ever since Saturday I’ve been asking myself the same question: how am I feeling about all this?
I’m not coming up with any concrete answers.
For the last three months, most of my vaccination energies have centered around my elderly father. Connecticut might have been doing a good job of getting vaccines into arms since the first doses arrived in mid-December, but Virginia’s strategy has been decentralized and opaque. Cities and counties across the state were in different phases of vaccination. I was constantly baffled whether my dad was yet eligible, or when he should qualify, or even what agency might be able to tell him when he would be. In mid-January, Connecticut was in the top three or four states leading the way in vaccinations; Virginia was solidly third from the bottom.
I did what I could. I read to my dad over the phone the information I could find online. From r/RVA I gleaned the names of various databases local agencies that were collecting the names and numbers of the elderly and infirm, to be notified if and when they could register for an appointment. I’d go online to those databases, sign up in his name, and tell him immediately after so that he’d be on alert if they called. He had been given a number from his local doctor to call so that he could enroll for a vaccination with his local health care provider—but the number was in Ohio, and twice the automated call distributor kept him on the line for close to an hour without ever sending him to an actual live person.
At one point in January, my dad’s friends were relying on shady deals to get their injections. One of his colleagues had a daughter who heard through the grapevine that a Jewish community clinic had extra doses left over one afternoon; the daughter marched into the clinic and asked for the vaccine for herself and her husband, and then their two children. After the four had gotten their first shots, only then did the daughter ask if there were doses enough left for her eighty-odd-year-old parents. The retired professor with whom my dad used to work hopped in the car with his wife and managed to get injected within about fifteen minutes. Afterward, he asked if there was one more dose left over for my father—but no. He and his wife had gotten the last two.
Whenever I talked to my father on the phone, I could hear his rising frustration at the numbers of his friends who were getting inoculated thanks to knowing someone who knew someone who had a connection somewhere, or who had simply lucked out by calling the right place out of many places at the exact right time. But then, at the beginning of February, he called me to say that I could stop worrying. He’d gotten his first Pfizer vaccination. One of the several databases in which we’d enrolled him had suddenly given him a call and told him to show up at the racetrack at the old state fairgrounds. A friend drove him. Whatever organization was spearheading the drive provided golf cart transportation for him, so that he didn’t have to walk or stand for very long. From the time he arrived to the time he was taken back to his friend’s car, he said, was all of twenty minutes.
At the time I felt immense relief. True, it was only the first of two vaccinations, but the news had been reporting that the Pfizer vaccine offered a substantial degree of protection in one dose. Knowing he had some protection, and knowing he had an appointment for the final inoculation in March, felt like a big step in the right direction.
I was prepared to be patient for myself. My time would come. I didn’t know when, but I felt certain it would. In January, my physician seemed fairly positive that most people in the area could be vaccinated by May, but he had no solid information on when people my age, at my level of health, might be eligible. I put it out of my mind and went back to the same routine: staying at home day after day, exercising outdoors when the weather permitted, planning meals, and trying to figure out what to stream in the evenings. It had worked for a year. It could work for a few months more.
Everything was upended toward the end of February, though, when Connecticut announced it was breaking from CDC recommendations and inoculating citizens by age rather than priority groups. My eligibility rocketed from maybe by May to March first—a mere week away. I greeted the news with excitement: I had an actual timeline to look forward to. I’d been primed by my dad’s experience to expect nothing but bureaucracy in the vaccination search, sure, but fighting red tape feel a lot better than sitting and waiting. I’ve done too much sitting and waiting, both, over the past twelve months.
I developed a strategy. Our state representative weekly sent out emails with links to the major routes by which his constituents could sign up for vaccinations. I bookmarked them all. I’d stay up late on Sunday night, February twenty-eighth, I reasoned, and check all the sites after midnight, when the calendar flipped to March first. Maybe I’d get something, maybe I wouldn’t. But at least I’d have the satisfaction of having tried.
Sunday rolled around. I had my evening plans in place—dinner, the Golden Globes, then killing some time until midnight and my assault on the various websites I had bookmarked. I was considering a nap when my mail application chimed at me.
The CDC databases indicated I was now eligible for a vaccination in my area, the email informed me. Would I like to sign up for an appointment? A profile in the CDC Vaccine Administration Management System had already been created in my name, and if I would take a moment to verify my information, I could get the process started.
My initial reaction to the missive was skepticism. I was getting an email directly from the CDC? Sure, Jan. More likely it was some scammer attempting to get my social security number, right? When I checked the email’s full header information, though, it seemed valid enough. It wasn’t a spoofed address, at least. The link in the message led to a genuine government site. When I went upstairs to ask Craig if he’d received anything similar, though, he hadn’t. What’s more, he seemed to think I was playing some kind of practical joke, just by asking.
I returned to my laptop, thought about it a while, and then decided, what the hell. Turned out the whole thing was legit. The CDC had a profile with my name and address and email all ready. All I had to do was provide my cell number and ask for notifications to be sent via text instead of email. A couple of screens later, I was presented with a list of all the vaccination sites in a ten, twenty, or even one hundred mile radius, and the opportunity to schedule a first vaccination at any of the sites with available appointments.
None of the sites had available appointments.
Still. I was one step closer than I had been a few minutes before. My dad certainly never had it this easy. All through the evening I kept checking on the VAMS site to make sure it was real. We had dinner. We watched the Golden Globes. I played Minecraft after the final award, killing time to midnight. At 12:02 a.m. I logged back onto VAMS. For one of the sites nearest me, the closed Lord & Taylor in Stamford, dozens of slots had opened up for Saturday, the sixth. A couple of mouse clicks was all it took to claim a spot at nine-thirty in the morning. The site issued me a QR code to take with me that the site could scan to connect me to my information online. I had a vaccination appointment.
I went to bed that night feeling more guilty than exhilarated. The experience had been so easy for me. I hadn’t had to scrabble or negotiate, like my dad. At no point had I registered with anything—why I got in the fast lane with the CDC is still a mystery. Unlike Craig, who gave up on the other web sites when none of them opened up after midnight, I actually had a solid date. It felt a little like as the Titanic sank, I was being escorted to a well-appointed solo lifeboat, while it was every man for himself among the rest of the passengers. (The guilt lifted a little the next morning, when Craig walked into a Stamford clinic reportedly giving vaccines to walk-in patients, and he was given an appointment for only a few days after mine.)
Saturday we pulled into the Lord & Taylor parking lot shortly after nine. The National Guard ran the operation. Men and women in camo fatigues with iPads hanging from their necks directed cars into the various lanes snaking around the lot’s perimeter—first two lanes, then five, then right before to the drive-through vaccination stations, closer to ten. While Craig drove, I sat in the back seat so that the Guard could scan my QR code and check my driver’s license. Eventually a cheerful Guard approached the car and spoke to me through the rear window. He verified my name and birth date, filled out a vaccination record for me to take home, and told me he was going to ready the syringe. I had the short sleeve of my t-shirt rolled up when he returned. I felt the cold daub of alcohol, followed by the Guardsman’s gloved fingers he pinched my bicep for the injection.
Is it possible to attach too much importance to that moment the needle pierced my skin? In some ways, the entire year had been leading up to this very juncture between vulnerability and protection. Then again, how can a year’s worth of fear and worry, twelve months of isolation and hope and of mind-deadening sameness, be borne on the strength of a needle with a width measured in mere fractions of a millimeter? I’d spent the entire crawl through the Lord & Taylor parking lot fretting that I might do something embarrassing when my turn arrived. That I might sob unexpectedly. Not from the needle—at this point in my life I’m used to being jabbed and prodded by doctors. I worried I might burst into tears from the relief, from the overwhelming emotion of it all.
But when the time came, I felt nothing. A small prick, a short wait further down the lot to see if I went into anaphylactic shock, and I was on my merry way. When I got home, I got a text from the CDC. Would I like to make the appointment for my second vaccine?
2.9 million people in the U.S. received vaccinations this past Saturday—a record day for the pandemic. I was one. I was not, however, one of the people on my social media feeds posting that I sobbed when it happened, or that I was overcome with emotion on the trip there. Perhaps I’ll feel something next month, when I show up in the Lord & Taylor parking lot for my second and final vaccination, new QR code at the ready. Maybe I’ll cascade into uncontrolled emotion when finally, one day in the not-too-distant future, I gather with others. When I wave at someone I haven’t seen since before the pandemic, or when I hug a dear friend whose presence has been reduced to an occasional post on social media or a quick text. Maybe it will be when I’m surrounded by the sound of strangers’ voices, by song and live celebration. That moment of release will come. It is more, though, than can be delivered by a single syringe and a friendly, efficient jab.
Until then, I’ll continue clicking on the smiling emoji the CDC offers up every day. I’m grateful to have received a vaccination. I’m lucky to have gotten it so quickly and easily. I’m good. Truly. I’m feeling good.
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