Covid Chronicles. Chapter 107: Vaccines are here!

 

Read chapter 106 here

Saturday, February 27, 2021 

SCIENTISTS WARN OF ANOTHER WAVE IF NATION RELAXES proclaims a headline on the front page of yesterday’s New York Times. 

 The article notes that 

After a year of being pummeled by grim statistics and scolded for wanting human contact, many Americans feel a long-promised deliverance is at hand. 

Well, it’s not ‘long-promised deliverance’, but today JoAnna and I are on our way to Chicago to meet up with Julianna, who is currently serving a 4-month (mid-January to mid-May) internship with an architectural firm. She is currently a first-year senior at Virginia Tech. (She’s in a 5-year program.) Last year she was selected to serve an internship in Paris, but Covid put the kibosh on that. 

I feel more at ease taking this road trip now that I’ve received my first dose of a vaccine. (Moderna.) Not that we’re planning to hang out with throngs of people. JoAnna and I will pretty much take the same approach to this overnight visit as we did during our weeklong road trip in September. We’ll mask up, keep our distance, and spend as much time outdoors as possible. Fortunately, the weather is going to cooperate. Today’s Chicago forecast promises abundant sunshine and an afternoon high of 45. Since a slight breeze is blowing in from the southwest, it shouldn’t cooler by the lake. Hope so, anyway. I’m layered up, just in case. 

Last week, I started a mental countdown to my first vaccine, which had been scheduled for March 4th. JoAnna recently suggested that we take a road trip with Paula to visit Albert and Cyndi in Maryland, as both Paula and I are on track to receive both doses by early April. By then, we should have good traveling weather. 

On Thursday, I received a message via UW Health’s MyChart that, due to shortfalls in the vaccine supply it received from the state, the date of my first dose was pushed back to April 1. 

Bummer, I thought. 

That would, in turn, push our road trip into May. 

JoAnna, of course, was chagrined to learn this news. She’s starting to chafe at the ongoing public health restrictions of the pandemic. 

A few weeks ago, at her suggestion, I signed up for a Walgreen’s account to schedule my vaccine shots there. The earliest available date was February 20. The process went smoothly until I clicked the ‘confirm’ button. I can’t remember the exact message that appeared on the screen, but it was something along the broad lines of ‘no can do’. I tried again, only to learn that no slots were available. 

Really? That quickly? 

Each time I logged in over the next few days, I received the same message: No vaccine appointments are being scheduled at this time. 

Just be patient, I counseled myself. 

Bad advice, ultimately. 

I decided to give it another try after receiving the disappointing news from UW Health. (Which, I have to admit, wasn’t wholly unexpected after a major storm crippled most of the nation’s supply chain.) Much to my surprise, an abundance of slots were open the following afternoon. I signed up for the earliest one, at 1 pm, and confirmed the appointment without a glitch. I was also able to schedule a second appointment four weeks later. 

Getting the first dose was a breeze. JoAnna walked with me to Walgreen’s as she needed to buy a few cosmetics. I felt increasingly giddy as we approached the entrance, as If I were about to collect a valuable prize I had just won. My check-in went smoothly as a pharmacist had called shortly after I had signed up online to verify my insurance information. The confusion arose from my not being on Medicare Part B. (My coverage starts July 1. I’ve on Part A since 2014.) Before poking me, the person administering the vaccine described the likely and possible side effects, a sore arm in the former case and flu-like symptoms in the latter. 

Hope I can get through this with nothing more than a sore arm, I thought. 

As it turned out, I barely had any soreness, very much a relief after this season’s rocky experience with the flu vaccine in November. 

Now I’m part of the more than 50% of U.S. adults 65 and over who have received their first dose. The country has made a lot of progress in the first 40 days of the Biden administration. What a difference developing a plan and having competent leadership at the federal level makes. 

I’ve posted my vaccine appointment successes and setbacks on Facebook. The responses give me an indication of how things are going in other parts of the country. A number of high school classmate already received both doses, including Patti Reiff Munch, a Warren resident, and John Nelson, who had to make two trips across a snowy Washington State mountain pass to get both of his. A couple from the St. Louis area that we met on our Ireland trip — they’re probably in their mid-70s — struggled to get on any lists there and spent hours online and on the phone until they finally hit paydirt. With Trump haphazardly dumping the responsibility of distribution onto the states, there was initially no effort made to standardize procedures, to make it easy for people to sign up. (We’re still not 100% there.) As a result, when people finally get an appointment, they feel as though they’ve won the lottery, a reaction I’ve seen posted repeatedly on Facebook. But as I just learned, scheduling an appointment isn’t necessarily a sure thing. 

Some of the response indicate how eager friends are to get back to socializing in person.