A story in this morning’s Seattle Times noted how this city is apparently the most stressed-out major metro in the United States, with more than 54 percent of folks here telling a U.S. Census Bureau survey team that they felt “nervous, anxious, or on edge” for at least several days during the preceding two weeks. Reporting the story, Gene Balk noted that the Census Bureau has only been asking the question since the pandemic began, so it’s hard to know whether this is a new development or a long-standing one, but we’ve ranked either number one or number two in surveys taken since July 2021.
Balk deals in data, yet he noted, “This is purely anecdotal, but I see a tremendous number of Seattleites masked up even when they’re walking outside,” at “extremely low risk of contracting the virus.” I’ve noticed this, too, and it’s very strange. Even with COVID-19 cases dropping, I get why we need to keep masking up in stores and on transit; I’m fine with that, it makes sense, and I’ll be wearing a mask on any bus ride or flight I take for the foreseeable future. But at this point — at least for healthy, vaccinated people — masking up outdoors in uncrowded settings seems like so much virtue-signalling hygiene theater, which is actually a very Seattle thing. Lighten up, folks.
My lax attitude toward masking up does not extend to the excellent news that many of us are now eligible for COVID-19 booster shots. On October 21, the CDC authorized boosters for all people 18 and older who’d received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine at least two months ago. I was getting a flu shot when the news broke, so I decided to give my arm a rest for a bit, but I signed up online for a vaccination slot at a local pharmacy late last week. It was such a cake walk compared to the months of waiting for my first shot last spring.
When I showed up last Friday, I was prepared to get a J&J booster because I thought, as a healthy 60-year-old, that’s all I could get. But the pharmacy tech said no, I could have whatever I wanted, so I got a Moderna booster, and I now feel like I have the best possible chance at continuing to keep the bugs at bay (or to have a mild case if I wind up a “breakthrough” statistic). As the National Institutes of Health found in a study this summer, J&J recipients who got a Moderna booster saw a 76-fold jump in antibodies that neutralize the coronavirus, the best outcome of all the combinations studied.
All gain, no pain: I had a sore arm for about a day after the shot and that was it, but even people who report losing a day or two to side effects from the vaccine say it’s totally worth it to know they’re protected against serious illness. Meanwhile, many Americans are still holding out on getting this protection, but it’s good to know that their numbers continue to dwindle — not because they’re getting sick and dying of COVID, though that is tragically still happening, but because they’ve decided it makes no sense to remain unvaccinated. Whether we continue to mask up indoors or roll up our sleeves for a shot, we’re all looking out for one another.
As I’ve written before, fear seems to be at the heart of so much of what ails our country these days, and fear has certainly driven much of our response to a pandemic that is running on far longer than it needed to. The trick is to identify what we truly need to fear and focus on what we can do most effectively to mitigate those risks so we can fearlessly embrace everything else life has to offer.
A note about this week’s video: I found this one while searching for a good take of Josh Ritter’s song “Long Shadows,” which — along with Dan Hicks’ “I Scare Myself” — was going through my head as I composed this post. It’s a one-take video shot on an iPhone! Very cool. As I mentioned in my last dispatch, I’ve been on a novel-reading tear this fall, and Josh’s new book The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All was a real treat. He is a renaissance man in a band full of them. Enjoy.