It’s sometime in April, and I’m in line outside the stadium field house that has recently opened as Seattle’s mass vaccination site. Nurses are standing by with tens of thousands of single-dose Johnson & Johnson shots newly arrived from the feds, and I hold a sliver of hope that my silver hair will confer an advantage in securing one of these coveted vaccines. I easily pass through the entrance, and my excitement builds as I near the station where volunteers are verifying eligibility.
The woman at the sign-in table glances at me, starts the paperwork and asks for my driver’s license. She frowns as she sees that, despite a mane of graying hair, I am a few months shy of my 60th birthday. A few more questions reveal that I live alone and do my non-essential work from the safety of my computer, that I am not a smoker, and that I have no serious health conditions.
Turns out I’m still not eligible for a vaccination, and it remains unclear when I will be. “Maybe by late May?” the volunteer muses. I stifle an urge to cry as I turn for the exit. I have plans to visit my daughter over Mother’s Day for only the second time in more than a year. Will I still be unable to hug her?
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I didn’t feel any vaccine envy until last Saturday, but it hit full force for me that day. First, I saw a friend’s Facebook story reveal that he’d secured a vaccine as a teacher. He’s in his 30s and teaches English as a foreign language — online. If anyone questions his eligibility, I guess he can argue that maybe he’ll get an in-person job soon. Later in the day, I learned that two family members had also received their first doses of the Moderna vaccine. Their situations merited legitimately getting the shots despite their tender ages (26 and 55), yet I still felt twinges of jealousy.
Then on Tuesday, the CDC announced that vaccinated people can now safely socialize together indoors without masks. I’ve signed up to write thank-you notes to people who take part in my church’s annual pledge drive, and within hours of the CDC announcement, the organizer sent an email inviting people to her home for an indoor note-writing party next week. As I sent my regrets, I felt another pang of loss and a preview of the limbo that we last-to-be-vaccinated folks will endure this spring as social gatherings ramp up among the protected.
It’s still the early days. As I write this, 19 percent of Americans have received at least one dose of the vaccine to fight COVID-19, and one in 10 are now fully vaccinated. I’m genuinely happy for people who are managing to get the shot, and it does look like the pace of vaccinations is quickening. But I also know that, due to my age, self employment, and lack of risk factors, I will likely be waiting a long time. It’s not always easy to make peace with that, but at least it’s a short-term situation, and certainly shorter than the year I’ve already endured.
Our priorities as a society seem clear and indisputable: vaccinate older folks and people of color, because they’ve been hit hardest by the coronavirus’s lethality. Beyond that, it gets a bit fuzzier. People under 65 with underlying health conditions need the vaccine, but that’s a wide category, subject to squishy interpretation and self identification. We need to give people the benefit of the doubt and honor those who feel they can’t wait, especially since a constellation of factors may be in play.
How about a 60-year-old with minor health issues who is caring for an aging parent? How about a 35-year-old who has been housebound for a year with an immune disorder? These seem like no-brainer situations. Get them their shots, stat. Then again, how about younger people who have mild health issues? And who is most essential in the vast category of essential workers? I’d put front-line healthcare personnel and grocery store workers at the front of the line, followed by teachers so we can open in-person learning. But hairstylists and health club employees? Maybe, but it gets murky.
I volunteer twice a week as an online English teacher, and there is no way I’d stretch that fact into a qualifying condition since I can’t catch COVID on Zoom. On the other hand, I also volunteer a few times a month at a food bank, and it was after such a stint that I received word in December that I may have been exposed to the virus. (I quarantined, and I tested negative.) I understand the food bank’s full-time staff may soon be eligible for vaccination, and they should be. But what about those of us who drop in on occasion? Although it doesn’t seem right to push us forward in the queue, I could reasonably argue that I might expect to earn a few bonus points toward eligibility via this moderately risky unpaid work. For now, though, I’d rather my shot go to the older woman volunteering beside me who hasn’t been able to get an appointment.
There are stand-by lists aimed at distributing unclaimed vaccinations so they don’t go to waste. People sign up and get alerted by text if a shot is available and they can immediately go get it. Intrigued, I checked to see if such a program is available in Seattle. It is, but only for people 65 and up. Then there’s the phenomenon of people traveling to places with fewer restrictions in order to get their shots. Alaska is one of the only four states I haven’t yet seen, and everyone 16 and older there is now eligible for the vaccine. Hmmmm … like many of us, I can work from anywhere these days … but I guess you actually need to prove that you live there. Go figure.
It’s human nature to want to give ourselves the best shot at life. Eventually, there will be enough vaccine for everyone who wants it, and it sounds like that time is now mere months away. After a year without hugs and unmasked human contact, my vaccination can’t come soon enough. But I’ll wait my turn, hoping that the people who truly need this protection are getting it the soonest. I’ll also try to remember that my place near the end of the line is the result of my relative youth, reasonably good health and no small measure of privilege and good luck — and for all these things, I am grateful.
Thank you for reading Surely Joy. You can find the first Pandemic Postcards and my earlier writings here. If you’d like to get future posts via email, look for the link on the right side of this page (or maybe below this post, if you’re on a mobile device). I write for a living, so if you’d like to support my work, please hit the tip jar. Thank you.