When you get a chance at the COVID vaccine, you drop everything and go. You go like there\u2019s a gold rush. You go like you just had a psychic vision of the winning lottery numbers. You go like you\u2019re not actually sitting in a meeting at work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
You just get up and you go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s what I did last week when I heard several colleagues I work with say that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) facility in Jacksonville was vaccinating anyone working in education, including those like us who work at colleges or universities. They had been up to the facility, which news reports say had seen thinner demand and wasn\u2019t administering as many vaccines as it was setup for, and were quickly moved through the process after showing their college IDs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
No wait for a vaccine and only an hour away? You don\u2019t have to tell this guy twice. Have arm, will travel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It had already been an exciting week on the vaccine front in our household. My wife, a pre-school teacher, had been vaccinated that Monday. She got the Johnson and Johnson vaccine at CVS \u2013 the one-and-done shot that needs no follow-up booster, and is supposed to have a similar efficacy to the others when it comes to the most severe effects of the virus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That was a big day for someone who had been so concerned about contracting COVID, and worse, spreading it to others. \u201cYou know what I realized?\u201d she said afterward. \u201cThis is the first feeling of optimism I\u2019ve had in a year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That was a powerful statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I didn\u2019t think I would have my opportunity for several more weeks. So, when I heard about co-workers getting their vaccines at the Jacksonville site, I immediately hit the road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The site sits in the parking lot of the Gateway Mall just north of downtown. It\u2019s massive operation with giant white tents like airplane hangars. Refrigeration units ring it, and it\u2019s mostly manned by U.S. Navy personnel. They point people down paths marked by blue tape arrows on the ground, and the whole operation looks like something out of a movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It also looks like it was built for speed and efficiency, and it lived up to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I showed off my college ID, answered a few questions and in no time was told to follow more blue arrows into another tent full of tables and military medical personnel lined up row after row. I sat down where I was told and pushed up my sleeve. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to need you to relax your arm,\u201d the service member told me after feeling my arm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Relax? Yeah, that\u2019s going to happen! Here I was about to get a brand new vaccine that only has emergency authorization from the FDA. I was surrounded by military personnel in a giant tent that looked like it should have been in an alien invasion movie. Or a film about a global pandemic. Oh, wait a minute \u2026 I WAS in the middle of a global pandemic!!! How exactly am I going to relax?!?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cUh \u2026 that\u2019s about as good as it gets,\u201d I told her apologetically. \u201cI was born a bundle of nerves, and it\u2019s been downhill ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She looked at me, calculated I might be the type who ends up flopping to the floor in fetal position, and figured she better strike quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis might hurt,\u201d she said as she jabbed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cToo late to worry about that now,\u201d I replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whamo! I was vaccinated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wait, really? I mean, that\u2019s it? I got it? It\u2019s in? I\u2019m done?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYep,\u201d she said (as it seems I was saying all of this out loud.) \u201cJust follow those blue arrows and they\u2019ll tell you where to go.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOK \u2026 blue arrows \u2026 on it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I thanked her for her service and stumbled off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t know how anyone else feels after getting the vaccine, but for me it was kind of surreal and hard to process. As I wound my way through the blue-arrow maze, I felt like I was part of history. That I was now a tiny little piece of something really huge and revolutionary. Incredible. I felt relieved, and grateful. Especially lucky. My mind wandered: Who were all the people around me? What were their stories? What had they struggled with? How did FEMA get this huge tent up? Why were there so many blue arrows?!? Who put them all there?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And like my wife, I guess there was that feeling of optimism. Even more important than my own health, this now meant I was less likely spread the virus to others. Now the vaccine seemed like a sacred duty \u2013 even patriotic. After a year of feeling isolated from other people, I suddenly felt a sense of shared humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was ushered into another tent with more blue arrows and more military personnel. They sat me in a row of chairs with a bunch of other people waiting out the requisite 15 minutes. They do this to see if you\u2019re going to have a negative reaction to the shot. It felt like a huge airport lounge of strangers. Even through their masks you could see expressions on their faces. That they were all privately wrestling with complex emotions. What was it? Relief, joy, fear, excitement, hope? Maybe all of them at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then someone came along, told my time was up and that the blue arrows would show me out into the world. To go live my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One final note: From experience, most in my family haven\u2019t experienced much in the way of side effects from the vaccines. My wife and I did, though. Nothing too bad. I don\u2019t know about the shots, but Johnson and Johnson says theirs could cause general side effects like headaches, feeling tired, muscle aches, nausea or even fever. For maybe the bulk of a day, I felt all of these, but not nausea and fever. I would sum it up as general soreness. Like a hangover, without the fun night out before it. It\u2019s a sign your immune system is firing up. My wife described it as feeling like you have the flu, but without the flu. And then it just went away. Like the blue lines, it\u2019s the vaccine\u2019s ways of saying, get on with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When you get a chance at the COVID vaccine, you drop everything and go. You go like there\u2019s a gold rush. You go like you just had a psychic vision of the winning lottery numbers. You go like you\u2019re not actually sitting in a meeting at work. <\/p>\n
You just get up and you go. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s what I did last week when I heard several colleagues I work with say that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) facility in Jacksonville was vaccinating anyone working in education, including those like us who work at colleges or universities. They had been up to the facility, which news reports say had seen thinner demand and wasn\u2019t administering as many vaccines as it was setup for, and were quickly moved through the process after showing their college IDs. <\/p>\n
No wait for a vaccine and only an hour away? You don\u2019t have to tell this guy twice. Have arm, will travel. <\/p>\n
It had already been an exciting week on the vaccine front in our household. My wife, a pre-school teacher, had been vaccinated that Monday. She got the Johnson and Johnson vaccine at CVS \u2013 the one-and-done shot that needs no follow-up booster, and is supposed to have a similar efficacy to the others when it comes to the most severe effects of the virus. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[578,577,558,574,572],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2021-nutshells","category-coronavirus","category-florida","category-health","category-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2213"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2214,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2213\/revisions\/2214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}