Today is the day I stopped stalling.
My BMI is on the cusp of “overweight,” and other than an overweening fondness for nondairy cheeses made from a mysterious hodgepodge of plant oils, space ingredients (dark matter for sure, and perhaps a soupçon of tauntaun smegma), and hipster smugness, I don’t have any qualifying preexisting conditions.
The only drug I take is an antidepressant, which allows me to visit family in my small Trumpy hometown in Wisconsin once or twice a year without my organs spontaneously shutting down.
So now that everyone in the U.S. is eligible to get the coronavirus vaccine—as of today!—my morning task was clear: Sign up for the Fauci ouchie. Which I did. I’m scheduled for Friday morning at my local Rite Aid.
Moderna.
Boom, motherfuckers!
Oh, and pardon me. Joe Biden has a message for you:
Unlike many other Americans, my vaccine “hesitancy,” if you can call it that, has nothing to do with what’s in the vaccine. If you could get it in my body through any means other than a needle, I’d have written down just about anything on my vaccination form to get a shot. “Hmm, is the stigmata on the list of qualifying preexisting conditions, because I for sure have that.”
The truth is, I have a severe, lifelong needle phobia. For instance, I can’t sit through a blood draw without passing out, and vaccines aren’t all that much more appealing.
But this is what you do when you’re part of a society. You act on behalf of the public good, even when doing so is scary, painful, or inconvenient. And, ironically, taking the vaccine will be one of my biggest COVID challenges.
I’m an extreme introvert, so quarantining wasn’t all that terrible. (Don’t get me wrong, I’m just as eager as most Americans to get back to “normal life,” which for me is only slightly less hermit-like than quarantine.)
Masking was as easy as … well, putting on a fucking mask.
But now we’re nearing the finish line, and my irrational fears are rearing their Hydra heads. That said, I’m going to get the shot, because I don’t want to die or, even more importantly, potentially take part in a superspreading event that kills dozens of others down the line.
And I’m more or less okay with that, because I’m not a fucking sociopath.
So no excuses. If I can get this damn shot, anyone can. I just hope whatever software Bill Gates has implanted in the Moderna vaccine has that old 3D pinball game that used to come preinstalled on Windows. I miss it so much.
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