Shit happens. Today, shit happened to me, quite literally - I had an acute emergency involving raw sewage flooding a significant portion of my apartment. Several hours and a few thousand dollars later, the problem itself is adequately resolved; they attacked the standing water (which mercifully didn't seep too much into the vinyl floor), threw out personal belongings that had been compromised, and treated the floor and furniture with antimicrobial chemicals. But that's not where I'm going with this.
Inevitably, fixing a problem like this involves interacting with people who may or may not be wearing masks, may or may not be in the habit of taking covid tests, and may or may not be up-to-date on their boosters. There is no way to anticipate such unavoidable human interactions, nor does the power dynamic permit micromanaging the person you're depending on to keep your space livable. I'm a property/casualty insurance examiner, and believe me when I say that this kind of thing is way, way more common than you realize. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that deferring hiring professionals to fix the issue promptly would have made the problem significantly - often, catastrophically - worse.
Meanwhile — I had to get an urgent physical therapy appointment, because of what they determined to be adhesive capsulitis, or frozen shoulder. I’m going to be experiencing a higher than normal amount of exposure over the next few weeks, and the PT may or may not work. And if it doesn’t? Hello, steroid injections — which are immunosuppressive, rendering vaccines more or less useless (if you’ve already built up an inventory of antibodies you’re good). Were I to have waited until winter, I’d have had to choose between vaccination and excruciating, nauseating pain. There was no way I could have predicted this a few months ago. You just never know.
I mention this because I see that a lot of folks are trying to time their boosters to line up with holidays, or they're trying to anticipate waves, or whatever. Let me be blunt: this is a fool's errand.
There is no way to anticipate when you're going to be thrown into a situation where people are unmasked, untested, and necessarily in your home. It's not hard to imagine a version of my scenario in which my ample collection of N95's had gotten severely contaminated by feces. Nor is there any way to know that you could end up on an immunosuppressant for a while. You can decline an invite to a holiday party, a cruise, a wedding, probably even a funeral; you can't duck out of fixing a toilet backing up into your tub and seeping into your bedroom. And if offered regular steroid injections in November, I’m taking them.
The *only* way to be prepared for a situation like this is to get boosted ASAP. The time to get boosted is BEFORE your next property/casualty emergency, and before you’re thrust into a situation where you’re put on immunosuppressive drugs to deal with nauseating pain. And that can happen any time.