HUMAN WRECKAGE

A Little Jab’ll Do Ya

I awoke Sunday morning with a mild headache. I felt a little foggier than usual as I poured my first cup of coffee in the kitchen. Eons ago I would’ve blamed Saturday night. This time the culprit was Saturday afternoon. Anyway, the positive news was that my left arm wasn’t sore and tender, that’s where the needle went in. I’d picked my left for the prick figuring I’d need to use the toilet before I’d have to write anything down in cursive.

Ann received her Pfizer dose a week ago Saturday. My hit was Astra-Zeneca. We understand either medicine requires a couple of weeks to kick in. We expect our booster shots in eight to 12 weeks, subject to supply and demand. Discussions surrounding the pros and cons of the various brands of covid vaccines have amused me. I think about tickets for a major concert: “Did you get orchestra or balcony?” The main thing is to be there. My take on vaccines mirrors my high school, college and university attitude toward street drugs: “What is it? I’ll take it.” I knew there are some documented albeit miniscule risks associated with Astra-Zeneca. But I also knew the odds of Ann and me being killed in a car crash en route to my hit were better than me dying because of a vaccination. I’ll roll the dice with a potential prophylactic rather than a potential pathogen any old time.

Throughout the years, our country, our province and our city have not demanded a lot from Ann and me: obey the law; pay your taxes; vote. Though we can quibble about the quality of our lives during 13 or 14 months of pandemic, we cannot in good conscience complain even though public health messaging has been frequently confusing and often incoherent. We’ve done our best to adhere to the ever-shifting advisories. As for inoculations for our own benefit and that of others, including our city’s public and private institutions – all those services we once took for granted – bring them on: we’re obligated to do our part; social contracts are two-way streets dotted with bus stops, clinics, offices, pubs, restaurants, schools, shops and theatres.

Friday, once I’d booked my jab and had filled in the requisite forms, I was stirred by a curious sense of elation. The petty tyranny of the virus, the pandemic present, is repetition, a single calendar page with some 400 Soviet grey and lethargic days endured to date: monochromatic and flatly uniform. Only the delusional and irrational believe in magic bullets. Still, as I thanked my pharmacist on Saturday, I was conscious of swallowing a catch in my masked voice, cleared my throat. Even amid a third wave of particularly nasty covid variants, inoculation, that proverbial and uplifting shot in the arm, is welcome because it at least suggests the possibility and promise of a post-pandemic future – whatever it may be.                                

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of medical advice since 2013. My novella Of Course You Did is coming soon. Sign up for e-mail alerts from the Crooked 9, use that thingy on the right.