{"id":13036,"date":"2021-02-04T07:17:39","date_gmt":"2021-02-04T15:17:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/?p=13036"},"modified":"2021-02-04T07:36:09","modified_gmt":"2021-02-04T15:36:09","slug":"i-am-not-throwing-away-my-shot-or-am-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/2021\/02\/04\/i-am-not-throwing-away-my-shot-or-am-i\/","title":{"rendered":"I Am Not Throwing Away My Shot. Or Am I?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

A friend texted yesterday to tell me that <\/span>Indian Health had lowered their vax requirements<\/span><\/a>; anyone over 50 is now eligible. They\u2019re prioritizing the Native community because of course they are, but any overflow is going into any and all available arms. Said friend (who is over 60) thought they\u2019d try to get on the list.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat ain\u2019t right,\u201d I thought. \u201cMy best friend works retail and has to deal with the public every day. He has regular interactions with people who won\u2019t wear a mask, won\u2019t keep their distance. He needs this thing way more than\u2026\u201d and then my brain started to shut down.<\/span><\/p>\n

Apparently, you can get the vax if you are in a multi-generational household with a person who has fragile health. I had been pondering the idea of going to visit my mom, who has a lot of stuff going on, and seeing if I couldn\u2019t get vaxxed through their county health program. At home\u2014Indian Health aside\u2014I can\u2019t get this thing until very late phase. I\u2019m healthy\u2014OMG I\u2019ve never been so healthy, I work at home, I live alone\u2014I have none of the physical indicators required to bump me up the list. There are easily a million people more at risk of contracting Corona than I am.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I also really, really, really want to get vaxxed.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have avoided most things indoors\u2014restaurants, bars, movie theaters, friend\u2019s houses, you name it\u2014since March 2020. In November, after a complicated series of negotiations and delays I had a quarantine buddy for two weeks; that was the first time anyone had been in my home, except to use the bathroom, since March, 2020. Last year I made two trips to visit my mom to be backup after she\u2019d had surgery; both trips sucked not just because my mom was having a hard time, but because the things I did when I\u2019d go visit before weren\u2019t available to me. I was stuck in a place not my home with nothing to do, nowhere to go. In July, 2020, I spent two nights in a hotel room in Leavenworth, Washington, a fireworks free town in the Cascade Mountains. I\u2019d gone to get my dog away from the noise of Independence Day (he hates fireworks). It was terrible, there were too many people around, it did not feel safe, so I ended up spending the bulk of my stay in my mediocre hotel room eating food I\u2019d brought with me. I do two things inside: the occasional shopping trip for groceries and household necessities, and the YMCA. The only place I\u2019ve seen stricter protocol than the YMCA is at the doctor\u2019s office, where I went to (finally) get my shingles vaccine after over a year on the waiting list. Everything, anything I do indoors is masked, everything else I do is outdoors.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I fucking hate it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Indian Health thing made me want to scream. This underprivileged population is bailing out NPR listeners while retail employees go to work each day and have to ask, over and over, people to pull their masks up over their noses, to step back, to wait, please, we\u2019re at capacity. Indian Health is bailing out the hyper-connected and hyper-informed while teachers have to argue that it\u2019s not safe for them to return to school yet. How dare People Like Me get in line in front of, well, anyone who has to take the bus, or has to go to work on a production line or\u2026 the list goes on and on.<\/span><\/p>\n

Among the things I hate about this stupid era\u2014and there are so many\u2014 is the constant grappling with ethics. I like to think I am an ethical person, I like to think that when confronted with ethical dilemmas I may not do the right thing right away, but I land there given a hot minute to think it over. This vaccine thing has me tied in knots over what I need to stay healthy and sane and what\u2019s right.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a piece on <\/span>Scientific American<\/span><\/a> that makes a solid case for my sitting down and waiting my turn; there\u2019s another on the <\/span>New York Times<\/span><\/a> that says every single person who gets vaxxed moves us closer to not having to do this anymore.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m so tangled up in the nuance of decision that when I read the NYT take, I think, \u201cWell, they say <\/span>if you\u2019re offered the vaccine<\/span><\/i>, which is not the same as seeking out ways to work the system so I can get it.\u201d Getting shortlisted with Indian Health or putting myself into a short term scenario in which I qualify for the vaccine isn\u2019t the same as being <\/span>offered <\/span><\/i>the vaccine, right? Or is it?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We are surrounded by people acting so very selfishly. They <\/span>won\u2019t stay home<\/span><\/a>, they argue about masks, there was that group in LA who interfered with the vaccination clinic because\u2026 I\u2019m unclear on why. They wanted to prevent other people from getting vaccinated because… ?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

None of it makes any sense. All of it makes my head hurt. Indian Health seems to have adopted a community first war effort mentality towards getting people vaccinated. I suspect we will, as history has always shown, refuse to learn from our Native neighbors. I can get bagels from New York and sewing machine needles from Germany and a crocheted Baby Yoda doll in less than a week, but I had to wait a year for a shingles shot, and who knows how long I\u2019ll have to wait for a Corona shot.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I know, I know, false equivalency. I know. But we have the systems in place to build and distribute things I <\/span>don\u2019t <\/span><\/i>need; are we not smart enough to apply that logic to building and distributing things I do need? It\u2019s not just me that needs it, it\u2019s every single human on the planet.<\/span><\/p>\n

I am waiting my turn. I am looking for ways to jump the line. I can count on one hand the number of times I\u2019ve had a hug since March, 2020. <\/span><\/p>\n

I have no idea what the right thing to do is.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To jump the line or not jump the line, that is the question. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":13037,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-op-ed","masonry-post","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13036"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13042,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13036\/revisions\/13042"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}