Vaxxed to the Max

It’s not quite three weeks since I got my second COVID-19 shot. This is how it’s going.

About a week after my first shot, I felt the lifting of my lingering long-haul symptoms. So that was great.

I had no aftereffects from either shot. My arm was sore after the first shot, but I barely felt the second injection at all.

As soon as I had my appointments, I booked a plane ticket. I would be flying on the first day I was considered fully vaccinated.

The week we got our second shot, our county changed the rules. It’s now allowed for people who have had both their shots to walk outside and go to the park without a mask. We took advantage of that fact! Nobody got within ten feet of us anyway. It felt like such a luxury to be outdoors, something that we never used to give a second thought.

We went to the grocery store to buy ice cream. Another activity that used to be completely normal but that we had given up for a year. It was nice to go to the store without a face shield and not break into a flop sweat.

I prepared for my flight with trepidation.

It’s one thing to walk around the neighborhood and go to the park, knowing there are no other people within several yards. It’s something else to go to the store, where max occupancy is enforced.

It’s an entirely different category to go to an airport with thousands of other people traveling from who knows where.

As much as I want things to go back to normal, my tolerance for personal risk is basically zero. I knew there would have to be a way to go on my trip without being exposed to every type of pathogen from every region under the sun. I bought a special helmet.

Much to my disappointment, I was required to take off my mask in the security line. Everyone has to. When you show your ID, they want to make sure it’s really you, so you can have the correct name on your headstone after they give you COVID.

I put my helmet back on after I got on the plane, hoping it wasn’t too late.

This is the important part. Despite all my planning, I was exposed to roughly two hundred people with my helmet off. Not only that, I had to take off my cloth mask in a spot only a few feet away from the line, where one person after another had also stood with a bare face.

Nothing about that felt safe at all. I strongly doubt the CDC got any say in the TSA regulations.

For my purposes, while I’m definitely still worried about COVID-19, I want to avoid any and all respiratory illnesses. I don’t even want the common cold, much less influenza or, worse, any emerging thing that doesn’t even have a name yet. I’m definitely a convert to the mask life.

I had a good time wearing my helmet and realizing how much of the world was now reopened to me. I would feel safe wearing my helmet on the bus or the subway, and that means I can basically go anywhere I want.

I got to my destination, where about half of the people I came to see are fully vaccinated, while the other half have only had their first shot.

If you haven’t had to manage this yet, it’s not all that complicated. The fully vaccinated can hug in one room, and those who aren’t there yet can keep their masks on in another room. When everyone is together, we all just put our masks back on.

Now it’s been five days since I was at the airport with my mask off.

I’ve been nervous, I’ll admit it. I sneezed a couple of times and had to ask myself:

WHAT WAS THAT???

Hayfever?

Reaction to pet dander?

Bubonic plague?

I sneeze in bright sunlight, and I also sneeze if I taste strong peppermint, which is probably why  it has “pepper” in its name, but it still seems like a corny joke.

Culturally, our natural reaction is going to be, “Wow, this person is really a hypochondriac.” Getting worked up over a sneeze? Get over yourself.

Yet my first symptoms of COVID were a sneezing fit and itchy eyes.

At the time that I got sick, these were not recognized as potential coronavirus symptoms. I was feeling very weird, and I had gone to a social outing five days before, so my husband and I Googled and read through several lists of COVID symptoms, just to be safe.

I didn’t have a single symptom on the list, and not a single one of my symptoms were on the list.

Two weeks later, I was gasping for air like a trout on a riverbank and having tachycardia several times a day.

This is why I still pay careful attention to my state of health every time I sneeze.

I keep hearing of local cases - cases in my area, cases of people in my industry, cases of people who are one or two degrees of separation from me - where half a dozen or more people got the coronavirus at work because one individual thought they had “mild allergy symptoms.”

It’s high time people quit going out or going to work in person when they are sneezing or coughing or having a runny nose. Yet I fear it’s never going to change. Our Puritan work ethic is too deep in the bone, even though nothing destroys productivity more than a global pandemic.

The good news is, in spite of a couple of sneezes, I appear to be fine. I appear to have escaped the TSA plague gauntlet with no repercussions.

That sorta supports the idea that the shot worked. Or at least it doesn’t refute it.

Soon I will have been on my visit long enough to pass through a quarantine period. Then none of us will have to wear masks around each other and it will be just like the old days, sitting at home like normal.

Normal!