Mar 11, 2021

I got vaccinated today, and my primary side effect was feeling conflicted about it.

By my standards, I should still be waiting for months to get immunized. I’m healthy, in my 30s, and have been working remote for virtually the whole last year. But I work for a railroad, which are classified by the state as essential employees in the transportation sector.

I was really torn about this. There are still so many high-risk folks who won’t be getting a chance for at least another month or two. In the state I live, immunocompromised folks are lumped in with the general public, and get no accommodations. And the math is ultimately zero-sum: every dose taken by someone who can manage their risk is a dose that can’t be given to someone more vulnerable.

But ultimately I couldn’t identify a clear distinction between my hesitation, and the more general vaccine hesitancy that’s resulting in large numbers of essential workers. And every recent story of an outbreak in a nursing home, where 40% of the unvaccinated nurses contracted Covid while 0% of those vaccinated did, solidified the decision.

I really hope we’ll be able to get out shit together and steepen the curve, and that we flip from being supply constrained to needing to seek out the remaining folks. But I’m ready to start turning the corner from the last hellish year.