Michael McLeod
Jim: You asked for a report about any after-effect of my covid 19 shot this morning and I thought I'd answer you here rather than via email, and flesh it out in terms of the whole experience in case anyone else is interested.
I thought I was going to get Moderna but they had switched to Pfizer. Fine by me.
It was quite the spectacle, the whole affair - not sure what the staging of this thing has been like elsewhere, but the operation down here in Orlando may well be the largest in the country. It is at the massive ghost town called the Orange County Convention Center. I say ghost town because conveniently, the convention business is zilch, thanks to the virus, so we had the run of the place. There was plenty of room on the grounds for hundreds of cars to line up, surely at least a thousand on the winding roads around the center, leading to the massive garage beneath it where our shots awaited us.
First traffic jam in my life I was grateful to be a part of.
I had made an appointment via an internet site weeks ago. You had to have one, you couldn't just show up, and they had people posted at points along the road to confirm everybody's name and info via a verification stamp they had emailed out to us. This was only for folks over 65 so it was a pretty crusty looking crowd. The line of cars moved slowly enough and stood still long enough that now and then an old codger or two got caught napping and had to be roused. We all stayed in our cars through the whole thing, start to finish, and got our shots through the windows of our cars, after answering a few check-in questions, when we got to the garage underneath the convention center.
Really well organized. Tracking every individual and every shot -- somewhere in a computer bank they've got my name, birthdate, address, phone number and time my shot was delivered. I made a point to look everybody in the eye and thank them along the way, from the first wayside check-in to the dude who administered the stick when I got to the end of the line and rolled down the window. I didn't actually say "thanks for quite possibly saving my life" but that was sure as hell the point I was trying to make.
As you pulled out at the other end of the garage after getting your shot they made you park in a big lot on the far side and wait for 10 minutes to see if anybody had a serious reaction - a rare, very rare event - before they got back on the road. It took me about two hours to get the shot, start to finish.
And that's the story of the most important drive-in I've ever been to.
I've heard just a very few stories of soreness and headaches or fatigue post-shot -- but it's been four hours now since I got home and other than just a wee bit of stiffness in the arm and the typical soreness in my shoulder around the muscle where I got the shot, I've had no reaction -- well not unless you call a great sigh of relief a reaction.
As you know it takes a couple of weeks for the t-lymphocytes and antibodies to get the message and start doing their thing and even then you only get about 50% immunity from that first shot; it's not until after the second shot, which I'll go back for in three weeks, that it gradually builds up to 95% or somewhere in that neighborhood. And even then you're advised to continue wearing masks to protect others in case you have unknowingly contracted a light load of the virus prior to your shot or shortly afterwards - and are asymptomatic and therefore, theoretically, a potential carrier who can unwittingly "shed" the virus with a sneeze or whatever and give it to others. Sounds like a remote possibility to me but I'll do as I'm told.
I say all this and post it for the benefit of our classmates, knowing that when you read it, Jim, you'll correct any layman errors I have made.
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