Guilty of Stanislaus COVID vaccine line-skipping — with a reason
Desperation was my main emotion as I stomped toward the crowd in an entryway of the giant building last week, with fear coming in a close second. I didn’t know how this would end, but I was done waiting and seeing. Security was surprisingly light at the end of the rope funnel with only single, cheery woman asking, “What’s your business, today?” to the crush of masked middle-aged people shuffling by.
“Immunization clinic!” I chirped, as one accustomed to being obeyed would. She asked if I was an employee and I nodded and just kept moving the way she pointed. Momentum is everything in an assault.
The precious vaccine was being given out in a conference room in my insurance company’s hospital in northwest Modesto, and I needed it. My profession puts me in the Phase 1a, Tier 2 group, but that’s just my guess and I haven’t seen any emails or messages that said, “StanCo: Phase 1a Tier 1 is wrapped. Tier 2 — you’re up!” So I just showed up.
I queued up in a line of people wearing full scrubs, face-shields and bootie covers who leered at me in my sweatpants and camouflaged cloth mask I wear duck hunting. Seconds later my heart dropped when I saw a woman with a clipboard fast-walking toward me, demanding my appointment time. I mumbled and she asked if I was here for the second dose.
“Negative. Initial dose!” I wanted to use as many polysyllabic words as I could. Medical people are super bright, and I needed to blend in. We went through the charade of looking for me and my company’s name on her clipboard list, but I was busted and she seemed to sense it.
“Well, I didn’t expect to get this far,” I told her with a shrug. “I’m no doctor. I’m just one of your contractors.”
There in the hallway, I gushed about the fear I’ve lived with every work day for the past 10 months. I knew the vaccine wasn’t reserved for those with the biggest sob story. Our government developed a prioritized plan for distribution, a perfectly reasonable plan.
“My job is teaching young kids with autism in their homes and group homes, and I’m sick in my guts with worry about spreading this,” I blubbered, but she cut me off as a woman with a clipboard should.
“DOB?”
Wait, what? She’s not throwing me out?
“I’m older than Gavin Newsom,” I lied. We’re the same age.
On Jan. 8, Governor Newsom publicly declined his dose and threatened all of us vaccine line skippers with “sanctions.” And here I was getting scheduled for my vaccine. Before the governor. As he said, “I don’t think that will sit well with people.”
Waiting those four days for my shot was the worst. Like being a grunt in a war where the generals were in peace talks but there were snipers everywhere, scoping you.
I got my first Moderna vaccine Wednesday the 13th and I startled the nurse with my whimpering. Not from pain, which there was none, but from the sense of relief. I made it through. Now, the vax doesn’t mean I can go back to kissing grandmas tomorrow so if you try to hug me before the ides of March, you’ll get a Derrick Henry stiff arm. But the vax is a giant leap toward normal.
I did this for my students and fellow tin foil-hat conservatives. You aren’t more skeptical of the government than me. You don’t own more guns than me. And I want you to seek the vaccine out eagerly, because this thing is a miracle.
I read the whole Baden review of the vaccine research in the New England Journal of Medicine and it’s solid. But don’t bum-rush your local clinic or hospital; just call and get on the list. Storming a building just because you think you have the right is un-American.