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livI am starting to think slightly optimistic thoughts about putting this pandemic behind us.
So first of all I got my first dose of Astra-Zeneca last week. I'm not sure I have much to say about it, I had a similar experience and similar emotions to everybody else who's already talked about it. But for my own records:
Theoretically the vaccine has now been offered to everybody classified as "vulnerable" in England. This isn't entirely true because the official definitions don't perfectly capture reality and some people have slipped through the cracks, but we have pretty good coverage of everybody over 50 plus healthcare workers and adults with risk-bearing health conditions. So they opened up vaccinations to everybody aged 45-50 and the system crashed (not just the booking website, I mean the actual system of vaccine delivery), because the entire cohort tried to book at once. In response, once that had been cleared up, instead of doing 40-45, they extended by one year every couple of days, and didn't announce in advance that they were going to do this.ghoti_mhic_uait texted me first thing in the morning saying everybody aged 41 and 10 months and upwards was eligible, so I ran straight to the website and booked appointments for both first and second dose.
Unlike a lot of people who have reported problems, I found the whole system worked smoothly. I was allocated two appointments at the same place, no more than a mile away from here, accessible by car, bike, or public transport. A few hours later I got a text inviting me to attend my GP, with a helpful web link where I could tell them I didn't need an appointment since I'd already booked at a vaccination centre. I thought the plan was to do the general public at centres and the vulnerable at GP practices but it seems that there's still two systems running in parallel. But anyway, that was entirely efficient.
I was very hyped up all week, and when I realized the first appointment would be on May the Fourth, Star Wars Day, I decided to dress up for my jab. But then it was a really blustery day and I didn't want to make either cycling or baring my arm inconvenient, so I compromised on just doing Princess Leia hair and a white top, not full cosplay. I cycled down to the indoor bowling club by the river, I arrived 20 minutes early because I was nervous and had left plenty of time. They were happy to let me in and in fact the venue wasn't at all crowded. I had brought my confirmation email with my booking number and the letter with my NHS number, but neither was needed. The greeter just typed my name, address and DOB into a rather laborious app, asked if I was likely to have been exposed to Covid or likely to be pregnant and sent me in to the main hall. I hardly had time to wait at all (even though I was still quite a bit before my appointment time) when I was sent into the booth. There were three people there including the person actually performing the injection. They asked several questions about potential risk factors for a bad vaccine reaction, such as history of allergies and blood disorders. They explained the common and rare side effects and I gave informed consent to have the vaccine. Then they told me to wait 15 minutes before cycling (or driving), but I didn't need to wait actually in the centre, I was welcome to start wheeling my bike home immediately.
In fact I sat down for a few minutes to get my things together and have emotions about actually being vaccinated. Then I went outside since I figured it was safest to minimize time in an enclosed space. I managed to overlap slightly with my OSOs and metamour just arriving but we couldn't really stop to talk because we were all on a fairly tight schedule. Then I cycled home, and got on with the rest of my day. I had a couple of days of very mild and possibly imaginary symptoms, a bit more of a headache than is typical for me, slightly achey neck and shoulders which could have been just bad posture though I'm not usually prone to pain in that particular location.
I have been very reluctant to make plans for "when this is over" because 2020 was just such a shitshow and everybody who planned anything ended up cancelling it. Also because I'm very concerned about the government yet again ending restrictions too soon and just betting on vaccines to keep deaths acceptably low. But having had my first dose and with an appointment booked for the second in mid-July, I'm ready to start imagining that I might get to do fun things by August. That's a weird feeling, I've been very emotional about maybe starting to look forward to things.
In the meantime I'm not really changing my behaviour much. It's currently lawful to meet outdoors in small groups, which I was already comfortable doing before I was vaccinated (except when the case rate was terrifyingly high in December and January.) From 17 May it will be lawful to meet in bigger groups outdoors, which is fine, and small groups indoors, which I don't really want to do until I have had my second dose. I'm bubbled with my partners and their children (as of Christmas), so I'm not completely starved of non-husband contact or weather-independent time outside my house.
I'm continuing to work from home at least until mid-June, and my manager and I are lobbying to delay our return until most people have had both vaccines. If work insist that I have to take the bus and work in my office, well, I'll do that. First dose makes me feel a lot more confident than I would have with no vaccine at all, and work are really good at meaningful safety precautions, particularly keeping all their workforce in small bubbles and doing their own really good test and trace because the official one is basically non-functional. There has not been one documented case of transmission within the campus since this started (currently only people doing actual bench science and people directly supporting them are working in person.)
The big question mark is returning to in-person synagogue services. I am really desperate to be back in shul, and I'm pleased that we are pretty much determined that a) nobody goes back until we nearly all can, and b) we will be keeping up with Zoom services in future, and if we can make the tech work, not just streaming but interactive between those in the building and those joining from home. Most probably this will happen from July, assuming the plan goes ahead to remove legal restrictions on 21 June. In some ways I'm more nervous that the goodwill will evaporate and we'll lose the inclusion gains of online services, than I am that lots of people will get infected, but on the other hand, going to synagogue in person would be a big step-up in risk, since it's a building that doesn't really have openable windows but some kind of weird air circulation system.
The situation in the UK looks pretty good for now. The vaccination schedule has accelerated, hospitalizations and deaths are really low. But we still have about 2000 new cases a day and that may be rising. And I'm very worried about removal of a lot of restrictions next week, indoor hospitality and allowing teens to go to school without masks seem particularly concerning. Plus there are still hotspots and the "Indian" variant is growing rather rapidly and we still have no meaningful border controls and no contact tracing and no support for isolation. The past year and a half have convinced me that elimination is the only viable strategy, you can't "live with" low levels of infection because cases always, always just explode. (I don't believe vaccination alone changes this calculus.) However the people in power seem to think they can make money and political capital out of mass death, and the recent election suggests they may get away with it. Also the global situation is obviously dire, with new cases at their highest ever point, essentially no vaccination programme in most of Africa, and the humanitarian disaster in India and South Asia. So it would be morally wrong to start celebrating that the pandemic is "over", and also practically speaking foolish, since nobody is safe until everybody is safe.
So anyway, last weekend, just before the polycule got our vaccines in fact, we met up for a Lag B'Omer picnic, including metamour's parents. I don't feel ready to celebrate the "end" of this plague yet, but it was a good excuse for some lovely family time, building forts out of big sticks, and being social safely.
I'm also aware that I was over-cautious last summer when cases were low, because of fallacious thinking: I thought restrictions were being lifted too early, which was true as it did in fact lead to a second wave which kind of crashed into the third. But retaining personal restrictions for myself didn't help with that, it just meant I missed out on fun things I could have done while I had the chance. I want to enjoy outdoor social things over the summer; I'm lucky enough that I'm not being forced to work in an unsafe environment and generally have control over my life, so I should assess potential activities based on real risks, not on emotions about how the pandemic is terrible. I don't entirely agree withsiderea's take on the eye of the storm but she makes points worth thinking about:
I also have a kind of survivor's guilt going on here. The fact I made it to the point where, as a healthy 40-something, I could be vaccinated, reflects massive privilege. I haven't been ill (I think I almost certainly never caught Covid at all, though I had some weird respiratory symptoms April last year), and nobody close to me has died, and I've basically been fine economically and my mental health has been, well, the worst I've ever experienced but that's a very mild worst. It's not particularly helpful to get sucked into that, but I record it here in the interests of being emotionally honest.
So first of all I got my first dose of Astra-Zeneca last week. I'm not sure I have much to say about it, I had a similar experience and similar emotions to everybody else who's already talked about it. But for my own records:
Theoretically the vaccine has now been offered to everybody classified as "vulnerable" in England. This isn't entirely true because the official definitions don't perfectly capture reality and some people have slipped through the cracks, but we have pretty good coverage of everybody over 50 plus healthcare workers and adults with risk-bearing health conditions. So they opened up vaccinations to everybody aged 45-50 and the system crashed (not just the booking website, I mean the actual system of vaccine delivery), because the entire cohort tried to book at once. In response, once that had been cleared up, instead of doing 40-45, they extended by one year every couple of days, and didn't announce in advance that they were going to do this.
ghoti_mhic_uait texted me first thing in the morning saying everybody aged 41 and 10 months and upwards was eligible, so I ran straight to the website and booked appointments for both first and second dose.Unlike a lot of people who have reported problems, I found the whole system worked smoothly. I was allocated two appointments at the same place, no more than a mile away from here, accessible by car, bike, or public transport. A few hours later I got a text inviting me to attend my GP, with a helpful web link where I could tell them I didn't need an appointment since I'd already booked at a vaccination centre. I thought the plan was to do the general public at centres and the vulnerable at GP practices but it seems that there's still two systems running in parallel. But anyway, that was entirely efficient.
I was very hyped up all week, and when I realized the first appointment would be on May the Fourth, Star Wars Day, I decided to dress up for my jab. But then it was a really blustery day and I didn't want to make either cycling or baring my arm inconvenient, so I compromised on just doing Princess Leia hair and a white top, not full cosplay. I cycled down to the indoor bowling club by the river, I arrived 20 minutes early because I was nervous and had left plenty of time. They were happy to let me in and in fact the venue wasn't at all crowded. I had brought my confirmation email with my booking number and the letter with my NHS number, but neither was needed. The greeter just typed my name, address and DOB into a rather laborious app, asked if I was likely to have been exposed to Covid or likely to be pregnant and sent me in to the main hall. I hardly had time to wait at all (even though I was still quite a bit before my appointment time) when I was sent into the booth. There were three people there including the person actually performing the injection. They asked several questions about potential risk factors for a bad vaccine reaction, such as history of allergies and blood disorders. They explained the common and rare side effects and I gave informed consent to have the vaccine. Then they told me to wait 15 minutes before cycling (or driving), but I didn't need to wait actually in the centre, I was welcome to start wheeling my bike home immediately.
In fact I sat down for a few minutes to get my things together and have emotions about actually being vaccinated. Then I went outside since I figured it was safest to minimize time in an enclosed space. I managed to overlap slightly with my OSOs and metamour just arriving but we couldn't really stop to talk because we were all on a fairly tight schedule. Then I cycled home, and got on with the rest of my day. I had a couple of days of very mild and possibly imaginary symptoms, a bit more of a headache than is typical for me, slightly achey neck and shoulders which could have been just bad posture though I'm not usually prone to pain in that particular location.
I have been very reluctant to make plans for "when this is over" because 2020 was just such a shitshow and everybody who planned anything ended up cancelling it. Also because I'm very concerned about the government yet again ending restrictions too soon and just betting on vaccines to keep deaths acceptably low. But having had my first dose and with an appointment booked for the second in mid-July, I'm ready to start imagining that I might get to do fun things by August. That's a weird feeling, I've been very emotional about maybe starting to look forward to things.
In the meantime I'm not really changing my behaviour much. It's currently lawful to meet outdoors in small groups, which I was already comfortable doing before I was vaccinated (except when the case rate was terrifyingly high in December and January.) From 17 May it will be lawful to meet in bigger groups outdoors, which is fine, and small groups indoors, which I don't really want to do until I have had my second dose. I'm bubbled with my partners and their children (as of Christmas), so I'm not completely starved of non-husband contact or weather-independent time outside my house.
I'm continuing to work from home at least until mid-June, and my manager and I are lobbying to delay our return until most people have had both vaccines. If work insist that I have to take the bus and work in my office, well, I'll do that. First dose makes me feel a lot more confident than I would have with no vaccine at all, and work are really good at meaningful safety precautions, particularly keeping all their workforce in small bubbles and doing their own really good test and trace because the official one is basically non-functional. There has not been one documented case of transmission within the campus since this started (currently only people doing actual bench science and people directly supporting them are working in person.)
The big question mark is returning to in-person synagogue services. I am really desperate to be back in shul, and I'm pleased that we are pretty much determined that a) nobody goes back until we nearly all can, and b) we will be keeping up with Zoom services in future, and if we can make the tech work, not just streaming but interactive between those in the building and those joining from home. Most probably this will happen from July, assuming the plan goes ahead to remove legal restrictions on 21 June. In some ways I'm more nervous that the goodwill will evaporate and we'll lose the inclusion gains of online services, than I am that lots of people will get infected, but on the other hand, going to synagogue in person would be a big step-up in risk, since it's a building that doesn't really have openable windows but some kind of weird air circulation system.
The situation in the UK looks pretty good for now. The vaccination schedule has accelerated, hospitalizations and deaths are really low. But we still have about 2000 new cases a day and that may be rising. And I'm very worried about removal of a lot of restrictions next week, indoor hospitality and allowing teens to go to school without masks seem particularly concerning. Plus there are still hotspots and the "Indian" variant is growing rather rapidly and we still have no meaningful border controls and no contact tracing and no support for isolation. The past year and a half have convinced me that elimination is the only viable strategy, you can't "live with" low levels of infection because cases always, always just explode. (I don't believe vaccination alone changes this calculus.) However the people in power seem to think they can make money and political capital out of mass death, and the recent election suggests they may get away with it. Also the global situation is obviously dire, with new cases at their highest ever point, essentially no vaccination programme in most of Africa, and the humanitarian disaster in India and South Asia. So it would be morally wrong to start celebrating that the pandemic is "over", and also practically speaking foolish, since nobody is safe until everybody is safe.
So anyway, last weekend, just before the polycule got our vaccines in fact, we met up for a Lag B'Omer picnic, including metamour's parents. I don't feel ready to celebrate the "end" of this plague yet, but it was a good excuse for some lovely family time, building forts out of big sticks, and being social safely.
I'm also aware that I was over-cautious last summer when cases were low, because of fallacious thinking: I thought restrictions were being lifted too early, which was true as it did in fact lead to a second wave which kind of crashed into the third. But retaining personal restrictions for myself didn't help with that, it just meant I missed out on fun things I could have done while I had the chance. I want to enjoy outdoor social things over the summer; I'm lucky enough that I'm not being forced to work in an unsafe environment and generally have control over my life, so I should assess potential activities based on real risks, not on emotions about how the pandemic is terrible. I don't entirely agree with
siderea's take on the eye of the storm but she makes points worth thinking about: What I know is that we have to be emotionally prepared for the possibility of victory being snatched from our fingers, and having to go back to restrictive preventive measures.Not quite true for me as with our 12-week dosing schedule I won't be fully vaccinated for a while, and I just have to hope that I do get some space between getting my second dose and getting overwhelmed by variants or a case rate so high the vaccines can't contain it. Indeed I have some hope that the UK will actually pull out of this, and that the third-fourth wave will be relatively small. But I don't know.
The clear skies we're seeing might merely be the calm in the eye of a storm.
Consequently, I would advise everyone who is fully vaccinated to make the most of their liberty while they have it, in case it goes away again.
I also have a kind of survivor's guilt going on here. The fact I made it to the point where, as a healthy 40-something, I could be vaccinated, reflects massive privilege. I haven't been ill (I think I almost certainly never caught Covid at all, though I had some weird respiratory symptoms April last year), and nobody close to me has died, and I've basically been fine economically and my mental health has been, well, the worst I've ever experienced but that's a very mild worst. It's not particularly helpful to get sucked into that, but I record it here in the interests of being emotionally honest.
