December 21, 2020: No Reassurance Needed -

Remember when the pandemic hit, and all of a sudden, you (or at least, I) got emails from every entity you’d ever done business with, or considered doing business with, which was why they had your email: 

We Care About YOU! Here’s what Wells Fargo is doing to help flatten the curve! Here’s what Obscure Dogwalking Service, or Little Store That Sells Cushions, is doing to help flatten the curve!

Does it feel to you like the advent (sorry, Christmas joke) of the vaccine has brought on a repeat? I’m hearing from the Muslim Educational Trust and from the Pope, both recommending I get the vaccine when it is available. 

(The original of this photo was taken by an AP photographer named Andrew Medichini. Medichini seems almost too good to be true, in a vaccine article.)

My PCP recommends it, as do the doctors at clinics I visited years ago. I will do it! I promise!

Our president-elect and our outgoing VP both made sure we saw them getting their shots, to “reassure” us the vaccine was safe. Republican politicians who delayed and halved the stimulus checks – but who insisted on raising the deduction for business lunches to 100% rather than 50%* - and who have gone maskless, trotted right out and got their shots, ahead of deserving old folks and essential workers. Call me cynical, but I doubt they did that to reassure me. I think they just wanted protection from the damn virus, and luckily, their lunatic leader thinks the vaccine is all about him.

Also on repeat: people shouting “There are no long-term studies!” Yes, we know. Agitated people were shouting that there were no long term studies about masks, just a few months back. Now they are shouting about vaccines. There has not been a long term yet, shouters. Hang tough.  

*I mention the business lunch deduction because Paul Waldman called me feckless.  In an article titled “Why Republicans demanded that tax break for business lunches,” Waldman writes:

“[I]t usually takes Republicans doing something implausibly evil — like trying to snatch health insurance from tens of millions and take away protections for preexisting conditions from everyone — for Democrats to realize they should all get on the same page and make a big deal out of it.”

Also:

“Even when the GOP hands Democrats a bludgeon and says, “Would you like to pummel us with this?” Democrats often don’t take the opportunity…”

Spoiler: Waldman’s answer to “why Republicans demanded the tax break…” can be summed up as “because Democrats let them get away with it.” I’m so tired of people like Paul Waldman, and I hate being called feckless. I’m feckful, I swear.

We have made it through the longest night of the year. One of my young medical friends got COVID this week (and is doing okay so far, thanks), but two other young medical friends got vaccinated. In Oregon, 4,475 people got vaccinated in this first week.

It’s a start. And it's reassuring.