2nd shot reaction. Pow!

I got the second shot. My bicep hurts, my head aches, and I feel weak.

I am happy about this. I don't mind being uncomfortable for a day. After all, I am a Boomer, and am inclined to believe that science fixes things.

Some people will use my experience of feeling unwell as part of their justification for not getting the COVID vaccine. Some people have a semi-bad reaction, and I am one of those, apparently. Fox News has story after story about vaccine reluctance and the confused instructions on what a vaccinated person is safe to do. Must a two-shot person still wear a mask? Can they spread the disease? The CDC says they can travel, but shouldn't? That seems weird.

And then the question, said on Fox with a sneering tone: How does the Biden administration expect to get reluctant people to get the vaccine if there isn't any payoff in the form of getting rid of masks? How come all the confusion?

Save the day.

The messaging by public health professional people in and around the Biden administration is coming across as very tentative, over-cautious and, unrealistic. It is as if they are being kill-joys because they can. A clear Yes/No bright line between the vaccinated and the un-vaccinated would go a long way toward increasing vaccine compliance. Young people and older vaccinated people both have an interest in increasing vaccinations for everyone, including the reluctant. The fewer people with the virus, the fewer people walking around as petri dishes creating new variants, ones that might confound the vaccine. At least, that is how I understand the science.

Deus ex machina. 

Americans born into postwar America--i.e. WW2, and therefore Boomers, therefore me--learned a lesson about science.  We learned it thoroughly, and too well. In the mythical and simplified American understanding of WW2, we won in Europe because brave Americans overwhelmed the Germans from the west, landing on D-Day and moving east to Berlin. (Eastern Front? What was that???)  Plus, the moral dimension: If Hitler hadn't been so racist and cruel to Jews, then Jewish scientists might have stayed in Germany, loyal Germans, and created the atomic bomb for Germany. We had the scientists, lucky us. And then, of course, the war with Japan was all about the atomic bombs--not the carrier war, the blockade or the million troops the Soviets moved to Manchuria ready to invade. 

Boomers bathed in the simple postwar lesson that everything will be OK because we have the smart scientists. Younger Americans learned a different message. They learned that our nuclear power plants fail, that our plastics get into the ocean, that our petrochemical science is warming the planet, that the chemicals we created are destroying our sperm count, that the internet is destroying our democracy, that technology is a monster that looks good on the surface, but is dangerous, too. Younger people see a Frankenstein amid the science. 

I am old-school. If science got us into a mess, science will get us out of it. I doubt the virus was created by scientists in a lab, but who knows? Living things are laboratories where mutations are tried out. One way or the other, we got the vaccine and now the vaccine will protect me. Science created it. 

My arm hurts and I feel miserable: There is Tylenol for that--more science. If there are new variants, then vaccine companies--somewhere, somehow, wherever they are--will make booster shots for them. If anti-maskers and conspiracy theorists want to think the CIA and Bill Gates are in cahoots to kill America, and they don't want to take the vaccine, then they shouldn't. They can please themselves, and put up signs denouncing Fauci. They can crowd into churches on Easter, sing loudly to their heart's content, spread the virus, maybe get sick, maybe die, and hasten their arrival in heaven. It's their decision, their lives, their eternity. 

I got my vaccine and I am thrilled to have it, even though I feel miserable right now. If others don't get the vaccine, for whatever reason, it's a free country. It would be better if they got the vaccine, but I don't sweat it.