After an Anxiety-Filled Year, I’m So Relieved to Be Fully Vaccinated
After an Anxiety-Filled Year, I’m So Relieved to Be Fully Vaccinated
I think everyone can agree that the last year has been, to put it bluntly, absolute shit. For 14+ months, the whole world has been gripped by a deadly virus that refuses to go away and people who refuse to take it seriously. But after more than a year of mental health struggles, crippling uncertainty and loss, we now have a glimmer of hope that the pandemic will be (somewhat) overcome.
Since the coronavirus pandemic started, scientists have been furiously working to develop a vaccine that would prevent the virus from spreading or taking more lives. Now countries around the world are working to make sure their citizens are fully vaccinated. It’s been no different in the US.
The Biden administration has been aggressive in its mission to get vaccines into people’s arms. The result? More than 100 million people, or 31.8 percent of the US population, are fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). As of April 30, I’m excited to say that I’m one of those people.
While I am by all accounts incredibly lucky, the last year hasn’t been a walk in the park. Early on in the pandemic, I experienced crippling anxiety and depression that stopped me from stepping outside of my home and eventually led me to be diagnosed with migraines with aura.
By the end of 2020, I believed things were turning around. I moved into my new place, my dad was back at work and vaccine availability was just around the corner. Cut to a week into 2021 and one fascist-led insurrection later, and I was newly unemployed and still very much stuck at home due to the pandemic.
Five months later and I’m convinced (or at least I’m trying to convince myself) that things are looking up. In early April, I finally became eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine when Massachusetts opened it up to folks with one comorbidity. Determined, I ran to get an appointment and just a couple of hiccups later, I managed to nab an appointment for this lifesaving vaccine.
I received my first shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on April 9. I couldn’t get over how relieved I was to get the shot. I knew that I was still a few weeks away from being inoculated but getting the first shot felt like a weight had been lifted. Three weeks later, on April 30, I received my second dose. Thankfully, I didn’t experience many, if any, side effects from the booster shot.
It’s exciting to see family and friends getting their COVID-19 vaccines and working towards a return to normalcy. I’ve already started making plans with friends I’ve barely seen since the pandemic began and members of the book club I belong to have discussed meeting in person. I hope that as more people around the world are vaccinated, we can begin to open up travel and I can see my family in Chile and Germany.
But along with the excitement, there’s also a lot of frustration, particularly towards people who outright refuse to get the vaccine or do any of the other things we need to do to curb the spread of COVID. Experts are now saying that the U.S. is unlikely to reach “herd immunity” due to persistent hesitancy about vaccines and widely circulating virus variants, The New York Times reported.
While I understand some hesitancy, I can’t really wrap my head around the growing distrust of medicine and science. Vaccine hesitancy can be so detrimental to individuals themselves and their community at large.
Years ago, similar hesitancy led my mom to stop allowing my sister and me from getting all of the HPV vaccines. This resulted in my HPV diagnosis and fairly traumatic colposcopy earlier this year. I know that my mom made her decision in order to protect us. I also know that with scientific-based information, she would follow the science and protect us by getting us vaccinated.
My hope is that more people take the time to educate themselves about the science behind these innovative vaccines and ultimately get it for themselves. The continuing pandemic is (hopefully) a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence and we should all do our part to stop the spread, protect ourselves and protect others.