Yesterday after a great class finishing up Frankenstein in my British Lit class, I drove the hour back home, and my spouse and I went to Ingles, our local grocery store, where we hoped to get both flu shots and Covid boosters. We are neither one of us over 65, but my spouse has some health conditions (early cardiopulmonary disease) that we thought might get us qualified. I'm happy to report that we were successful in getting both shots.
I do wonder if this time is the last we'll get Covid shots. Last year I assumed that getting a Covid booster and a flu shot would be part of our autumnal rituals. This year, the future is much less clear, and not only for these vaccines.
The last few days have brought a lot of public handwringing over the indefinite suspension of Jimmy Kimmel. I haven't ever seen his late night show. I remember him from his days in the 1990's as the sidekick in Win Ben Stein's Money; from what I could tell, he was on there in the hopes that jock/frat boy types would keep watching the show. He's had more staying power than I would have predicted when I watched that show.
In terms of first amendment rights being erased, I'm much more worried about ordinary people who have been losing their jobs because of stray remarks or social media posts done on the employee's own time. I drove home on Thursday and heard a South Carolina state legislator talking about a professor at Presbyterian College. Friday morning I looked back over my blog and Facebook posts. I've always been careful what I post, so I didn't see any cause for alarm.
You might accuse me of self-censorship, of obeying in advance, of giving up my first amendment rights without using them. But I've been blogging a LONG time, and I remember even earlier days of blogging, when we all tried to be careful about how much about our personal lives we revealed. Some of us had jobs we wanted to keep, and some of us were aware the a lot of creeps out there might use personal information for nefarious purposes.
We had no idea how many creeps were out there and how many nefarious purposes there could be.
This morning, I went back through my blog for a different reason: I wanted to remember past Covid shots. Last year was my 7th booster, so yesterday was my 8th booster. Last year and 2022, I got my booster at the same time in September. In 2023, it was a bit later, in October. I remember being thrilled when I got us the appointment for our first Covid vaccines. The moment we were eligible, at 7 a.m., I started dialing for appointments, and I later wrote this blog post about it. At the time I thought about the fact that I used to do this dialing to try to get concert tickets and now it was for a vaccine.
That post is so hopeful. I would never have dreamed that we would come to a day when we'd need to worry about vanquished childhood diseases making a comeback, even as people who suffered from polio and measles in childhood are still with us. I am one of the last of a generation who routinely had chicken pox. I can't imagine why we want to unleash that on children again--or on adults, who will have childcare and work disrupted when their children are infected.
On a more mundane note, I have no side effects to report, only than sore arms--a small price to pay, if it means that I'm not laid low by these infections.
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