Vaccination

from the House of Hope with an image that says “For You, For Me, For All: I am COVID vaccinated.”

House of Hope worked with Lowell General Hospital to get its staff and residents vaccinated. Some employees and staff resisted.

“It’s too new,” they said, as I said under my breath, “It beats a ventilator.”

But in many ways the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are not new. Yes, they were approved for COVID use only months ago under a Food and Drug Administration emergency use agreement, but the first paper on MRNA (messenger RNA) was published 30 years ago. The technology was considered the Holy Grail by vaccine researchers. And it was ready for scientific trials as the COVID pandemic began to terrorize the world.

I received my first Moderna vaccine at Lowell General Hospital. The staff was organized and it went smoothly. I had a slightly stiff arm that I barely noticed until my dog climbed up on my sofa and landed on it. I had no other symptoms.

I encountered a small hiccup in obtaining my second dose of the vaccine. I arrived at the LGH site on Pawtucket Boulevard — once a Wang Laboratories manufacturing site, then M/A-COM and now known as the Cross River Center — on Feb. 18, precisely in time for my appointment. You are advised to arrive at the door 3 minutes before your appointment to promote social distancing.

A gentleman in charge of traffic flow asked me, “Is this your first or second dose?” I replied “second dose.” Then he asked “Pfizer or Moderna?” I answered Moderna and was turned away. Apparently, my vaccination was held up somewhere due to the weather in the Southwest and Midwest. I was told to come back Monday.

A friend of mine had recently lost her husband to COVID-19. He had been on a ventilator so I was nervous about any delay in getting the final dose of the vaccination.

Those who know me, know that I am not an early riser. But on Monday morning, I managed to get myself down the boulevard, barely a mile from my house, by 7:15. I was in and out by 8. Again, as with the first vaccine, LGH ran the operation smoothly.

You are advised not to take ibuprofen, acetaminophen, aspirin or the like before you get the vaccine. But you might want to learn from my experience and not wait 20 hours before taking one of these medications.

There is still much to learn about the virus and the vaccines, but the virus has been with us just over a year. In that time, it has claimed more than 500,000 American lives. I didn’t want to add my name to the growing list.

Researchers now know that the vaccines successfully prevent the disease from slamming the human body with grave illness and death. But can they prevent its transmission from human to human? In just the last few days, they’ve found good evidence that at least the Pfizer vaccine can.

Despite the remaining questions, the vaccine beats a ventilator.

And mask up! Masks beat ventilators, too.