Just to be safe, I got a third vaccination — but I’m still worried
Mike Snyder says a pandemic with a rapidly mutating virus is fraught with uncertainty.
The pharmacy tech who approaches me at the “Consultation” window looks to be about 18. “William,” his name tag says. Unruly strands of dark hair hang over his forehead. The CVS is swarming with customers, but William exudes calm, youthful competence. “How can I help you?” he asks brightly.
“I’d like to get a third COVID shot,” I say. “I’m a transplant patient.” A few days earlier, federal health agencies had authorized a third dose of the COVID-19 vaccine for certain people with weakened immunity. I’ve been taking anti-rejection drugs, which work by suppressing the immune system, since undergoing a liver transplant in 1998. My doctors advised me to get a booster. Yet the prospect of more antibodies churning through my bloodstream hasn’t ended my struggle to distinguish between prudence and panic as I grope my way through a changing public health landscape.
“Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it,” then-President Donald Trump said last October after he emerged triumphantly from a hospital where he received COVID treatment unavailable to most Americans. I am not among those inclined to heed Trump’s advice, but the sentiment he expressed is not uncommon — particularly after a moment when it seemed that the worst was over. Nor is it limited to vaccine skeptics or anti-mask crusaders. People appear determined to reclaim their old lives, COVID be damned. Look at the crowds at Astros games, the long lines at airports. Kids are going back to school — kids have to go to school, right? — leaving parents conflicted and terrified as political
fights rage over mask requirements.
At the CVS, William doesn’t ask for any proof that I’m eligible for a third dose; it’s an honor system, apparently. He pulls out a form and starts asking questions: Have I been infected with COVID, have I recently been around anyone known to be infected, have I taken certain medications. I sign the form.
“Have a seat behind the blue screen,” William says. “I’ll be right over.”
Demand for third shots has been high since the announcement, William tells me. Are some people cheating? Perhaps. But the once-scarce vials are now so abundant that Harris County officials are offering $100 to people who get their first dose. Soon, boosters will become available to the general population.
William jabs me like a pro. While waiting the required 15 minutes afterward, I consider the moral implications of Americans getting third doses while so much of the world lacks a first. I’m reminded of childhood moments when I left food uneaten on my plate, and my mother told me that children in China were starving. I remember thinking: “If only there were some way I could get this creamed spinach to those hungry kids …”
I’m grateful for my vaccinations — all three of them. But the additional dose, I know, is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. Gov. Greg Abbott reportedly got a third shot, and he got COVID. The delta variant has changed the calculus. At the end of July I took my first flight since the pandemic started — Houston to Boston, for an 11-day visit to Cape Cod. Around the time I left, news emerged that a series of July 4 celebrations in Provincetown, at the tip of the Cape, had led to the infections of roughly 1,000 people, almost all of them vaccinated. The discovery led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to advise vaccinated people to resume wearing masks indoors. Delta, it was now clear, could infect the vaccinated — though most cases were not severe — and they could spread the virus to others.
Because of my health issues, I can’t afford even a mild case of COVID. I had planned a second trip, later in August, to Washington state — my first visit to the Pacific Northwest. I was scheduled to leave a week after returning from the Cape. After much agonizing — and consultation with doctors, who were maddeningly noncommittal — I canceled my flight and hotel bookings. I got a COVID test a few days after spending time in crowded airports; the result was negative. Days after getting my third vaccination, I told friends I had misgivings about attending a planned indoor social gathering; it’s a monthly get-together that we had conducted via Zoom during the first year of the pandemic. A few months ago, when everyone in our circle was vaccinated and the danger seemed to have subsided, we happily resumed meeting in person. Now what?
It’s hard to make a sound risk-benefit calculation without sufficient data. Statistics assure us that airline travel (under normal circumstances) is safe, that texting while driving is reckless. A pandemic caused by a new, rapidly mutating virus is fraught with uncertainty; as scientific knowledge grows, public health guidance changes. In some ways, the decisions were easier back at the start, when we all worried about picking up the virus from sitting on a park bench or touching a doorknob. Vulnerable people like me just stayed home. It wasn’t fun, but I didn’t constantly secondguess my decisions. Now, a voice in my head asks if I’m depriving myself of rich life experiences based on fear. Is a plane trip to Washington state, or an evening with vaccinated friends, really more dangerous than, say, driving a few miles in my car? I have no idea. But it feels different.
Whenever this nightmare ends — or perhaps evolves into an endemic problem like the flu or the common cold — its legacy will be more than the lives it claimed (4 million and counting), the economic calamity it caused or the suffering it inflicted on infected patients and their loved ones. For me, at least, the nagging sense of uncertainty, of doubt, will linger like the bitter aftertaste of a bad cup of coffee.