+10 potion of protection

Started: 2025-09-17 20:27:09

Submitted: 2025-09-17 21:44:20

Visibility: World-readable

Getting this year's COVID and flu shots, despite the best efforts of certain brain-wormed political appointees

Yesterday, like every fall since 2021, I got a COVID-19 shot. But this year, unlike previous years, the prospect for the shot was clouded by the new administration's anti-science anti-vaccine rhetoric and policies.

After a summer of vague uncertainty about whether the COVID-19 shot would even be approved this year, or who it would be approved for, or what hoops one would have to jump through to get it, last week Kaiser announced that it would be offering the vaccine to all of its members in walk-up clinics in their medical offices starting Monday, the 15th of September. (Never mind that the administration had decided that only people 65 or older were recommended to get the shot, and there were reports over the weekend that they might try to further restrict availability to people 75 and older.) Kiesa took the kids to our local office in Santa Cruz on Monday afternoon for their shots. I already had a visit scheduled to my doctor (on the other side of the mountain in Santa Clara, because my doctor in Santa Cruz moved out of state and there are no more doctors left on my side of the mountain) on Tuesday, so after my visit I nipped down to the pop-up clinic in the lobby.

The line for the flu+covid vaccine clinic looped around the lobby and down the hall, with a couple of well-ordered gaps for people to pass through the line. I waited in the line as it slowly moved forward and wondered how much of a gap I should leave when I reached the biggest discontinuity in the line.

For a brief moment, standing in the long line snaking around the lobby, waiting for my COVID-19 vaccine shot, I remembered what it felt like to get my first COVID-19 shot in the spring of 2021, at Levi's Stadium on the other side of Santa Clara, and the profound feeling of relief I felt to finally be exiting the acute phase of the pandemic.

After an hour of waiting, shuffling slowly around the lobby with the mid-day sun streaming in the large windows, past a poster advertising the vaccine shots printed with low-resolution Kaiser logos (it looked like the graphic designer had picked up web-resolution thumbnails and scaled them up way past the point of plausibility to the point where the individual pixels were clearly visible and the jpeg compression artifacts made the image almost painful to look at), I reached the front of the line and got a packet of papers talking about this year's covid shots. This included a page asking me to attest that I was freely electing to get the vaccine, and that I could ask for medical advice about whether the vaccine shot was right for me. (It was. I didn't need to ask.)

Finally I made it into the conference room where several tables were set up with nurses giving shots. They scanned my id card, confirmed that I wanted both the flu and covid shots, asked if I had any special eligibility from a list on a laminated page ("but it's ok if you don't"), then got two shots in my left arm, and I was done.

By the time I got my shot I had spent more than an hour waiting in line, so the whole thing was less convenient than it could have been. (I was already there, but it might have been faster to drive back to Santa Cruz.) But I got my COVID shot this year, giving me a +10 potion of protection against the virus and this year's flu, and no one can take it away from me.

California pride flag on the deck in the fog at night