104. It ain’t over...

I was checking out at the Safeway and casually mentioned that I was all vaccinated and had my post-vaccination two weeks in. The checker immediately told me that she was going to have nothing to do with the vaccine

 

She is white, and pollsters say that the highest percentages of vaccine resisters are among  young white Republicans and white evangelicals. I also know that there is an anti-vaccine group on the pollical left, anchored by a Kennedy. I don’t know if our Safeway friend belongs to any of above—but chances are….

 

I think back to getting my shots at Cloverleaf, the local fair hall. It was a super-efficient affair from check-in to shot to the required 15-minute post-vaccination wait.  I didn’t know everyone in the room, but I recognized several and talked to some. We were all in the 70+ category, and there were Republicans and church-goers among us.

 

All this went through my mind at the Safeway checkout. And it immediately occurred to me that those of us over 70—of all political and religious persuasions—have been exposed to polio stories if not the virus itself. As it turned out, one of my fellow vaccinees told me her own polio story during our 15-minute wait. Together we remembered the “dog days” of August, and, in my case, an end to the Minnesota swimming season. 

 

And we remembered chickenpox and measles—how our moms took us to a neighbor’s house to be exposed and infected so that we got chickenpox young, when it was less severe. I’m not sure on measles before it got its vaccine; I know I had it and was kept in a dark room for a week, my parents worried about the impact of measles on the eyes. 

 

We in the 70 + crowd have personal memories and experiences of diseases, and of vaccinations that work: measles, chickenpox, polio, smallpox—we got the vaccination; it’s no longer necessary as smallpox is eradicated! Most of us automatically okayed the new vaccines for our children. Now it appears that some 30-40 percent of those children are no longer believers. Enough of them to give our coronavirus the time and space it needs to keep mutating and moving among us, like the “1918 Flu” did a hundred years ago, when it went on for three or four years. 

 

It ain’t over till it’s over, as Yogi Berra said.

 

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