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My Fully Vaxxed Life Won’t Change Right Away
But perfectly average days no longer terrify me, and that’s incredible
On Monday, I crossed a pandemic milestone: I reached the two-week threshold since my second vaccine shot. I am, for all intents and purposes, in the clear. I suspect there will be Covid-19 booster shots coming in the years ahead, and I do not mind this in the slightest because the number one thing I’ve been worried about over the last 14 months — will I get Covid? Will I give it to someone else? Will I get sick? Will they get sick? — is no longer something I am worried about. That was the goal, wasn’t it? This is what we wanted, no?
I know that the pandemic is not over, far from it, and what is happening in India right now, among other places, is tragic and horrible. We are not out of this, as a country, as a society, as a species. There is so much more work to be done. But this is also the most personal of global stories. We have all gone through this collectively, but we also have all gone through it individually. And it is also undeniable that once an individual person has been fully vaccinated — say, this particular person — the pandemic changes for this person. It has to. How could it not? Isn’t that the point of having vaccines in the first place?
