I was sitting down to write an essay about vaccine impatience when my friend Josh called.
“I’m at Kedren, I think it’s near your house, I just got the coronavirus vaccine; they’re open for 30 more minutes, there’s no line, and they’re vaccinating anyone who walks up. If you want the vaccine you can get it right now.”
Panicking, excited, and immediately overwhelmed, I called my partner (who lives about 30 minutes from Kedren Community Health Center) to pass on the information and ask him for advice. “Tanya” he said, “What do you mean you don’t know what to do? Get in your car and go. I’ll meet you there.”
Kedren is the closest Covid-19 testing and vaccination facility to my house, and only a few blocks away from the house I lived in when I moved to LA; since the beginning of the pandemic I’ve been going there for my monthly Covid tests. The last time I was there for testing, I noticed a long line adjacent to the testing tents; I figured it was a line for vaccinations, but later learned that it was an unofficial standby line, which was both covered and critiqued in a well-circulated LA Times article.
It takes me 20 minutes to bike there, 10 to drive. I arrived 15 minutes after my friend’s call, rushing out of my car, already starting to cry. I saw a nurse and asked her if I was in the right place, and if my partner—trailing ten minutes behind me—would be able to get vaccinated as well. She smiled. “We’ve got plenty, we’ve got enough. He will definitely be able to get his vaccine, I promise.”
I walked over to the line, hands shaking, trying to think of who else I could call who could get there in time—who could I share the privilege of my knowledge with? I didn’t have my co-workers’ phone numbers (the majority of whom are Latino and live in the area); I didn’t know who else was close and in need. I was still waiting for my partner to arrive when I heard the doctor command a security guard, “Close the gate after the next 20 people.” I clutched my phone tighter, feeling helpless.
By the time my partner had reached the entrance, the gate was closed. The security guards told us they were waiting for the doctors to give their approval before letting more people enter. My partner was the second person in line.
I went back to my line, walking through the final registration process when he called. “The guards just told us they weren’t authorized to let anyone else in. I’m going to go home.” Tearing up, I told him to stay on the line. Asking the first name-badged person I could see, I was sent from employee to employee, waiting for each to tell me if there were enough doses to be able to let him in. I thought briefly if what I was doing was wrong, getting my partner in for his shot when there was someone waiting before him. But they had promised me, they promised me. They promised me he could get his vaccine.
Finally, one of the doctors arrived. “What’s going on here?” he asked. I explained. “He’s outside right now?” the doctor demanded. I nodded furiously; “He’s the second person in line.” He turned to the nurse I had been speaking with. “You can let him in, and only him. Go get him, now.” (Later in the night I heard him repeating variations of the same phrase to several other patients or nurses—several more people waiting in line were allowed in for vaccination).
When my partner finally arrived inside the gates, I started sobbing for real, shaking against his body. “Why are you crying?” he asked, half-laughing half-bemused. I was too worked up to try and explain: the anxiety of such a sudden change in routine, the worry that he wouldn’t get there in time, the pre-guilt if I got my vaccination but he didn’t, the fear of side effects coming from the Moderna vaccine, all the ethical conflicts I had about vaccine chasers and not wanting to be seen as one. Above all, the gratitude; the sheer disbelief of my luck, the relief at the beginning of the end of this nightmare of a year.
I got my vaccine first and waited outside for him to finish, as the line trickled to a stop. There was a blue tent directly outside of the testing area, and when people exited the vaccination tent you could see their shoes for a good few steps before their body came into view. I kept waiting for his white shoes to appear beneath the hem of the blue tent, worrying the whole time—what if they had run out of doses? What if something went wrong and he was having a reaction? I finally saw him walk out—shoes, shirt, smile crinkled in his eyes—and burst out crying (again).
I am an essential worker—I assist with the breakfast and food pantry programs at a local soup kitchen and homeless/low-income resource center. I regularly pass bags of breakfast over to homeless guests, unmasked and coughing; register high-risk maskless pantry guests through the window of their car before placing boxes of food in their trunks. I am exposed to the virus every day, yet I have no idea when I will be vaccinated.
I’m going to be losing my job in March. I’ve known this for a while—it’s a temporary position created just for the pandemic, its ending hastened by a tight budget. A few weeks ago, I stopped in the middle of assembling pantry boxes and thought, “What if we don’t get authorized for the vaccine before my job ends?”
I have had more Covid scares than I can count on one hand. Two of my co-workers have gotten the virus. I have several chronic illnesses (none life threatening, or on the list of high-risk conditions) which have symptoms similar to Covid-19. Every time I get tested I go through the same spiral of anxiety—should I call out from work and lose two days (or more) of pay? What if I have it and I’ve gotten my partner—or his older parents—sick? What if I have it and I have to isolate, which will completely tank my physical and mental health? I am one of the most responsible people I know, when it comes to masking, sanitizing, and distancing. Still, every time I get tested, I know there’s a chance that I have it.
As a relatively-healthy, active, twentysomething, it has never been the disease I have been afraid of (or, well, at least until I started reading about Long Covid). It has been the fear of infecting people I love, care for, and work with. It has been the fear of killing my parents when I drove home for a socially-distant 60th-birthday celebration for my father. It has been the quiet terror of two potential weeks in isolation, trapped in a studio apartment with nothing but my thoughts, anxiety, and depression.
It’s not fair that I got the vaccine before my parents; my former neighbors, who still live three blocks from Kedren; my co-workers, who are equally as exposed as I, and demographically more so; Californians with disabilities, who face the same anxieties that I do, with a significantly higher threat of death.
I am not a vaccine chaser. I am not one of the many beanie-clad twentysomethings in beach chairs lined up outside Kedren Health (but perhaps I will be in four weeks, when I will have to go wait in the standby line for my second dose if not able to secure an appointment). From speaking with Kedren staff, I learned that the day I got vaccinated was also the day they had the most doses left over, and about to expire—a result of the heavy rains that day, which led to many missed appointments, and Kedren receiving leftover Moderna doses from several nearby facilities (whom, I suspect, read the aforementioned LA Times article and decided to send their doses Kedren’s way, knowing there were so many people waiting, rather than having to create their own infrastructure).
I got this vaccine because of luck, knowledge, and privilege. I was lucky to pick up the phone when my friend called—lucky that he even called in the first place—but I also knew about the standby lines, and was familiar with Kedren as a testing and vaccination site. I was privileged enough to have a car that I could jump in and drive over, I wasn’t working a night shift, and I didn’t have children or family members that I had to care for when I left.
I don’t feel guilty about getting vaccinated because I know that otherwise these doses would have gone to waste—and that, along with California’s deeply messy rollout, is the true “It’s not fair.” There is so much about this pandemic to make me angry—Covid-deniers; mask refusers; line jumpers; slow, seemingly inequitable vaccine rollout—the list goes on. When the vaccine rollout was first announced, I started to feel hope for the light at the end of this disease-ridden tunnel.
It has been four days since the vaccine, my arm has finally stopped hurting, the fever-brain of the second day has cleared, and I’m already feeling even more hopeful for what’s to come. I’m a little less scared when someone maskless pushes past me on the street. I’m a little bit happier when I hear stories of others getting their shots. I’m halfway to fully vaccinated, and I am grateful.
Note: Irony is deep and rich, friends. I got the first does of the vaccine on Friday, and was taking my sweet time to write this essay; as I finished it up today, Tuesday, I found out that my work got a letter qualifying us to get the vaccine. I am still glad I got “surprise vaccinated” this Friday, and I am so, so excited and grateful for my co-workers to get the protection they deserve.