The COVID-19 vaccine is destroying me.
My ears ring due to high blood pressure and breathing is obstructed. But they are not side effects. We know that vaccines are safe and effective.
It is frustration and a certain vertigo.
I have a risk as big as just about anyone, but no, at least from what I can say clearly, I haven’t allowed myself to be shot yet. Anyway, not in Alabama, where about half a million people have had it before me.
It feels pretty guaranteed that a case of COVID-19 would kill me. I am middle-aged — in my mid-50s — but I was diagnosed with genetic emphysema in my late 30s. A missing chemical component, called Alfa-1 antitrypsin, allowed my immune system to gradually destroy the elasticity of my lungs. My breathing capacity is less than a fifth of what it should be for someone my age.
I went from an active life (cycling, hiking and running with my dog) to struggling to breathe in a few years. That’s why I stopped working in the smoke and heat of restaurant kitchens and devoted myself to writing to make a living.
This is also why I sleep and exercise with a jet of oxygen flowing through my nose, why even a cold in the head or hay fever cause bronchitis and then pneumonia. The last 16 years have resulted in more than half a dozen hospitalizations.
My first stay in the hospital cost $ 8,000 over four days, all in the absence of a pharmaceutical dose. Since then I have been qualified for disability and for Medicare auxiliary coverage; otherwise, I would have no insurance or access to the nearly $ 250,000 in drugs I need to stay alive each year.
When a “strange new pneumonia” arose more than a year ago, it obviously caught my eye. In March 2020, COVID-19 was making its way across the United States and my doctors told me I would do quarantine at home and take all safety precautions.
Vaccine advances have come incredibly fast, and Alabama’s phased deployment began in December, first targeting front-line workers and residents of the group’s homes. Understandable and fair.
Last month, some facilities moved to phase 1b: those over 75, first aid, essential workers dealing with the public. It was addressed to interested parties on websites or telephone numbers for registration.
At this time there was a parade on social media, when younger, healthier faces proclaimed their vaccines. Every two days, my wife boiled.
“How did they get it? Why can’t you get it? she shouted.
We found that some lawyers were eligible, or at least we felt they were being shot. There are 18,000 members of the Alabama Bar Association, two-thirds male, about 90% white. Librarians, publicists, city employees and others were also vaccinated.
As for me, some websites did not have any specific list of media staff (my profession) or pre-existing conditions for eligibility. I registered anyway, but I never knew anything.
Rumors of intermittently open facilities circulated to the first to arrive, which are offered without restrictions. I have never received any notification.
Conditions hardened. A clinic’s website was shut down. Another announced critical shortage. One phone number from another only gave a message “out of the vaccine.”
This poor quality scenario ruled the state. Like the Wall Street Journal it was recently reported that we were the last to be vaccinated in the country, with only 10,013 per 100,000 residents. Although we had one of the highest rates of positive coronavirus testing at 29% in recent weeks, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The causes are obvious: Alabama is largely poor, rural, and unhealthy. When the state rejected the expansion of Medicaid for Obamacare, it highlighted an overburdened public health system that has seen access to rural health evaporate. In February 2020, a quarter of Alabama hospitals risked closure.
The latent paranoia generated by historical racism and the horrible experimentation on black populations makes some understand, albeit unfortunately, inoculations. Blacks make up 27% of Alabama’s population (the state’s most impoverished rural counties are mostly black), but only 11% of those vaccinated are black, according to a recent estimate.
The broader politicization of COVID-19 and paranoid beliefs also play an important role. That’s why only a quarter of Mobile, Alabama’s police force had been vaccinated earlier this month. Add to that the confusing communications I found and the results become inevitable.
Some of these police officers worked last Tuesday at Mobile’s massive Mardi Gras Street party, a possible superspreader event chaired by Mayor Sandy Stimpson, after the state legislature passed a bill to protect businesses and governments of COVID-19 lawsuits. The assistance expected of thousands of people was dampened by cold temperatures and warnings from public health officials. He could be a savior.
State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris admitted that the supply of vaccines is low and, when combined with the aforementioned factors, is a headache. He said the Biden administration has rectified the grunts, but that is not enough.
“It simply came to our notice then. We have a lot of diabetes, heart disease and other things that predispose people to bad health problems, ”Harris told reporters recently. “If you add this category of chronic diseases, you could add two million people to the list. It is not useful to say that all people are eligible immediately when there is no vaccine to give them. “
Despite Harris ’statement, there are still mixed signs on the street. A restaurant worker told me he arrived at Mobile’s largest clinic on Feb. 13 and, without being asked for any “or anything” identification, was shot. His diabetic wife also got the needle, he said.
Walmart announced the distribution of the vaccine earlier this month. On their website, I called myself an essential worker — as a media staff — rather than a high-risk individual. Ironically, if I use portable oxygen, my wife may choose to “live with a high-risk individual,” even though it looks like the “high-risk” patient would still be in a later vaccine group.
I don’t know the origin of all these protocol shortcomings, between official schedules and what’s going on. We’re sick of worrying about that. We tried to play strictly by the rules, but we are tired of playing with my life.
Three days before our scheduled vaccination appointments, I woke up with my first bout of vertigo. The disturbance of the inner ear made me suffer and stagger enough to avoid my vaccination, as it would now be impossible to differentiate vertigo from the possible side effects of inoculation.
A visit with a specialist doctor will take precedence over vaccination, assuming you have been able to get it. The week until then will be full of questions about the local broadcast of COVID-19. Was Mardi Gras enough to fill the office of the deadly virus specialist? Am I going to shoot in the waiting room looking for relief just to find my destination?
The only certainty is that if I find relief from the vertigo specialist that day, we will go directly to Mobile’s largest vaccine clinic, where stories about ignored priorities, appointments, and protocols continue to emerge.
Our patience and decisions have been exhausted and I need that trait.