Y'All

 It's been awhile since I posted.

On Tuesday, I had my Covid booster shot. I decided on another Moderna shot, although they were also offering the Pfizer shot (which would also have been fine). I got Moderna the first two times so I just stuck with what I had done before. I was fine for hours after the shot. (The incompetent pharmacist injected it into the fatty part of my arm and not into the muscle, so the effects lagged and will probably not be as strong as they might have been otherwise.) But there were some late side effects: The injection site was painful, red, hard, and swollen. My arm was sore, of course. I put heat on the site throughout the day and shortly after started to experience other side effects (chills, fever, headache). That seems to have largely subsided although the injection site is still painful, red, and hard to the touch.

Dave got his Pfizer booster the next day and is now feeling puny himself. He has a slightly elevated temp and headache, chills, etc. I just keep reminding myself that all these side effects are better than Covid. I'll get booster shots every goddamn week if I have to because I'm so done with this pandemic. Will everyone just get the vaccine so we can all be done with it? (Or at least die sooner so that the herd immunity numbers get better as unvaccinated people die off. Jesus fucking Christ.) The good news is that soon children aged 5-11 will be able to get vaccinated, so that will help slow the spread of Covid. (The household transmission when a child has the Delta variant is 100%, whereas with the earlier variant it was something like 25% so a lot of sick kids are infecting adults, too.) I follow a lot of healthcare workers on Twitter and there are so many who have breakthrough infections. They're also burned out from taking care of unvaccinated people who get Covid. I can't imagine how angry they must be, risking their lives and their health for people who refuse to do the barest minimum to keep themselves healthy and safe. 

There are so many stories from nurses who have been threatened by families after a family member dies of Covid. Some nurses tweet out that they are not allowed to wear their scrubs to and from work because people who are in scrubs are being attacked by anti-vaxxers. There are so many stories from doctors whose clearly Covid positive patients refuse Covid tests because they refuse to believe in Covid. There are so many stories about patients who are near death who ask if it's too late for them to get the vaccine. There are so many stories about doctors who have to tell patients that they should say what they need to say to their families before being put on a ventilator because doctors know that once a Covid patient goes on a vent, they die soon after.

One twitter story from a nurse I follow: Her unvaccinated, right-wing brother convinced their father not to get vaccinated. The father got Covid of course and the brother refused to take him to the hospital, saying that doctors are murdering Covid patients to falsely prove that Covid is deadly when it is really no worse than the flu. He also blamed vaccinated people, who he believes shed active virus, for infecting the father. The father grew increasingly worse and eleven days after he got sick, he died at home. The brother, who was also infected, was convinced by his sister to go to the hospital for treatment (which he did, of course) and was getting better at the time his sister the nurse tweeted all this out. The brother was so angry that the sister was right that he told her that she was barred from attending the father's funeral services. Can you imagine? This is the kind of thinking that has infected people, mainly conservative right wing people. The craziest thing to me is that a lot of the anti-vaccine misinformation comes from Fox News (which requires all its employees to be vaccinated) and trump (who himself is vaccinated). It's insane.

What else has been going on? I had been making great progress on what was becoming my Halloween quilt, but that stalled and now it's in pieces on my sewing table. It's two-thirds quilted. I have six of the nine panels quilted and the batting cut out for the last three panels, but I'm going to have to piece together the backing for them so I've been stalling on doing that.

I managed to read a book this week, Born Standing Up by Steve Martin. I started Naked by David Sedaris, but it was awful so I put it down and started another book called Moose by Stephanie Klein.

Ugh. I need to go and put some heat on my arm again. And decide what to have for dinner.

Stay safe, y'all.