My wife and I are both fully vaccinated. The clinic did their shots at a small office downtown, with nothing but healthcare workers trickling in. I did mine in the ballroom at Seattle U, where there was a line to get in the line that gets in line. They go from 6am to 9pm; I got there half an hour early for an appointment that you pick by the minute and was getting jabbed within 2-3 minutes of the allotted time. They told me the site does 5500 vaccinations a day, so that would have been 400-odd people there at the same time as me. My mother-in-law should be getting her first shot today, my father-in-law got his first shot two weeks ago. I see far too much stuff about mutations, B.117, 501.V2 and the general nature of coronaviruses, which simply don't stand still. Eventually? Eventually COVID will evolve to be ridiculously virulent and fundamentally nonlethal. But I don't see "eventually" on the horizon yet. I don't mean to rain on your parade. 50% efficacy kicks the shit out of 0% efficacy. But this doesn't seem like an "out of the woods" moment to me just yet.
By then it is another iteration of the common cold or seasonal flu, and my worry is reduced to normal worrying-about-old-people-any-time-they-get-sick, rather than TRUMP FOLLOWERS ARE ACTIVELY TRYING TO KILL MY PARENTS!!! Which is a relief. Now we just need to go back to worrying about angry white men with guns, and no longer have to also view them as a bioweapon hazard.
I started reading a truly miserable book about the SAS during the troubles that's basically "yay death squads!" written by a prominent member of said-same death squads. I had to stop halfway through 'cuz it's just so awful. I hate the British to begin with but this book made me really hate the British. I countered that by reading a truly more miserable book about the IRA that's basically "yay shamrock Taliban!" I hate the British no less but now I hate the Irish, too. I thought it was weird when a Welsh boy's choir couldn't perform at my middle school in the middle of goddamn New Mexico because the fucking IRA called in a bomb threat but really? That's the fuckin' IRA. I keep reading this fucking bullshit about people I would happily push into a meat grinder because at the end of the day? Gerry Addams has a Twitter, Northern Ireland is largely bomb-free and somehow, the UK maintained partition without salting the ground of Belfast so that nothing would ever grow again. it was pointed out this morning that Lauren Boebert is speaking at CPAC, the same body that banned Mitt Romney.