Vaccine side effect: feelings of joy return

For those of you who haven’t yet found GomerBlog, today is your lucky day.  It’s like The Onion, but for medical topics.  The other day I saw a piece there that completely captured a moment I recently experienced.

As my wife likes to say, I now have a superpower.  I’ve received both doses of the Pfizer vaccine!

Dose #1:

Dose #2:

In a couple of more weeks, I’ll be about as immune to COVID-19 as I’m going to get.  As I previously wrote about, I was carrying a lot of worry about acquiring this virus, and then spreading it to my family.  Now that I’ve finally been vaccinated, my worry over this has gone down dramatically.  In fact, I didn’t realize how concerned about this I was, until the concern went away.  It’s a real breath of fresh air.

When I was at the hospital, at 7:00 AM on a Saturday morning getting my first dose, and again at the second dose, the mood of the staff was ebullient.  People were smiling and laughing, joking around with everyone, and really enjoying the moment.  I think GomerBlog got it right – what they were experiencing was something they hadn’t felt in a long time, hope.  There’s officially a light at the end of the tunnel.  While this pandemic has been a worldwide tragedy that will be a touchstone in the lives of almost everyone on the planet (almost 2 million deaths globally, almost 400,000 deaths in the US, countless patients with ongoing medical problems/disability, and incalculable economic losses), the end is finally in sight.  If everyone can continue to do what they’re supposed to do (wash your hands, wear a mask, and remain socially distant), and if we can get vaccine production and deployment rolling, we can finally begin to put this behind us.