The COVID-19 vaccine is destroying me.
My ears ring with high blood pressure and my breathing is difficult. But these are not side effects. We know that vaccines are safe and effective.
It’s frustration – and some dizziness.
I am as risky as anyone, but not – at least as far as I can say with any clarity – I allowed a shot yet. At least not in Alabama, where about half a million people had this before me.
It seems virtually guaranteed that a case of COVID-19 would kill me. I am middle-aged – in my 50s – but I was diagnosed with genetic emphysema in my late thirties. The lack of a chemical component called alpha-1 antitrypsin allowed my immune system to gradually destroy the elasticity of my lungs. My breathing capacity is below a fifth of what it should be for someone my age.
I went from an active life – cycling, walking and running with my dog - to struggling to breathe in just a few years. That’s why I stopped working in the smoke and heat of restaurant kitchens and started writing for a living.
That’s also why I sleep and exercise with a flow of oxygen flowing to my nose – because even a cold or hay fever causes bronchitis and then pneumonia. This has led to more than half a dozen hospitalizations in the past 16 years.
My first hospital stay cost $ 8,000 for four days, all due to the lack of a pharmaceutical dose. I have since qualified for Medicare disability coverage and care; otherwise, I would have no insurance or access to the nearly $ 250,000 worth of medicine I need to live every year.
When a “strange new pneumonia” appeared more than a year ago, it obviously caught my attention. In March 2020, COVID-19 was leaking across the United States, and my doctors told me to quarantine it at home and take all security measures.
The vaccine discoveries came with surprising speed, and Alabama’s phased implementation began in December, going first to frontline workers and home residents. Understandable and fair.
In the past month, some facilities have moved to phase 1b – those over 75, first responders, essential workers who deal with the public. Those interested were directed to websites or phones for registration.
Around that time, a parade appeared on social networks, when younger and healthier faces proclaimed their vaccines. Every two days, my wife was seething with anger.
“How did they achieve this? Why don’t you get that? “she shouted.
We found that some lawyers were eligible – or at least we heard that they were being shot. There are 18,000 members of the Alabama Bar Association, two-thirds male, about 90% white. Librarians, advertisers, city officials and others were also vaccinated.
As for me, some sites did not have a specific list of media personnel (my profession) or pre-existing conditions for eligibility. I registered anyway, but I never got an answer.
Rumors of open installations circulated intermittently on a first-come, first-served basis. I never received notification.
Tight conditions. A clinic’s website was closed. Another critical shortage announced. The phone number of another person only displayed a “no vaccine” message.
This poor quality scenario ruled the state. While the Wall Street Journal recently reported, we were the last in the country in vaccinations, with only 10,013 per 100,000 residents. At the same time, we had one of the highest rates of positive coronavirus tests at 29 percent in the past few weeks, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The causes are obvious: Alabama is largely poor, rural and unhealthy. When the state rejected Medicaid’s expansion for Obamacare, it emphasized an overburdened public health system that saw access to rural health evaporate. In February 2020, a quarter of Alabama’s hospitals were in danger of closing.
The latent paranoia engendered by historical racism and horrible experimentation in black populations makes some here understandably – if unfortunately – suspicious of vaccines. Blacks make up 27% of Alabama’s population – the state’s poorest rural counties are overwhelmingly 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 a role. That is why only a quarter of the police force in Mobile, Alabama, had been vaccinated earlier this month. Add to that the confusing communications I found, and the results are inevitable.
Some of these officers worked at Mobile’s massive Mardi Gras street party last Tuesday, a potential expansion event chaired by Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson after the state legislature passed a bill protecting companies and governments from lawsuits. COVID-19. Assistance was expected to reach thousands by being hampered by low temperatures and warnings from public health officials. It can be a savior.
State health officer Dr. Scott Harris admitted that vaccine supplies are low and, when combined with the factors mentioned above, is a headache. He said the Biden government has straightened out the snarls, but that is not enough.
“To begin with, we are not a healthy state. We have a lot of diabetes and heart disease and other things that predispose people to serious health problems, ”Harris recently told reporters. “Adding this category of chronic disease can 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 apply them ”.
Despite Harris’ statement, contradictory signs are still on the streets. A restaurant employee told me that he arrived at Mobile’s largest clinic on February 13 and – without being asked for his identity “or anything” – had an injection. His diabetic wife also took the needle, he said.
Walmart announced its distribution of vaccines earlier this month. On his website, I considered myself an essential worker – as a media person – rather than a high-risk individual. Ironically, if I use portable oxygen, my wife can hitchhike as “living with a high-risk individual”, although it appears that the “high-risk” patient would still be in a later vaccine group.
I do not know the origin of all these gaps in the protocol, between official times and what is happening. We are tired of worrying about it. We try to follow the rules strictly, but we are tired of playing with my life.
Three days before our scheduled vaccination appointments, I woke up to my first vertigo outbreak. The inner ear disorder made me stagger and vomit enough to prevent my vaccination, since it would now be impossible to differentiate vertigo from possible side effects of inoculation.
An appointment with a specialist doctor will take precedence over vaccination – assuming I was able to get it. The week so far will be filled with questions about the local broadcast of COVID-19. Was Mardi Gras enough to fill the specialist’s office with the deadly virus? Am I going to roll into the waiting room for relief just to find my doom?
The only certainty is that if I find relief with the vertigo specialist that day, we will head straight to Mobile’s largest vaccine clinic, where stories about ignored priorities, commitments and protocols continue to emerge.
Our patience and choices have run out, and I need that chance.