The COVID-19 vaccine is killing me.
My ears are ringing due to high blood pressure and my breathing is blocked. But these are not side effects. We know that vaccines are safe and effective.
It’s frustration – and some vertigo.
I’m as risky as just about anyone, but no – at least as far as I can tell – I haven’t allowed a shot yet. Not in Alabama anyway, where about half a million people had it before me.
It feels pretty guaranteed that a case of COVID-19 will kill me. I am middle-aged – 50 years old – but I was diagnosed with genetic emphysema in the late 1930s. A missing chemical component called antitrypsin Alpha-1 allowed my immune system to gradually destroy my elasticity. My breathing capacity is less than one-fifth of what it should be for someone my age.
I went from an active life – cycling, hiking and running with my dog - to fighting for breath in just a few years. That’s why I gave up working in the smoke and heat of restaurant kitchens and turned to writing to make a living.
Also, why I sleep and exercise with a stream of oxygen flowing in my nose – why even a cold or hay fever causes bronchitis, then pneumonia. It has led to more than half a dozen hospitalizations in the last 16 years.
My first hospitalization cost $ 8,000 over four days, all for lack of a pharmaceutical dose. Since then, I have also qualified for disability and the Medicare coverage companion; otherwise I would have no insurance or access to the nearly $ 250,000 in drugs I need to stay alive every year.
When a “strange new pneumonia” appeared more than a year ago, it obviously caught my eye. Until March 2020, COVID-19 was flowing in the United States, and my doctors told me to quarantine at home and take all safety measures.
Vaccine discoveries came astonishingly fast, and Alabama’s gradual launch began in December, first going to front-line workers and home residents. Understandable and correct.
Last month, some facilities moved to Phase 1b – those over the age of 75, the first to respond, essential public workers. Stakeholders were directed to websites or telephone numbers for registration.
During this period came a social media parade, as younger and healthier faces proclaimed their vaccinations. Every day, my wife boils.
“How did they do that?” Why can’t you get this? She shouted.
I found that some lawyers were eligible – or at least I heard they were being shot. There are 18,000 members of the Alabama Bar Association, two-thirds male, about 90 percent white. Librarians, publicists, city hall employees and others were also vaccinated.
As far as I was concerned, some websites did not have a specific list of media personnel (my profession) or pre-existing eligibility conditions. I registered anyway, but I haven’t heard.
Rumors circulated about facilities open intermittently to first come, first served and without restrictions. I never received a notification.
Tough conditions. The site of a clinic has been closed. Another critical shortcoming announced. One phone number for another gave only a message “outside the vaccine.”
This miserable scenario led the state. As the Wall Street Journal reported recently, we were the last in the country in vaccinations, with only 10,013 per 100,000 inhabitants. However, we have had one of the highest rates for positive coronavirus tests at 29% in recent weeks at Johns Hopkins University.
The causes are obvious: Alabama is largely poor, rural and unhealthy. When the state rejected Medicaid’s expansion for Obamacare, it highlighted an overburdened public health system that saw access to rural health care evaporate. In February 2020, a quarter of Alabama’s hospitals were in danger of closing.
The latent paranoia caused by historical racism and the horrific experimentation on black populations makes some understand – if unfortunately – to be discouraged by inoculations. Black people make up 27 percent of Alabama’s population – the state’s poorest rural counties are the majority – black – but only 11 percent of those vaccinated are black, according to a recent estimate.
The wider politicization of COVID-19 and paranoid beliefs also play a role. That’s why only a quarter of the police forces in Mobile, Alabama, had been vaccinated since this month. Add to this the mixed communications we have encountered and the results become inevitable.
Some of these police officers worked Tuesday night at the massive Mardi Gras street party, a potential overcrowding event chaired by mobile mayor Sandy Stimpson after the state legislature passed a bill protecting businesses and governments from COVID-19 processes. The expected presence of thousands of people has been diminished by low temperatures and warnings from public health officials. He could prove to be a savior.
The state health officer, Dr. Scott Harris, acknowledged that vaccines are low and, when associated with the aforementioned factors, is a headache. He said the Biden administration had grumbled, but that was not enough.
“It simply came to our notice then. We have a lot of diabetes, heart disease and other things that predispose people to serious health problems, “Harris told reporters recently. “Adding this category of chronic diseases could add two million people to the list. It is not useful to say that every person is eligible immediately, when there is no vaccine to give them. ”
Despite Harris’ statement, mixed signals are still on the streets. A worker in the restaurant told me that he arrived at the largest clinic on Mobile on February 13 and – without being asked for his “or something” card – he got hit. And his diabetic wife got the needle, he said.
Walmart announced the distribution of vaccines earlier this month. On his website, I called myself an essential worker – as a media personnel – rather than a high-risk individual. Ironically, if I carry portable oxygen, then my wife can make a “life with a high-risk individual,” although it seems that the “high-risk” patient would still be in a group of vaccines later.
I do not know the source of all these gaps in the protocol, between the official programs and what is happening. We’re tired of worrying. We tried to play by the rules, but we got 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 move and manage enough to prevent vaccination, because now it would be impossible to differentiate vertigo from possible side effects of inoculation.
A visit with a specialist will take precedence over vaccination – assuming I have not been able to receive it at all. The week until then will be full of questions about the local spread of COVID-19. Was Mardi Gras enough to fill the specialist’s office with the deadly virus? Will I return to the waiting room looking for relief just to find my fate?
The only certainty is that if I find relief from the vertigo specialist that day, we go directly to the largest vaccine clinic in Mobile, where stories about priorities, meetings and ignored protocols continue to appear.
Our patience and choices are exhausted and I need this blow.