Flu & Covid-19 Booster Shots
Today I got my flu & Covid-19 booster shots. I took one in each arm. I'd have also gotten the pneumococcal and RSV vaccines but I only have two arms, not four. 😅 I'll get those shots in another few weeks.
I thought it would be amsuing to take a selfie while getting my shots. I last did that- a shot selfie, not the shot itself- back in 2021, in the heady days of getting vaccinated. Back then getting a shot was like hearing the starting gun on a race track, the signal that it was time to get back to living life normally. Alas Covid went from a pandemic to an endemic, a now yearly booster shots are a thing... much like the flu shot I got moments later in my other arm today.
The pharmacy where I went for my shot wasn't very busy administering vaccines. I still had to make an appointment two weeks in advance to reserve a time that fit my schedule, but that appointment thing seems to be mostly so the pharmacists can fit this task to their schedules. It's not like those heady days in Spring 2021 when clinics had nurses working full-time administering shots and people lined up out the door to get them. Or when people were doing crazy stuff like driving 100+ miles to get their first shot.
As for those other vaccines, RSV and pneumococcus, I'll make an appointment soon to get them in about two weeks.
There's some value in spreading out the shots. For one, it avoids overtaxing the immune system by asking it to mount a response to too many viruses at once. Two, it spread out the severity of side effects. Last year I experienced a day of full body achiness and fatigue from the Covid shot. As I've said before, I will happily take a day of aches and fatigue over having even a mild case of Covid-19.
I thought it would be amsuing to take a selfie while getting my shots. I last did that- a shot selfie, not the shot itself- back in 2021, in the heady days of getting vaccinated. Back then getting a shot was like hearing the starting gun on a race track, the signal that it was time to get back to living life normally. Alas Covid went from a pandemic to an endemic, a now yearly booster shots are a thing... much like the flu shot I got moments later in my other arm today.
The pharmacy where I went for my shot wasn't very busy administering vaccines. I still had to make an appointment two weeks in advance to reserve a time that fit my schedule, but that appointment thing seems to be mostly so the pharmacists can fit this task to their schedules. It's not like those heady days in Spring 2021 when clinics had nurses working full-time administering shots and people lined up out the door to get them. Or when people were doing crazy stuff like driving 100+ miles to get their first shot.
As for those other vaccines, RSV and pneumococcus, I'll make an appointment soon to get them in about two weeks.
There's some value in spreading out the shots. For one, it avoids overtaxing the immune system by asking it to mount a response to too many viruses at once. Two, it spread out the severity of side effects. Last year I experienced a day of full body achiness and fatigue from the Covid shot. As I've said before, I will happily take a day of aches and fatigue over having even a mild case of Covid-19.