Vaccination

Coming home, finishing our usual three-mile run around the crown of Queen Anne hill, R spotted an object in a round patch of dirt in which a tree had been planted by an apartment complex. I thought it was a root that had surfaced and which resembled a human figure, with two stout legs and a narrow torso. I moved in for a closer look. It was a rubber giraffe. The color of the giraffe was remarkably similar to the color of the tree. Funny we use the same word for arms and legs – limbs – as we do for the branches of trees. We are walking talking trees with a bush on our head. “O, he’s a limb that has but a disease; Mortal, to cut it off; to cure it, easy,” wrote Shakespeare in Coriolanus. My left arm is still a little sore from my Covid vaccination shot earlier today. The vaccination procedure was smoothly organized at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. After the shot, which I barely felt, I was instructed to go sit in a booth with a strip of blue cardboard sticking up, indicating it had been sanitized, and wait there fifteen minutes, just to make sure I wasn’t going to be in jeopardy if I had an allergic reaction. I was given a timer, a cylindrical, drum-shaped implement with a dial that felt surprisingly heavy. A patch of blue lessened by the second into a smaller and smaller crescent. When it dinged, I raised my hand, and a health official appeared, a young woman with long black hair. She took the timer and put it in a tray marked “dirty timers.” I felt very little, if any, effect for the rest of the day. A tiny bit woozy, maybe. The word ‘vaccine’ comes from Latin and means “pertaining to cows, from cows.” Latin for cow is ‘vacca.’ The word ‘vaccine’ was initially used by British physician Edward Jenner for the technique he developed for preventing smallpox by injecting people with the similar but much milder virus. Vaccines trigger our immune systems to produce proteins that fight the invasive virus without being overwhelmed by it. T and B cells recognize distinct structures (or antigens) sourced from the virus. T cells detect and kill infected cells. B cells produce antibodies that neutralize the virus. Since the antigens in the vaccine are sourced from the weakened or noninfectious material from the virus, there’s little chance of severe infection. Everything seems to be besieged, one way or another. What I look forward to the most is no longer having to dodge people on the sidewalks and streets when I’m out running. I will still wear a mask, just to be on the safe side, but I won’t worry so much when I go whizzing by someone within a few inches. I also look forward to being able to go into a library again to check out a book. Why libraries had to remain closed while gyms and nail and hair salons got to remain open is a mystery to me. And the nice feeling that we won’t be barred from the rest of the world, which will also be relaxing its restrictions, people resuming the flow and circulation of the agora, that aorta of the social pulse.