Spinning the Wheel of Vaccines in Prague
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Sorry I haven't written sooner. COVID didn't kill me, but all the lockdown restrictions surely beat the hell out of my joie de vivre. I've had a full-time writing gig for the past 2.5 years, so my blog posts have been few and far between.
It's like when I was a photographer and I never had time to take 'fun' photos in my spare time. Or no creativity left. It's like that with writing, too. Recently I've been moved to a new project at work which is much less writing and much more image-oriented work.
For the past year and a half, I've lived under the shadow of a pandemic reportedly so serious that Czechia was rated as a 'red state' in terms of emergency status. Not commie red or redneck red, nothing so sinister, mind you. But I couldn't travel. And for a Wide Body Jetsetter, that's almost as bad as taking away my beloved fried cheese.
The Wheel of Vaccines
There has been a shortage of vaccines in the Czech Republic as well. While the government 'leaders' (I use this term loosely; more like a gang of former commies caught with their hands in the cash register of Capitalism) hemmed and hawed about 'what to do' every other week, the rest of the world began inoculating their peeps.
But in a
country with an unapologetic drunk for a president and a parliament
full of smarmy used car salesmen for politicians, it's a wonder we
got a vaccine in Czechia at all. But we finally did.
And then
the vaccine ran out. So they had to order more from other countries.
And in came the flood of unknown, never-before-heard-of vaccines that would put a
Prague knockoff shoe salesmen to shame.
There was no Pfizer, so they had something called Moderna. Followed by Johnson & Johnson. Then Nano-Bio-Something. Then AstraZeneca. Then the Russians had to ooze out from beneath their radioactive tombs and dump something called Sputnik on us. Nyet, privyet.
The difference between the vaccines is probably like Coke & Pepsi. They each do the same thing: quench your thirst, rot your teeth, and make you morbidly obese after 40 years of drinking the stuff. Mind you, I am not morbidly obese due to Coke or Pepsi. Smažený sýr and pivo are solely responsible for my morbid obesity.
Each vaccine ostensibly protects you against COVID, but each one has its own unique side effects. How much of this is based on actual research and Facebook memes is uncertain. But you get the idea.
I've heard that Moderna might kill a small number of people. Or wait, was that BioNTech? I do have it on good authority that a woman who works with my wife heard about some women from another neighborhood who got red bumps all over their junkal regions after receiving the AstraZeneca jab.
Gimme the Pfizer
I did the usual amount of reading up on vaccines till my eyes glazed over and I needed a drink. Then I started listening to all the recommendations proffered by the hearsay of third-party old wives tales.
The Czech government said we don't get to choose our vaccine flavor, but I got the inside scoop on where they were serving up the cool vials full of Pfizer. And THAT was the place I registered.
As it happens, the Vinohrady hospital set up a special vaccination site not far from their main block of clinics, conveniently located near a massive cemetery. Nothing like walking a kilometer past a sprawling cemetery to get in the mood for your jabs. And if an American has a bad reaction from the jab, they can just chuck 'em over the cemetary fence for the krematorium proletariat to clean up.
I don't know why I favored the Pfizer. I just hadn't heard any stories of crotch rot or infections of the junkal regions associated with it.
Sputnik? Are the Russians serious with this thing or what? Sorry, I'm not injecting something called Sputnik into my bloodstream. Even if it's 50% vodka and gives out a killer buzz.
The last time I heard of Russian needles, millions of poor malchiks were slamming something called krokodil into their veins. It got them high, twitchy, nervous, and crazy, just like any other street drug. Except that this shit turns the victim's skin into something resembling crocodile skin. Hence the name of the drug.
Somewhere between the Soviet Sputnik spacecraft in the 60s, growing up in the Cold War 80s, to the Crocodile junkies littering the streets of Mother Russia, I lost the narrative.
First Jab
The vaccine is administered in two jabs one month apart. I'm not sure if this is due to lack of supply, safety, or what. So I got my confirmation, went to the site (they didn't even give me a street address. I had to Google that shit), and sat down waiting for my needle.
I finally did my registration, shuffled the medical info, and was sent to an vaccination box. The whole parking lot was filled with what looked like a dozen shipping containers retrofitted for medicinal purposes. It looked like the first scene of your basic zombie apocalypse movie right before the infected monkeys escape from their cages.
The staff members were nice, but one of the questions struck me as odd.
“What country are you from?” asked the nurse with the computer.
“America?” I replied. Suddenly I sounded like a fucking Millennial. You know, how every sentence ends with an uncertainty. 'Um, like, I'm in a hurry? Cuz I'm like, going to work now?'
Upon hearing me say 'America,' the needle nurse perked up and presented the needle. I rolled up my sleeve and she plunged the needle into my left upper arm. Then she cackled Death to Americans! and began stabbing me with the needle over and over and over and...
Sorry. I've been cooped up too long. And I was sitting in a parking lot full of shipping containers located near a cemetery for fuck's sake. That will get the old imagination churning.
After my injection, I sat with a few dozen others in a special waiting area. If you didn't keel over 15 minutes after your jab, you're good to go. Anyway, no serious side effects so far. The old sore arm routine, not much else. The crumpled sign on the injection box I entered said 'Pfizer' on it. Did that mean that we were getting the Pfizer vaccine, or that the parking lot was sponsored by the Pfizer company?
Well, I'll let you know if I develop any clusters of boils on my junkal region or if I suddenly sprout crocodile skin.