Sassafras Luck

Yesterday morning I opened my e-mail to a message from the state of New Jersey that it was my turn to schedule a vaccine.  After a few seconds of disbelief and then some hit and miss moments, I got an appointment more than an hour away.  I took it and headed south to one of our state’s vaccine mega-sites.  A few hours later, I had a Pfizer vaccine in my arm and an appointment for my second dose on March 2.  I spent the rest of the day in a haze of disbelief and gratitude, a feeling that remains front and center today.  

New Jersey, with a population of just under 9 million people, is approaching 10% of the population having received a first vaccine.  I am glad that my lucky number came up so quickly and crossing my fingers for everyone else.

The Faint Light Ahead

The Pfizer vaccine has received emergency FDA approval and distribution in the United States will begin this weekend.  The Moderna vaccine is expected to follow within two weeks.  

The amount of hope that this news brings is hard for me to quantify.  Thanks to a complete absence of national leadership, the pandemic is worse than ever in the U.S. at this moment.  We are averaging one million new cases a day; deaths are approaching 1,000 a day.  In New Jersey, with a population just below 9 million, things are better but we are struggling as well, with somewhere between four and six thousand new cases each day.

There is still a long and dark Winter before us but this vaccine news feels like a faint but steady light at the end of a very long tunnel.