Items

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  2022-04-05

  Gabrielle's First Dose

  This is an Instagram post by lavie_est_belle8. This is a post about Gabrielle getting his first COVID vaccine dose. Based on the caption, it looks like the parent/guardian planned a fun day with Gabrielle after getting the shot, including: out for sushi for lunch; games at the arcade; and out for dessert at the end. Gabrielle is standing in front of a backdrop and holding a "I'm Vaccinated" sign.
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  2022-04-05

  Baby Rapha

  This is an Instagram post by eu.cynthiabesteiro. This post is in Portuguese. It is about a kid that just got vaccinated. The caption is about the mother describing her gratitude for vaccines.
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  2021-10-07

  Covid Vaccine Reminiscence

  This is a recording I did of myself where I reminisce on my Covid Vaccine experience and the feelings it brought
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  2021-03-12

  COVAX First Round Allocation

  COVAX first round of vaccines
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  2021-01-16

  My Experience with the COVID-19 Vaccine

  Through my job, I was privileged enough to be able to receive both doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. My first dose went fine, and I had no ill effects besides a pretty sore arm for about a day. I had heard the second dose was a little more brutal and consequently I was slightly nervous when the day came. As a pharmacy intern and pharmacy major, I am a proponent of the vaccine (and all vaccines) and was excited to receive it. Also, as a college student I am ready for life to go back to as normal as possible. Virtual education is undeniably more difficult, and I saw the vaccine as a step in the “normal” direction. My boyfriend drove me up for the second dose and as I had heard helped, I took two ibuprofen tablets before going in. The first thing I noticed that was different was the shot itself. Quite honestly, the second shot HURT. The first one was just a pinch and analogous to a normal vaccine. The second shot was immediately more painful, and my arm was bleeding. The pain quickly passed as I sat for the 15 minutes of observation afterwards. I felt okay, went home, and proceeded throughout my day normally. I was relieved that it had gone well…until that night. As I tried to go to bed that night, I noticed my stomach was not feeling well but I figured I would feel better in the morning. Shortly after, I began to shake violently. I had such bad chills and could not go to sleep because I was shaking so badly. My muscles began to ache as time went on, but I could not control them. In the morning I noticed I had bruises. The arm I got vaccinated in throbbed and I began to feel very nauseous. These symptoms went on for hours and I did not fall into a restless sleep until 3am. The next few days I gradually felt better, but I barely left my bed. Luckily, the semester had yet to start so I could afford to have some lazy days. I felt so fatigued and just off. The arm in which I had been vaccinated remained bruised and painful for just over a week and my lymph nodes became quite inflamed. All of these symptoms are normal after receiving the vaccine, according to a pamphlet about the Pfizer vaccine given to me during my first dose. After two weeks I felt completely normal, but I wish I would have known what to expect after the second dose. I do not want my story to make people afraid of the vaccine because if I could go back, I would still receive both doses. The symptoms I experienced were no joke though, and I was not expecting to be hit as hard as I was. No vaccine has ever impacted me like that, and it was a rude awakening for my immune system. I have since come to find out that I am not alone in my symptoms and that about 70% of people have similar symptoms after receiving the vaccine. I am slightly concerned about the long-term effects of the vaccine because obviously these effects have not been studied. However, I am thankful I had the opportunity to receive the vaccine, and I am also thankful I had this opportunity to share my experience with it to hopefully help others feel more prepared should they choose to receive it.
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  2020-12-01

  Funny, First dose of vaccine side effects

  @vivi.karkasi enters her home after getting her first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. She notices some funny side effects.
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  2021-01-14

  Halfway, hamburgers, and drive-throughs

  I work in the library at a high school. It has been a surreal experience during the pandemic. While on spring break last year we learned that we were not coming back for two weeks, which became the remaining 9 weeks of the year in short order. At the end of the school year, we had to collect, and in some cases return, the items that students had from campus or had left on campus when we departed for spring break expecting to return on March 16, 2020. For a few weeks, we held drop-off zones for band instruments, sports uniforms, textbooks, and even cameras in the school parking lot. We distributed laptops to students who needed them for virtual learning. We asked seniors to drive through the student parking lot to pick up caps, gowns, and other graduation regalia, eventually diplomas, senior shirts, and if a favorite teacher was working that particular shift, to say final goodbyes. Drive-through graduations took place all across the state and the country in May, hoping that the rising senior class would have a different experience in 2021. We somehow are no closer to the end of the pandemic, and there is little chance that my school will return to in-person learning before spring break, and that is how it should be. I cannot say what graduation will or won’t look like at this point. Cases in Arizona are exploding, and in the days surrounding my posting of this story, we lead the entire world in positive cases. In some ways, it doesn’t feel like we have even reached the halfway point. But actually… I have. Because yesterday I was vaccinated with the first dose of the COVD-19 vaccine. My library team and I stalked the website all weekend, waiting for when 1B groups could sign up. I found an open time on Wednesday, January 13, 10 months after March 13, 2020, the day we now say the world fell apart. On top of working, I am a Ph.D. student in history at ASU. So after the first class meeting of my Wednesday class, I drove from Ahwatukee to Chandler-Gilbert Community College and participated in my own parking lot drive-through pandemic procedure. Almost like I was ordering a hamburger in a drive-through. Or maybe I am the hamburger in this analogy? We filed in lines, then split into multiple lanes, guided by a combination of medical staff and National Guard. The first nurse I spoke to, who asked to see my appointment number and my ID, asked me if I had any medication allergies. I responded that I get raised hives from Amoxicillin and Bactrim. She tied a strip of yellow caution tape around my driver's side mirror and told me that I would have to stay 30 minutes after my injection, rather than 15, to make sure I didn’t have an adverse reaction and then proceed to lane 5. No one was paying attention to my car, and I was far from the only one with this yellow strip, but for the few hundred feet that I drove toward where Lane 5 split into an A and B, I felt marked, and then I got to thinking about what other things warranted the Caution tape. I think that it harkened back to my biggest fear about COVID, that if I became infected, I would be seen as irresponsible, a pariah. It’s a privileged outlook, to be sure, but I had done my best to be safe for almost a year, hence why I was in line for the vaccine on the third day that it was open to 1B individuals. The next medical staff told me to lower all four windows in my car. You might think for airflow, but a coworker told me it was so that the EMTs could get in your vehicle if you were having a nasty reaction. The doctor for the 5A line asked me again about my allergies and decided to remove the tape that he did not see any fear for an adverse reaction. I pulled up under the tents, put my car in park, and the nurse opened the door. She confirmed with me that it was my first dose and rubbed a single-use alcohol prep pad on my arm. She asked if I was ready while she did that thing that doctors do, the thing where they squeeze a bit of your arm where they are going to stick you. “Yep,” I said back, chipper, unafraid of needles, vaccines, shots, or anything like that. “Okay,” she said, less than a second later, “you’re all done.” I didn’t even feel the needle before she was putting a bandage on my arm and putting my t-shirt sleeve back down. We exchanged “thank you” and “have a great day,” and I pulled up to the end of the line where an EMT gave me a packet of information on the vaccine and a card that had no patient name yet but was stamped with today’s date, indicating that I had completed my first of two vaccines. That I was halfway done. I really have to wait 30 days after the second dose to truly be “done,” but “third-way” done doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. I pulled off to the side on the meandering path back through the campus parking lot and took a photo with my half-completed card. Because by social media rules, if you don’t take a selfie with your card, were you really vaccinated? Thinking back to my coworkers’ puppies that had gotten their vaccinations to make them safe around other dogs over the summer, I sent the photo to our group chat, “halfway to street legal!”