Want ‘normal life’ in Fresno to resume? Don’t wait to vaccinate against COVID-19
Don’t know about you, kind reader, but I’m ready to resume normal life.
Or at least some semblance of how things were before coronavirus turned us into a society of mask-wearing, hand-scrubbing shut-ins.
It would be nice to eat restaurant food inside the actual restaurant. Visit my 81-year-old father, who lives alone. See live music being performed. Attend a Fresno Grizzlies game. Read the facial expression of the cashier who rings up my groceries.
For the first time in 10 long months, the end of our public health crisis is within sight. The COVID-19 vaccine is being distributed en masse in Fresno County, and every day the pace seems to accelerate.
County officials earlier this week unveiled a “super vaccination site” at the Fresno County Fairgrounds capable of administering 1,500 daily doses and published a schedule of who could be inoculated and when.
Twenty four hours later, the schedule was already obsolete. Now anyone 75 and older is allowed to register for vaccine appointments at the fairgrounds — two weeks earlier than previously stated — with the intent of dropping the age barrier to 65 “sooner rather than later” to satisfy California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s latest mandate.
Other area clinics, including Sierra Pacific Orthopedics in north Fresno, are already administering the vaccine to the 65 and older crowd on a drive-thru basis.
Compared to where we were a week ago — frustrated by the vaccine’s slow roll-out statewide and almost completely in the dark about when average citizens can expect to get it — this is heady, exciting stuff.
“I’m a little bit giddy with excitement, to tell you the truth,” my Bay Area-dwelling dad said over Skype, minutes after scheduling his own vaccination appointment.
The long lines at the fairgrounds and at local clinics are an encouraging sight, since the only way out of this pandemic nightmare is for enough people to get vaccinated.
How many? Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says 75% of us must get the vaccine before we can return to “some form of normalcy.”
Yikes. That’s a scary figure, considering how difficult it is to get three out of four people to agree on anything, let alone take action. (That only half of Fresno County’s health care workers signed up to get vaccinated is disconcerting.) But it’s a target we as a community must hit, or else new cases will continue to surge and our hospitals will remain filled.
As other regions of the state see their pandemic restrictions lifted, we’ll remain mired down.
‘The best shot we have’ at normalcy
I certainly don’t want that. I want kids back in school and playing sports without controversy or ill feelings. I want each and every business to reopen. I want churches to be able to hold indoor services, without any compromise to their parishioners’ health. I want to drink bourbon cocktails at a bar. I want to experience ArtHop on Fulton Street. I want to attend Grizzlies games this summer and Fresno State football in the fall.
Don’t you? Getting back to normal requires enough of us getting vaccinated until we reach a critical mass.
In the words of Dr. Rais Vohra, Fresno County’s interim health officer, “This is the best shot we have.”
No pun intended but certainly applied.
Of course, we don’t have nearly enough doses of the vaccine to inoculate three-quarters of the population. That would require about 1.5 million doses for Fresno County alone, since everyone must get two shots three (Pfizer) or four (Moderna) weeks apart.
Even if we did, and county officials met their goal of administering 3,000 doses per day, it would still take months and months until we made a sizable dent And, inevitably, there will be people who seize upon the vaccine as an opportunity to drop their guards, forgo preventative measures like masks and social distancing and set us all back as a result.
If the vaccine’s initial roll-out was any indication, the next few months promise to be uneven and frustrating. Especially as we get past essential workers, seniors and those with pre-existing medical conditions and move toward younger, healthier age groups. But at least now there’s a road map back to normal. We can see the finish line at last.
