Just A Little Prick

 My family and I have not given up. We all piled into my son's car. Mom got shotgun and I squeezed into the cramped back seat. My son drove because, well, because he really likes to drive. We headed downtown to our local Kaiser facility to stand in line for flu shots. Initially, as much as my son was looking forward to an excuse to head out on the highway, he was not enthusiastic. At age twenty-three, he has not yet become accustomed to the idea that someone jabbing a needle into your shoulder, thigh or other fleshy parts might be the lesser of two evils. 

Because for him it brought back very visceral memories of being poked with these pharmaceutical torture devices. This would include a couple of ill-fated trips with mom and dad to donate blood that ended up making him less than functional for the drive home. Which is why we tossed in the offer of a lunch at a nearby taqueria to take away some of the sting. 

Initially, this seemed to get us past the bumpy part. As we stood six feet away from the other pending flu shot victims, we joked about how much easier this would all be if we were in line for Space Mountain and oh by the way here's your shot just before the push the bar down and send you off into that high speed turbulent roller coaster ride in the dark. They took us one at a time, and I could hear my son chatting up his needle tech in the tent in front of me. He sounded very brave. And when he emerged he didn't look like he needed a lollipop. He even commented that the experience wasn't as bad as he had imagined. 

Later that day, however, his shoulder began to ache and the notion of working on his construction project downstairs no longer seemed like such a good idea. He was still encouraged by the experience of having participated in preventative medical care, reasoning that if he was going to insist that those he encountered around him should wear a mask and maintain social distance, this was all part of the game. 

All of this to say that my son, who by his own admission is a big baby, is still far and away more interested in curbing the spread of infectious diseases than the current administration. While five aides to the head of the "president's" COVID-19 task force have tested positive for the virus, the White House Chief of Staff announced that they were "not going to control the pandemic." Instead, they plan to "control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics, and other mitigations." The reasoning, it would seem, is that all the chickens in their particular coop have been eaten, so they're not even going to bother fixing the hole where the fox gets in. Instead, the Trump regime seems to be targeting chicken self defense as a better solution. 

Even my needle-adverse son knows that surrendering now to the virus just means more shots. Shots that have not as yet been approved or proven. Keep wearing your mask.