A Facebook Post About Covid Vaccination

 (I posted the following comment this morning to a friend’s Facebook page in a thread discussing vaccination.)

On a personal note, my wife and I were fully Modernized months ago. We had slightly unpleasant but not severe reactions to the second injection and have experienced no discernible ill effects since.

Nevertheless, we recently attended a major bowling tournament for a couple of days in a crowded bowling center, and even though masking was required and practiced by all spectators and competitors, it was a reckless risk we shouldn’t have taken in the middle of a Delta Covid surge.

Four days after we came home, my wife began experiencing subtle symptoms of possible infection and subsequently tested positive. But her symptoms remained mild and have now virtually disappeared.

Moreover, I never had any symptoms to speak of but got tested Tuesday and received my test result this morning. It was negative.

I don’t know how much of a role our being fully inoculated with a mRNA vaccine played in this very favorable outcome, but I think it’s pretty reasonable to surmise that getting vaccinated didn’t harm either of us and that, given my wife’s age and especially mine, it may well have spared us serious illness or worse and with no apparent downside.

And even before this recent brush with Covid, ever since we were fully vaccinated, we’ve experienced so much less anxiety about becoming infected and severely sickened with this deadly and pervasive disease than we did previously.

Vaccination removes or at least greatly lessens the terrible, nagging fear of catching Covid and makes life so much more enjoyable.

I guess some dispel this fear by underestimating or even outright denying the threat Covid poses to the unvaccinated. But that seems to me like a perilously risky strategy with potentially deleterious if not deadly consequences for them personally, for their loved ones, and, collectively, for society at large.

I say don’t be foolish. Get vaccinated. Do it for yourself. Do it for your loved ones and friends and coworkers and other people around you. Do it for your country. And do it for the world.

 

Taking a Foolish Covid Risk

I did a very foolish thing late last month. I did it out of love for my lifelong favorite sport and its practitioners, but that's no excuse.

I went with my wife to a major professional women's bowling tournament and spent two days in a crowded bowling center during a surging pandemic worse than anything the world has experienced since the 1918 influenza pandemic.

Yes, I had a great time watching the world's best female professional bowlers compete in arguably their most prestigious tournament. Yes, everyone was masked inside the building. And, yes, we were both fully Modernized. But it wasn't worth the risk of still catching a disease that has killed millions and severely sickened and debilitated many millions more over less than two years. I should have known better. I did know better. But I did it anyway because I felt like I just had to see all those great bowlers up close and personal come what may.

Four days after we returned home, my wife began feeling a little odd. She reported intermittent piercing pains in her head she said she'd never felt before, a somewhat unusually dry if not semi-sore throat, and mild muscle aches and bodily fatigue. She wasn't sure that it wasn't her allergies acting up or something else innocuous, but when those symptoms persisted, she got tested at work for Covid and was informed the next day that she was positive. 

By that time, I was feeling a little "under the weather" as well and even developed some unusual diarrhea for half a day after prolonged lower digestive tract discomfort the day before, so I decided to get tested too. I did that yesterday and am awaiting my result while assuming and acting as though I'm infected until I receive it. And if my result is negative, I'm a little afraid that the exposure I may have had to people infected with Covid while waiting in the long, serpentine line ahead of and behind me outside and inside the testing center may have infected me.

My wife and I now feel almost back to normal, and if one or both of us doesn't take a turn for the worse like has been known to happen with some after they thought they were out of the woods, I will consider us exceedingly blessed.

And I will have learned my lesson. No more needless venturing into precarious places and situations until the pandemic is no more. Yes, maybe my wife didn't catch Covid on our trip. And maybe I don't have it or didn't catch it from the trip either. Maybe I caught it from my wife who caught it somewhere else, or I caught it somewhere else. But it doesn't much matter. The aforementioned "lesson" is to not take needless risks in the time of surging Covid-19 no matter how tempted I am to do so.

My Happy Birthday

I turned 68 today. Who woulda thunk I'd make it this far?

When I was a kid, the year 2000 seemed impossibly remote and the thought of being 47 years old almost inconceivable. But I'm now 21 years into the twenty-first century, and my body and mind are still relatively intact.

Not only that, but the Covid threat I worried about a year ago seems markedly diminished by the fact that my wife has had both of her Moderna shots and I'll be getting my second in six days. I'm not looking forward to the potential side-effects of that infamous booster, but I am looking forward to the immunity from serious illness I'll very likely soon enjoy.

This is not to say that I don't still harbor ample concerns that I won't detail here and now. But I feel plenty grateful and happy today, and I'm just going to embrace that happiness and get on with getting on. Maybe I'll still be here next year to post again, and maybe I won't. But I'm glad I'm here today, and if anyone else ever reads this, I hope you are too, whether it's your birthday or not.

Bye for Now, Facebook

Yesterday, I did something I needed to even though I didn't want to. I announced on Facebook that I'm "taking an indefinite leave of absence from posting to or commenting on [the platform] while I work on some projects I've been neglecting including bettering myself and launching one or more podcasts." And now I need to honor that pledge.

It won't be easy. I love participating on Facebook because it's about the only social interaction I have these days. Sharing and discussing articles I've read; reading and commenting on articles, opinions, or personal matters others have shared or comments they've made; and just receiving "likes" for things I've shared or comments I've made feels good. I'm going to miss it.

But Facebook has diverted me from so many things I need to do to fulfill myself more deeply and, perhaps, save my marriage if it can be saved. My participation on Facebook has also brought out some of my worst qualities in terms of how I feel about and interact with people who, for example, support Donald Trump or downplay the seriousness of Covid-19.

I hope to return to Facebook someday. But not until I have at least one podcast up and running, and not until I'm ready and able to consistently dialogue with people I disagree with on politics and other matters in a more respectful and kindly manner. And even then, I can't spend most of my day there doing what I've been doing. Much of my future activity on Facebook and other social media sites such as Twitter must revolve around sharing and discussing my podcast episodes or written pieces I've published somewhere or other.

I simply don't have enough time and cognitive bandwidth to do more if I'm going to make the most of what time I have left in this world to, in the words of a prayer I composed that I recite every night before sleeping, "do and be my very best from now on and to mindfully shine as a bright beacon of wisdom, strength, equanimity, compassion, and lovingkindness lighting the path of goodness, truth, and beauty."

Should I Change How I Speak and Write?

I've read recently that psychologists have conducted research suggesting that people with deteriorating brains from Alzheimer's and other dementias exhibit telltale signs early on in the ways they speak and write. That is, they express themselves with diminishing sophistication in their syntax and resort to more concrete words and convey fewer abstract ideas. 

If neuropathology causes this degradation of language, I'm wondering if this unfortunate process might work both ways. That is, if a deteriorating brain causes deteriorating use of language, might deliberately simplifying one's syntax and using simpler and more concrete words cause the brain to deteriorate faster or in worse ways than it would otherwise?

I ask because I feel a growing urge to radically change the way I write and speak so that it's much simpler, clearer, and more succinct than it has been.

Of course, I want to continue addressing the generally abstract topics and issues that interest me most not only without oversimplifying them but by being more incisive than I ever have before. Yet, I wonder if this is even possible, and worse still, whether I might initiate my brain's precipitous decline.

I tell myself that the greater effort I'll need to make to speak and write the way I wish will preserve and maybe even strengthen my brain's verbal centers and my corresponding language fluency. I also plan to do even more focused and extensive reading in various subjects, to write more, and to even systematically expand my vocabulary. So, maybe my concerns are groundless.

But they're still my concerns.