Confession of a Vaccine Shopper (Who Sympathizes with Vaccine Hesitance)

Last month, I read the article “This entitlement is beyond me’: Canada hits COVID-19 vaccine milestone, but people are still ‘shopping’ between Pfizer and Moderna” and I felt irritated. Why? Because I was a ‘vaccine shopper.’ I could have gotten a Pfizer/BioNTech dose a few days before I got my J&J vaccine, but I chose the J&J appointment. I don’t like being told I’m ‘entitled’ just because I make a calculated choice about what was better for me.

Did I hurt anybody by delaying my vaccination for a few days? Nope. I even reached ‘fully vaccinated’ status faster by choosing the appointment for a J&J vaccine.

Another problem with the urging to ‘get the first possible vaccine dose’ message is that, if I took that advice literally, I would have potentially done more harm to myself than others. I could have gotten a vaccine dose faster if I had been willing to board a taxi/bus/streetcar/etc. However, between March 2020 and my vaccination, I made a rule not to board any vehicle unless absolutely necessary. If I believed that my only choices were ‘board public transit to get vaccine’ or ‘never get vaccine’ I would’ve taken my chances on public transit, but I had a third option, ‘wait until vaccine is available at a site within walking distance of my home.’ That’s the option I chose.

The Fun of Watching BATS Live on Zoom

One of the more pleasant discoveries I’ve made in recent weeks is that watching BATS on Zoom is fun.

No, I’m not talking about flying mammals. I’m talking about Bay Area TheaterSports – Improv (BATS Improv).

As you probably know, traditional live theatre shows around the world are very cancelled right now. Some theatre companies are planning shows for this summer and fall, but I predict most or all of these will also be cancelled since live performances with audience members travelling potentially far distances to sit next to each other in close proximity while performers project respiratory drops much more than 6 feet / 2 meters so that they can be heard in the back row is one of the last things I expect to open up again. Unless there is an amazing breakthrough in preventing/treating COVID-19, I think traditional theatre shows are too risky. Even without legal restrictions, I expect that there will be so many people who agree with this that there won’t be sufficiently large audiences.

A lot of theatre companies around the world are streaming recordings of old performances.

BATS Improv it taking it one step further. They are doing live performances – on Zoom.

So, about the notorious difficulties of getting toliet paper…

I’ve heard and read that it’s really difficult to get toilet paper these days. I’ve seen that, at one of the local supermarkets, that the shelves in the toilet paper / paper towel section are the most consistently empty (though it’s been more than a week since I went to that supermarket, so I don’t know if that has changed). This doesn’t directly concern me, because I stopped using toilet paper at home long before the current coronavirus crisis.

And whether it directly concerns me or not, difficulty in distributing toilet paper is far, far from the most important aspect of the current crisis. I wish that there was nothing worse about the crisis than toilet paper supply chain problems. But even though it is far from being the most important thing, it is still a thing. So, toilet paper shortages.

More Personal Comments on the Coronavirus Crisis

I want to avoid discussing the coronavirus crisis in my regular weekly blog posts (at least while the crisis is ongoing) – so I’m going to say some things now.

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During shelter-at-home, I’m learning things I never knew about my parents before. Such as this:

Dad: I haven’t told your mother, but I think I have a cataract in my left eye.
Me: Uh… [I was thinking that this came totally out of the blue]
Dad: It’s like looking out a really dirty pane of glass.
Me: Oh.
Dad: The last time I went to the DMV to get my driver’s license renewed, they made me look at that eye chart on the wall, and I had no problem reading the letters with my right eye. But with my left eye, I couldn’t tell what the letters were.
Me: [trying to remember when my dad last went to the DMV] Wait, this has been going on for that long??!!
Dad: [sheepishly] I was in denial.
Me: I don’t think you can get treatment for that now.
Dad: No, I probably can’t.

Hopefully, both of my parents will survive the current crisis, and thus live long enough for my mother to go all $#!@%$^$%$# on my dad when she finds out that he’s been keeping a visual impairment a secret for years. (If my dad is clever enough, he’ll imply that the cataract started during the coronavirus crisis, and that he didn’t want to stress her out about it during the crisis when there was little possibility of treatment). (No, my mother doesn’t read this blog). (Though if she is reading this blog after all, I’m probably going to find out very soon).

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I am glad that I currently live in a household with other people right now, though I am keeping on eye on possible opportunities to physically isolate within the household. That’s mainly because I’m at low risk, and do things like run to the hardware store to get a replacement for the plumbing part that wears out NOW of all times, whereas my parents are at high risk. It would be safer if I could go outside for necessary tasks like ‘get plumbing thingy from hardware store’, and then be isolated from them in case I somehow got infected in the hardware store. But it is hard to isolate when there is only one bathroom, which makes other efforts to physically isolate myself within the household seem potentially pointless.

(Is okay that I was secretly pleased that the thingy wore out so that I had a really good reason to enter the hardware store, where I got a few things other than the plumbing thingy? Maybe if I lived in physical isolation, I’d feel comfortable with going to the hardware store for errands less important than an urgent plumbing problem.)

What Does It Mean to Leave an Ace Community?

This is for the March 2020 Carnival of Aces “Leaving”

When I first saw the theme for this month’s Carnival of Aces, I wondered whether I had anything to say about the theme of ‘Leaving’.

Well, now I do, because I am no longer a contributer to The Asexual Agenda. Since I want to keep the reason I chose to leave private, I’m not going to discuss that specifically. But it did focus my mind on what it means to leave an ace community.

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There are now so many online communities that, if someone wants to leave one online ace community and join another, it is often possible. For example, if someone wants to leave the ace community on Tumblr or Twitter because they want to get away from the ace flame wars (a.k.a. “The Discourse”), they might be able to join Pillowfort, or Dreamwidth, or somewhere else online with other aces and better moderation. If they are able and willing to put in the effort, they can even try to create a new online ace community.

And the reason one might leave an ace community may not be negative. Someone could be so excited about a new online ace community that they may leave an old one so that they may more fully throw themselves into the new community.

Then some people choose to leave an ace community without joining another. It happens all the time, and for many reasons. If you’ve spent much time in any ace community, you’re probably aware of people who have dropped out of the ace scene altogether (as far as we know).

Not all people have the same range of options. Someone who is not comfortable with using English on the internet, or at least in an online ace community, has fewer options than someone who is. Someone who needs specific accommodations to use a website may find that some online ace communities do not offer those accommodations. Et cetera, et cetera.

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Scattered Thoughts on the Coronavirus Crisis

As you may know, I live in San Francisco, and today was the first day of the “shelter in place” order. The changes in the past week – such as all public schools and libraries closing, the state government ordering all bars/clubs to close, etc. led me to think this was coming. I had already decided to not go to the local ace meetup days before it was formally cancelled/moved online (and no, I didn’t try to attend the online meetup).

I think it is good that the local governments are doing this. I am convinced that extreme social distancing can save lives, and I could see from the behavior of people around me (even while keeping a safe distance) that not enough people were going to do the social distancing thing without a mandatory government order.

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