After several years, I started watching Scooby-Doo after the band-aid I got over my shot was bright blue with Scooby’s face on it. Multiple faces. You’d think they’d put one face per band-aid, but no.
The typical plot of a Scooby-Doo episode is simple enough, and you probably already know it. Scooby-Doo or another gang member runs into something weird, they carry out a task that leads them to a “nice guy,” they find something else weird, get jump-scared, and unmask the bad guy that turned out to be the “good guy” all along.
That is what I’m assuming. Only one episode was free and my childhood memories are hazy.
Our society, though more complex, is basically Scooby-Doo. Substitute a groovy polyamorous gang with most people on the planet, the good guy/bad guy with rich people and government officials, and the haunted house with a planet on fire, we’re basically living in a long episode of Scooby-Doo.
Take our current haunted house, the coronavirus. 61,751 people have died from it in the US alone. 3.18 million people have died worldwide. Dolly Parton and others have contributed to make three vaccines available: Moderna, Pizfer, and the somewhat sketchy Johnson & Johnson vaccines. The one HSU has been administering is Pfizer/BioNTech with 95% efficacy.
So who’s the good guy/bad guy? Well, the US has been a top vaccine producer, yet has an export ban on the raw materials used to make the vaccine. India in particular is the second most populous country in the world with 1.3 billion people, and 19.2 million COVID-19 cases and 3,523 deaths per day. (For comparison, the US daily average as of Saturday, May 1 is 691 deaths.)
I’m not going to lie and say I haven’t benefited from “America First.” I am a young person who was able to walk into Nelson Hall, have a nice panic attack over how many people were there, sign a form, get a shot, and walk out 15 minutes later.
And yet, I wasn’t thinking about India, or injustice. I did think that maybe I should wait and was being selfish by going when so many others hadn’t. But I was sent an email saying I could get shot on a Tuesday, so I went.
It was this point when the gang had completed their task and felt rewarded by a “good guy.” Then a couple hours later I felt the urge to barf. I doubled over, clutching my stomach as I anticipated the slime. I didn’t know if I could make it to the bathroom in time, but I did know that I couldn’t move.
Then it passed. Nothing went up my throat, and the dorm’s carpet remained, if not clean, then not covered in barf.
A pain was growing in my arm where I thought the shot was painless. Then my other arm decided it wanted to join in. Stupid arm.
And that was it. I didn’t contract COVID-19 and am waiting for my second shot in May.
It’s important to note that my symptoms were merely my own immune system reacting to foreign material. It means the vaccine worked, and that my system is learning to identify and target the virus. Vaccines, if anyone reading a newspaper would doubt it, are safe.
Scooby-Doo, if there was a dog version, would take it. Poor guy would be terrified by the pandemic.
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