A Tale of Two Jabs...

I have never, at any time throughout my entire life, been a conventional 'sports fan'. Let me qualify that to say that I do not enjoy ‘professional' sports (that is, heavily commercial sports that involve gobs of money, either from fans and commercial sponsors and individuals, or paid out in obscenely overinflated salaries to so-called 'celebrity athletes'). Once ‘professionalism’ hits the sports scene, what may have originally been a most enjoyable pastime suddenly becomes a mere exercise in wretched excess (i.e. as exemplified by grossly overpaid ‘star’ players who receive millions of dollars each year for tossing some sort of ball around in front of grossly overcharged stadium audiences and media cameras for an hour or two each year…and quite often later end up on the five o’clock National news for some egregious breech of conduct, ethics, graft, drug or spousal abuse, or other forms of violent personal behavior…on or off the court/playing field).

By such a reckoning, the only truly worthwhile sports (unless you’re a bloodthirsty, excessively bored and unreflective plebian who needs to expiate stored-up antipathies vicariously by watching virtual gladiators hack each other up in the colosseum…excuse me, I meant ‘stadium’) are either individual sports (i.e. man against the clock) or amateur games in which it’s still all about fun, sportsmanship and mutual enjoyment.

I myself have NEVER, therefore, been any kind of ‘sports fan’, such as is typical of so many who live and breathe their favorite pro-sports team’s exploits on the grid-iron (et al). Yeah, you know who they are…the ones in the stands with outrageous face-paint and wearing their favorite player’s numbered jersey, et bloody cetera. Or clustered around the Big Eye in the family room during the several annual media-broadcast professional football, basketball or baseball ‘super-events’ (e.g. the Super Bowl, the World Series and/or whatever passes for same in ‘bassaball’). The chicken-wing and snack food junkies who typically put on several pounds of body weight during a 6-hour ball game or get totally blitzed on Budweiser Light before halftime. Sound familiar?

OK, need I say more? I think not. That pretty well summarises my feelings about American ‘pro-sports’. My personal sports, by contrast, are strictly confined to tests of the individual against himself and nature (such as in mountaineering, rock-climbing, running and bicycling) and they have been all I’ve ever needed to maintain an even keel and a healthy mental outlook in life.

OK, enough back-story here. Cut to this coming Sunday (7 Feb 21), which is, of course, the day of SUPER BOWL 55, between the Chiefs and the Bucs.

Wifie and I are subscribers to Kaiser Permanente’s Northern California HMO division and we, like so many others, have been anxiously awaiting Kaiser’s announcement that they are (finally) offering subscriber appointments to members so as to receive the first SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 immunisation injection.

Shamefully, thus far, Kaiser has been the tardiest, slowest-to-respond of all the major health insurance providers in the State of Calipornia (sic). ALL of the other top-tier HMOs in the state have either developed plans to administer the vaccine or are already immunizing their ‘Tier-2/3’ plan members. And while the whole sordid national and state vaccine roll-out has been a colossal and total screw-up from its inception, most all the other HMOs are already about three leaps ahead of the Kaiser game. Meanwhile, Kaiser subscribers have nearly melted down (and at least ‘crashed’ several times) the Kaiser internet website with their millions of calls to inquire as to when the vaccine WILL be finally be made available to ‘those at highest risk’ and/or those over the aqe of 65.

Despite huge numbers of sincere sounding advisories from Kaiser’s PR wizards (and even the CEO himself), reiterating the ‘need for patience’, thus far pretty damn little has been done in this regard, other than Kaiser inoculating its own, grossly overworked and at-risk primary health care workers (no arguments contrary to that vital necessity, of course).

What Kaiser doesn’t like to broadcast widely is the fact that due to its commercial efforts to maximise its premium-paying (or Medicare-subsidised) client population, so as to firm up its economic bottom-line, it has presently a population of clients in excess of 9.5 MILLION subscribers! All individuals who, of course, generally have ‘regular’ and continuing health care concerns that require close monitoring and clinical treatment (not to mention ‘elective procedures’, such as minor surgeries) during the present pandemic crisis.

Meanwhile, we keep hearing plaintive excuses from Kaiser PR about ‘not enough vaccines being provided’ to the Kaiser parent organisation (which has responsibility for the health needs of two major divisions within the state, one for Northern California and the other for Southern California), etc., etc.

So here we have continued to sit, hunkered down at home (as we have been, for over a full year now) so as to minimize any possible unnecessary exposure to the carelessness of all the blithe idiots who persist in disregarding the pandemic preventive recommendations, waiting for our ‘shot’ at getting jabbed by our HMO!

Then, yesterday, one of wifie’s close friends from the Chinese Christian Church called to inform her that…miracle of miracles!...the local ‘Safeway’ store’s pharmacy was taking appointments to administer the vaccine (uncertain which version, but one of the approved iterations, anyway)! This was at about 9PM at night, but we quickly dialed up the local Safeway store chains to try to book an appointment, despite thinking “This is too good to be true!”

Sure enough, as a quick survey of three local Safeway Grocery Stores (that all have on-premises pharmacies) promptly revealed, none of them had any appointment openings up through April (it was unlikely, however, that anything past March had not yet been officially ‘opened’ for bookings). Zero, Zip, Zilch, Zed!

We then, albeit considerably let down, resigned ourselves to the on-going futility of waiting for Kaiser to step up to the plate, vis-à-vis offering immunisation appointments, when the phone rang again and it was the same friend, advising wifie that there was a Safeway store that had openings, so we quickly followed that up and sure enough, there was one store not far from us that DID have openings: all of them on one single day only. And that day was Sunday, the 7th of February!

At first, I failed to connect the dots, as the inimitable Sherlock himself would have likely advised (“Eliminate all the evidence that can be ruled out first; that which is left must be the truth.”)

After a few ruminative moments it suddenly dawned on me with the impact a small boulder would, after connecting with my head in a drop from a great height! Sunday was SUPERBOWL SUNDAY and everyone in the entire American continent was staying home that day to watch the big game live on the Big Eye!

I can only draw one conclusion from this and that is that, by and large and with all other things being equal (as my political science teacher often phrased it), here was irrefutable evidence that most Americans place more importance on watching professional sporting events than on protecting themselves from a pandemic whose reputation for causing statistically significant mortality is undeniable! Gotta be!

And if that conclusion is correct, it goes light years towards explaining why so many unreflective, uncomplicated (I’m being politely understated, here, obviously) people in our society continue to refuse to take this pandemic seriously and jeopardise the health of everyone else. And that’s even completely excluding a friend who, as one of those rabid right-wing ‘Q-Anon’ nuts (I don’t have many like that, I can assure you!), has been actively trying to spread misinformation about the pandemic (such as “masks are hazardous to your health”, “social distancing is unnecessary”, and “the COVID-19 pandemic is a Dr. Anthony Fauci inspired hoax to enhance his personal wealth and professional stature”, etc.).

And there you have it, folks! Word of mouth wins the day, Kaiser Health Insurance gets very LOW marks for efficiency, logistics and planning, and it underscores the truth that if ya don’t actively pursue your own best health interests, you’ll surely fall behind in the race to stay out of the clutches of COVID-19!

Finally, I will conclude this by saying that if I were a good God-fearing Christian, I’d probably be inclined to interpret my extreme loathing for professional American sports as a portent from God that he likes the way I think! I furthermore don’t feel like such a social pariah, now that my disdain of such mass crowd predilections has yielded a pot of virtual immunological gold!

Faith & begorrah, faddah, and how about thim potatoes, eh Paddy?! [It’s almost enough to make me want to book another appointment at the local Irish RC confessional! (Well, not quite enough, but you get my meaning here!)]

Be well, all of you, stay healthy and by all means continue to exercise that least used muscle in the human body we all have: the human brain!

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Postscript (5 Feb 21):

I was greatly amused to learn (today) that our Kaiser HMO has finally gotten around to contacting wifie to say that she may now 'schedule' the first of her two SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 immunisations at the local Kaiser HMO facility. This 'authorisation' occured, ironically enough and entirely by coincidence, on exactly the same day her initial Safeway Pharmacy COVID-19 injection is scheduled for. What utterly unfunny irony that is! [Kaiser informs her that they have been 'short' of the required supply of vaccine to innoculate their 9.5 millions of subscribers, so apparently that supply is now increasing sufficient to permit expanded immunisations.] Still, the 'wheels of progress' certainly do seem to move in an arbitrary manner...just like the human bowel!  ;P

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HOLD THE PRESSES! BREAKING NEWS!

(Postscript, dated 8 Feb 2021)

So there I was, smugly thinking that I had deftly managed to circumvent the frustrations of the COVID-19 bureaucracy at Kaiser, by getting an incredibly rare COVID-19 immunisation appointment at the SAFEWAY Pharmacy, right?

I showed up at the pharmacy on schedule with wifie, who was processed and did in fact receive the MODERNA COVID-19 vaccine (first injection), but then they turned to me and asked for 'the second (informational) sheet' that my printer should have printed but did not; a sheet that contained a few simple screening questions...among them, "Have you received any injections immediately prior to this appointment?"

I replied that yes, on a routine Kaiser clinical appointment (annual physical) two days earlier, the nurse had said I was due for a Tetanus Toxoid/Diptheria booster and administered it to me (this was two days prior to my Safeway COVID-19 scheduled immunisation date).

WHOA! Big red flag! I was told that "Sorry, but you can't have a COVID-19 immunisation until 14 days after any prior injections! Appointment canceled! You'll have to start the appointment process all over again, from the beginning (and only 14 days AFTER the Tetanus booster)."

Naturally, those few appointments that had existed on Superbowl Sunday were long-since snapped up and there were now NO appointment openings at all (for the current and following three months).

So here I am, back in the shuffling herd of frustrated 'most-at-risk' individuals, awaiting some sort of SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 immunisation...unable to get a Kaiser vaccine yet and also closed out of my one guaranteed opportunity to get immunised, thanks to Kaiser's bumbling concerning 'other vaccine' caveats.

I just can't believe it! But it certainly IS further excellent proof of exactly how screwed-up the entire American COVID-19 immunisation plan is. It strikes me as the absolute height of irony that the wealthiest, most advanced nation in the world (for the moment, anyway) has so thoroughly politicised and completely blown the vital effort to get its citizens vaccinated as expeditiously as possible!

Sady, given the deplorably attenuated memory-span of American citizens (read: voters), this truly unforgivable bureaucratic ineptness will quickly be forgotten the same way America conveniently failed to learn its lessons in 1918, after the 'Spanish Flu' pandemic decimated so many people!

America, America! Land of the free and home of the head-up-ass bureaucrat!

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PS: 'You're kidding me, right?' Department:

After returning from the pup's 2nd daily 'long walk' this AM (and not in a really good mood, in view of all the foregoing), wifie grabbed me and remarked: "PBS says this February is 'Black History Month'...all month long."

Quick as a flash, I responded: "You're kidding me, right? It's been Black History month every month this past year!" No flies on this lad...!   :)