Tag: Society

Oh Happy Day! COVID-19 Vaccine First Dose

Yesterday I received my first COVID vaccine shot. I was amazed at how quickly it all came to pass after months and months of waiting. In Florida last week there was talk of possibly expanding eligibility to ages 55+, just days after it was lowered to 60. But on Friday, the state announced eligibility is now 50+ starting on Monday.

To seize the opportunity, I quickly registered on county vaccination sites and set up online accounts at pharmacies and grocery stores. Florida has a patchwork of vaccination paths, which makes it confusing and inefficient. The county-administered sites run on a first-come-first-served basis, while the retail outlets require appointments scheduled directly on their sites. With no centralization, there’s huge potential for overlap, especially for motivated vaccine seekers like me.

So at dawn Monday I had two computers and my phone ready to get in the Publix and CVS appointment queues which opened at 7 AM. I waited as patiently as I could as I watched the availability decrease steadily: 92%… 76%… 48% then to 30% quite rapidly. Suddenly, about 45 minutes after the hour my screen moved from “On Hold” to “Register Now” and I speedily seized the first available slot for Wednesday afternoon at a local Publix supermarket.

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Olá mundo

First blog post, just testing this out.

I prefer the edge: the place where countries, communities, allegiances, affinities, and roots bump uncomfortably up against one another—where cosmopolitanism is not so much an identity as the normal condition of life. Such places once abounded. Well into the twentieth century there were many cities comprising multiple communities and languages—often mutually antagonistic, occasionally clashing, but somehow coexisting. Sarajevo was one, Alexandria another. Tangiers, Salonica, Odessa, Beirut, and Istanbul all qualified—as did smaller towns like Chernovitz and Uzhhorod. By the standards of American conformism, New York resembles aspects of these lost cosmopolitan cities: that is why I live here.

You can read the full post by Tony Judt here.