As I sat and waited the requisite 15 minutes post-jab in the community center of the Crosby County Pioneer Museum auditorium Friday afternoon, I gazed up at artist Joe Taylor’s grand mural incorporating bison roaring across the early plains. The depiction reminded me, with some optimism and sense of cooperative duty, that I was now part of the herd.
On a tip last week that the Crosbyton Clinic Hospital would be offering the Covid-19 vaccine (thank you, Mary Martin of Spur, for prompting us to share it on the newspapers’ social media), Kay Ellington and I secured appointments. The process was uncomplicated, in contrast to the spotty success we had heard of, and personally encountered, in trying to access the Lubbock Health Department’s jammed system last month.
Administration of the shots was equally uncomplicated. The efficiently moving, socially distanced crowd in the auditorium seemed as much like an afternoon social gathering as I’ve experienced in recent months, with masked and polite participants willingly following the guidance of helpful volunteers, local law enforcement, and medical personnel. Happy chatter filled the space as neighbors wished one another well.
The nurse supervising my table said the hospital expected to administer about 1,100 doses of the Pfizer vaccine over two days. Appointments had been filled for all available doses.
Melinda Cagle, director of the museum, told me it wasn’t the first time in the facility’s history that it had stepped up during a public health crisis. In the 1950s and ’60s, she said, the auditorium had been the site of polio vaccines given to schoolchildren orally in sugar-cube doses. (I’m old enough to remember mine, in first grade in Atlanta, Georgia.)
The Crosbyton crew verified ID’s at the front door—a process simplified by a marker board outside requesting that arrivals have that information out and ready—then checked temperatures and assigned places at resanitized tables and chairs via a post-it note. Volunteers guided folks to their assigned seats, staff provided a simple information form with a dozen or so health questions, and syringes were quickly readied for rolled-up sleeves. The needle itself barely registered. The mandated rest after the shot took longer than all the preceding steps.
One retired nurse from Lubbock, assigned to walk around and check on our welfare during that period, told me she’d grown up in Spur. Through masks for a few minutes we shared reminiscences, hers distant, mine recent.
Second-dose reminder cards in hand, we waved to our neighbors and were ushered out the back to waiting golf carts, which delivered us right to our parked vehicle.
Each of these public servants and volunteers deserves our highest gratitude for playing a smoothly executed role, and for putting themselves in the midst of the crowd so that many others could get vaccinated. Kudos to the Crosbyton Clinic Hospital and their recruited help.
On the way home a National Public Radio segment featured voices from around the nation sharing their post-vaccination impressions.
“When they plunge the COVID-19 shot into your arm, you may not feel much of a physical sensation, but many people feel a lot emotionally,” said host Audie Cornish. “After a year of worry and pain, they've taken action that may ward off the virus.”
Maryland educator Jennifer Danish, whose school is trying to reopen, told Cornish, “When I saw my colleagues come out vaccinated and then knew that I was about to go in myself, I was honestly just overcome with tears.”
Twenty-five-year-old Allegra McComb of Colorado, a hospital volunteer, said, “I’m so grateful that I got a vaccine. The main feeling I got was just, like, a huge sense of relief, to know that . . . I am personally protected but also have another layer of protection for the people immediately close to me and also that I can be contributing to herd immunity.”
Yeah, that’s right, I replied aloud to the radio as though it were able to hear me. (I’ve been on way too many Zoom calls and audioconferences lately.) I’m running with the thundering herd now. We are on our way.
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