Fully vaccinated today! Now what?

     

The Bakers took a selfie while on a hike at Scott County Park, Iowa.

    It was exactly 14 days ago when Steve and I received our second, and last Pfizer vaccine for COVID-19.

    It was six days ago when the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, or CDC, issued a surprising edict from Atlanta: Fully-vaccinated individuals could safely go without masks outdoors and indoors.

    So it was that I entered Modern Woodmen Park on that same day, one of about an estimated 40 percent of those at the baseball game so attired. Lots of folks seemed to be immediately comfortable without a mask in mixed company.

    I am not.

    "I don't change, quickly," I recently explained to Amy, the hair stylist who helps me monthly. We talk about COVID-19 and vaccines a lot, because, well, it's a popular topic of conversation.

    Yesterday (May 18) I got my hair colored and cut, and did not wear a mask; got a pedicure at the nail salon where I wore a mask, and the UPS store, where I also wore a mask.

    I feel pretty comfortable entering a restaurant, for example, and wearing a mask until getting seated. I also wear a mask when walking around the site, indoors.

    Today I wore a mask into every spot I visited: A dry cleaners where the clerk quickly donned a mask once she saw me; at a popular flower shop, where most everyone had on a mask; and inside HyVee, where a lot of shoppers had on a mask. I did not wear a mask out in the temporary flower area outdoors in the HyVee parking lot.

    Drop the mask routine? How does that work?

    It would be more comfortable, for sure, but the cost still seems high.

    Staying mostly at home means I have a sparkly clean house and yard.  I exercise five days a week without too much trouble. I go out with masks to super markets (Did anyone else try getting food delivered and decide it was too much of a hassle?) as well as other stores. 

    Full vaccination is vitally important because no American really wants to repeat the actions we all had to take the last 16 months. Hopefully we can reach 70 percent of the population, fully vaccinated by early July.

    In the meantime, I think having hobbies and doing those hobbies with passion got this individual through the darkest pandemic days.

    The garden is carefully designed and tended in the warm summer months. In the winter, I scrapbook and organize photos. I now have 38 scrapbooks. These are records of the past and fodder, perhaps, for a book. We Bakers also feed and watch wild birds -- right now the focus is on Baltimore Orioles and hummingbirds.

    But never wearing a mask? I wonder when that will feel okay?

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