The COVID Vaccine: A New Social Divide Between the Haves and the Have Nots

"No, Jeannie doesn't have it yet," I heard my friend say into the telephone. When I looked up, she had turned her back and lowered her voice so she could continue the conversation with her husband about an upcoming outdoor gathering more privately. I imagined that he was telling her I couldn't come, that because I had not received my COVID vaccine (and they had) I was persona non grata. I felt a combination of anger, frustration, and rejection, like I was being excluded from a lunch table in the junior high cafeteria. I was obviously not in the cool group.

I never learned for sure if he was indeed banning me from the gathering because later that day, in a stroke of luck, I got a text from a neighbor to say that our community center had leftover Pfizer doses that needed to be used. I rushed over in my biking gear (since I'd been on a ride) and got my jab and in a snap, I felt like I'd been elevated in the new social order. I guess it didn't matter that I'd only had the first dose and that it takes weeks to build up real immunity, because two days later, I went to my friend's small, outdoor Happy Hour, where we still socially distanced. Everyone else there had gotten at least one dose.