First shot

Yesterday I got my first covid shot.  It came as a bit of a surprise.  I had registered online three weeks earlier but didn’t expect to be called until April.  Switzerland is a mess with the vaccinations.  Everything happens extremely slowly.  Less than 10 per cent of the population have been vaccinated.  Some in the highest-priority group are still waiting.

I got a text message on Thursday with an appointment on Friday.  I took my doctor’s not confirming my risk-group status and my yellow vaccination passport.  It would make sense, it seemed to me, to enter the vaccination into this little booklet, recognized as it is internationally and underwritten by the World Health Organization.

The Swiss health system has other ideas.  My vaccination passport was ignored.  Instead, I got a simple piece of paper, signed by a person of little leverage, that confirmed that I had been vaccinated.  As proof of its official nature, the piece of paper carried the logo of the Baden hospital where I had received the shot.

How far does the authority of this document reach?  If I tried to travel to Japan or China, would I be welcomed as a healthy and safe visitor, or would I be laughed out of the country without having been allowed to enter it in the first place?  It came to me that it’s ridiculous that the WHO doesn’t issue an app that serves as an official vaccination record.  All the various national discussions about vaccination passports would be moot, and people would have something of wide, maybe global acceptance.  Or maybe Bill Gates should have added little RFID chips to all the vaccination doses.  Then I would just need to touch a sensor at the airport, and all would be good.

So far I don’t feel any side effects from the vaccine.  My harm hurts a bit around the point where the needle went in, but this is minimal.  The cancer has a much graver effect on my well-being.  Even though I’m at the end of the first recovery week, my abdomen hurts from constant pressure, my belly is not too enthusiastic about food, and I am horribly tired most days.  The second cycle of the Lonsurf therapy will start in a week.  When I’m recovering from that, after Easter, I’ll get my second covid shot.