Please, please, please, get vaccinated. Here’s my latest LIHerald.com column:
By Scott A. Brinton
As I made my way along Bay Parkway, headed to Jones Beach Field 3 on a recent Wednesday, I more than half-expected the worst. I anticipated a mile-long line and a five-hour wait, during which I would be spoken to brusquely by exhausted state government employees. At the end of it all, I would have a needle stuck in my arm.
So I was pleasantly surprised when I arrived at Field 3 at 7:50 a.m. for an 8:00 appointment, and there was no line. A National Guardsman, dressed in olive green fatigues with an olive green mask, met me at the gate, asked whether I had an appointment and waved me through to a check-in post, where I showed my ID.
That was it. I was in. No hours spent idling in line. I was about to receive the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says, is 95 percent effective in preventing Covid-19.
As it turned out, the vaccination experience was nothing like what I’d half-expected. I marveled at the assembly-line efficiency with which doses were administered by friendly government employees. Lines of orange cones led me to a large white tent that fit four cars at a time. There were a half-dozen or so such tents. The entire operation looked like a cross between a giant car wash and a fast-food eatery, with lots of military personnel directing traffic. I pulled up to my slot. I was asked a series of simple questions. I showed my ID again. I was told to pull down my sleeve, and I was injected. Then I was told to pull over to a waiting area and sit for 15 minutes to check for a reaction. Feeling nothing out of the ordinary, I drove home.
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