Second Dose Symptoms

I know I updated a few days ago, but I thought I'd follow up to let you know what my experience was after getting my second dose. The day after, I woke up early with some discomfort. Nothing too extreme. My left arm hurt like last time, but this time around, I was sore all over. Kind of like how you might feel the day after getting a really good workout in, or after a day of heavy physical labour. I also felt chilly. I didn't get around to taking my temperature until the afternoon, but when I did, I had a slight fever. I was lethargic all day. Today, I was back to 100%. No aches, no fever, and good energy.

I bought the thermometer yesterday after getting my shot. I realized we didn't have one when I was leaving for my appointment, and thought I'd want to keep track of it. I felt really self conscious as I walked into the pharmacy. They always have those COVID questions posted up front, saying that you shouldn't enter if you have a fever. Plus, with all the emphasis on not leaving your home more often than necessary, it feels bad to go in, buy only one thing, and that one thing being a thermometer.

I'll give a bit of an update on the situation, since I'm already here.

Waterloo Region is currently the hardest-hit place for COVID in Ontario. We're worse than Toronto, Peel, and York, which is a first. Not a lot of consensus as to why. I've heard it might have been because of the anti-mask protests, although Toronto's had larger ones, and I've heard it might be because of our Mennonite population, who often live in congregate settings and don't have the highest opinion of vaccines. Apparently it's ripped though our homeless population, but again, I don't know why this would be more of an issue for Waterloo Region than Toronto.

As far as our recovery plan goes, we traded out our colour system for a step system. So now we've started with phases, moved to colours, and now we're using steps. When we swapped phases for colours, I speculated it was because phases created a "linear" impression. We hadn't experienced the waves, and when we did, it was disheartening to see us go from "Phase 3" back down to "Phase 2". Plus, if they wanted to advance things but didn't think they could go all the way to what they promised the next phase would look like, they had to awkwardly make it a fraction, like "Phase 3.5".

I don't really know why they've swapped colours for steps. Seems like the same problem of using numbers the way that that phases did. I guess they're feeling more optimistic with the vaccine rollout, and they want to give that impression of a linear route to success. If I'm being honest, the colour system was my favourite of the three, and I wish they stuck with it.

When they reveled the new step system, the step they said we were on was "Before Step 1". I don't know why you wouldn't just make the initial stage Step 1, and then continue from there. About a week ago, we moved to "Step 1" which means that some non-essential services were allowed to open. As far as I could tell, it meant you could go indoors to buy clothes. Still can't use the changing rooms, though.

Malls still aren't open, except for stores that have an external exit and entrance.

I celebrated Step 1 by going to Giant Tiger. If you're not familiar, it's a Canadian department store. I haven't gone clothes shopping since before the pandemic, and it's been a good lesson in how you don't need to shop all that often to still maintain a professional appearance, but it was time. Selection wasn't as good as I remembered, probably because they hadn't been ordering as much, and it had been worked over by people shopping using curbside pickup slowly over the last 14 months. Still got a few shirts and shorts out of it.

I know that clothing doesn't have the level of immediacy that food does, but it's felt weird that whenever restrictions are put into place, the first thing that gets taken away is clothes. Of course high fashion is frivolous, but my understanding is that at a most basic level, humans need food, shelter, and clothes. In fact, we have homeless people who are hungry, and they are allowed to live alongside us without food or shelter, but without clothes are deemed "indecent" and criminal. But now we restrict access to clothing. Weird.

We also have a new system for tracking the COVID variants. I mentioned in a previous post that while we condemned the phrases "China Virus" and "Wuhan Flu" due to being xenophobic, we were oddly okay to use national identifiers when the virus started to mutate. We had the "UK Variant", "Brazil Variant" and "South Africa Variant". This was corrected when an umbrella term was issued "Variants of Concerns", which could further be shortened to as "VOC".

But what if you did want to get specific about which strain you caught? Well, you could use the scientific terms, but to the lay person they sound like a random string of letters and numbers. The World Health Organization has put forward a catchier list of phrases for the different variants. Here they are:

COVID-19: The original strain. Believed to have originated in Wuhan Province China

Alpha Variant: Believed to originate in the UK

Beta Variant: Believed to originate in South Africa

Gamma Variant: Believed to originate in Brazil

Delta Variant: Believed to originate in India

Kind of odd that the US didn't get their own strain, since they're still leading in overall cases. The second and third countries with the highest recorded number of cases, India and Brazil, both got their own strains.

The Delta Variant is the newest of the bunch. It's sometimes referred to as a "double mutant" because it varies from the original strain in two ways, while the other variants only differ in one way. Our vaccines are built to combat the original strain, so the Alpha, Beta, and Gamma variants are a little more resistant, and the Delta is even a little bit more. But the vaccines are still effective for the most part.

At Max Vax

I got my second dose of the Moderna vaccine today. I'm at max vax. I've been double dosed. I was going to get it on July 16th, but a couple weeks ago I was told that I'd been moved up. So today I got to join the 16.5% of Canadians, and 20% of Ontarians that have been fully vaccinated.

Lee-Anne also got her second dose of Pfizer today. She got her first vaccine a few days before I got mine, but I managed to beat her to the second, although only by three and a half hours.

On my way to the pop-up clinic, I saw a dead fox on the road. My spirit name, which I got in a shaking tent ceremony in Chisasibi, is Fox Man. So this sight gave me an ominous feeling.

I got into the clinic fine. This time around, they asked me to swap my reusable mask for a medical one. When I did my First Aid training, they also required a medical mask, but last time I got a COVID vaccine, they were fine with a reusable one. In their invitation, they asked me to bring a mask, but didn't specify it had to be medical. It was fine because they provided one.

Before I got my shot, the person administering it asked me a series of question. Pretty standard, except she included the question "Are you pregnant or breastfeeding?". For a moment, I wondered, "Is it because my mask is covering my beard?" before I remembered that I'm still a hulking 6'3", broad-shouldered individual with very obvious male-pattern baldness.

Last time, I complained that it was raining on the day I got my vaccine, and there was nowhere to wait indoors to see if you experienced immediate side effects. So I wound up huddled against a small overhang against the side of the building for the required fifteen minutes.  It was raining this time too! I was, however, relieved to see that this time around, there were a couple of rooms where you could wait inside. Maybe I somehow missed them the first time around. On the card they give you with instructions, they simply tell you to wait in your vehicle after you get your shot, and they let you know you have the option of getting your shot in your vehicle. There is nothing to indicate any accommodations for people who don't show up in one. The waiting room was also not marked in a highly visible way. This is a pop-up clinic specifically for people who work in, or receive services from, the developmental sector. I think it's kind of ignorant to make it so vehicle-reliant.

There still wasn't anyone monitoring the room. One thing that bothered me with the vehicle system the first time around, aside from the fact that it only works for people with vehicles, is that they instruct you to honk your horn if you feel like you're about to faint and someone will help you. But I've had multiple vaccinations where people have passed out in the waiting room, and no one has ever had the presence of mind to know in advance if they were going to pass out. If I passed out in this unmonitored waiting room, would it even be any better than passing out anywhere else?

There were instructions to sanitize your chair before leaving the room. I thought surface transmission was negligible, and health authorities were wondering why schools were still bothering with sanitization as a safety measure?

So now I just need to lay low for two weeks while the antibodies work their way through my system. I know four people who got their second dose recently that have felt like crap the next day, even though their first dose was fine. I'm happy I got mine on a Friday, because I've got the weekend to recover. 

I got ice cream sandwiches to reward myself for getting the shot. For some reason, people seem to associate ice cream as a reward for getting injections. It didn't seem like a bad idea, so I adopted it. I've got convenience foods and video games to help me live a low-maintenance life if I need to recover over the weekend.

Transit

During the first wave, Greyhound closed it's services in Canada. They pretty clearly couldn't take the financial hit from the reduction of passengers due to so many people staying at home. They claimed that this was a temporary measure, but recently they announced their permanent closure across the nation.

This sucks for me, because as you probably know, my mother and brother live in Guelph, and Greyhound was the only real transit option between Guelph and Kitchener. Despite the fact that it's not a great distance between the two cities, and there is a demand, it's far more difficult to make the trip possible than it should be.

Greyhound's competitor is Go Transit, which has buses and trains. The only option Go provides between Guelph and Kitchener is an incredibly minimal train service for people who commute for work. This means it runs only from Kitchener to Guelph in the morning on weekdays, and from Guelph to Kitchener in the evenings on weekdays. This sounds like it's for people in Kitchener who need to work or go to school in Guelph. I would've thought it would be the other way around.

There are Go bus stops in both Guelph and Kitchener, but they don't connect. If you want to take a bus between the cities, you need to go all the way to Brampton, which is an absurd detour.

I'm gonna miss those Greyhound ticket sellers. The one guy who was always talking about how much younger he looked than he was, the woman who always made a big deal about remembering how to spell my name, and the woman who kept trying to pitch payment plans specifically for Guelph-Kitchener. There was the guy with the forearm tattoos on the Guelph side but I think he got to keep his job, since the station he works at deals with Via Rails and Go as well. Never going to see him though, because I've got a Presto card that I can put money on anywhere. Even though I could buy Greyhound tickets online, I often seemed to wind up buying them over the counter.

I mean, I know it's a little premature to be making home visits anyway, but I don't like feeling trapped.

There's always the option of dropping like $50 on an Uber, but that's not fiscally responsible, and then you're stuck making awkward conversation for half an hour.

Since we're on the topic of transportation, let's talk about Uber vs. taxi. When I worked factories, I used to take a taxi into work on Sundays because the buses didn't run that late. I used to joke that on Sundays, I worked my first two hours for free, because what I made in that time was about what I paid in cab fare.

When I came to Kitchener, Uber didn't yet exist, and I occasionally used taxis. Somewhere down the line, Uber got big and I eventually transitioned to mostly using that service. Not going to lie, every once in a while I see a taxi and I'm surprised that they still exist. I'm still aware of the pros and cons of each system, so let's go over them.

One thing I like about taxis is that they're clearly marked. Uber vehicles often have the little sticker on the windshield but it's less distinct. You can hail a taxi if you're in a hurry (and this is the only reason I've taken taxis occasionally since Uber rolled in), but you have to order Uber through the app, so you can't really hail them. Taxis tended to congregate in certain areas, like Fairview Mall and Charles St Terminal, so if you were near one of those places, you could make a pretty reliable gamble that you could get a cab quick.

You can pay cash in a cab, unlike Uber. I know that it's an assumption nowadays that everyone has a smart phone and credit card, but that's not always true and in this way the taxi system is more inclusive.

Taxi companies have a certain number of wheelchair accessible vehicles on standby. Since Uber uses the personal vehicles of their employees, it's very unlikely that you will be able to get one of these through that system.

Taxi companies are more forgiving. In an Uber, the end of each trip, the passenger and the driver get to rate each other. If your overall rating dips beneath a certain level, the drivers can reject you, and if the driver's score dips low enough, they might lose their job. There is no such system for taxis.

Some cab companies are small enough that you can make deals with them. For example, our accessible public transit system hasn't always reached everyone that's needed it (although it's improved!) and Waterloo Region's local cab company stepped in to fill the void, giving discounted services to specific people and locations. That level of communication is difficult to have with a company as large as Uber.

So those are the benefits of taxis. You can hail them, you don't need a credit card or smart phone, you can get a wheelchair accessible vehicle, you're less likely to get banned from the service, and it's easier to communicate with the people who run the organization.

As far as Uber goes, it used to cost a third of the price of cab fare. That's mostly why I originally switched over, but it's not true anymore. Both services cost roughly the same now.

It's still more convenient. With taxis, you have to pay after finishing the trip. With Uber you just hop out and go on your way. You also don't have to call anyone, you just plug your info into the app. This is very appealing for an introvert like myself.

But... and I feel bad for saying this, the biggest difference for me concerning my average experience between the two is that Uber has a better customer service. When I was talking taxis, I said that their system is more forgiving and phrased it as a positive, but there's a clear benefit to having the rating system. When passenger and driver have the opportunity to wreck each other, they're incentivized to get along. I've met a number of creepy or erratic cab drivers in the past, but I've never had trouble with an Uber driver. 

They don't carry cash, which is less accessible, but this way there isn't the danger of passengers trying to rob them, or passengers running away without paying fare since it's already been automatically charged.

I've had taxi drivers try to scam me by intentionally taking longer routes. Uber has an electronic system that indicates how the driver should reach their destination. Apparently whenever cab drivers said their debit machine was broken and you needed to pay cash, sometimes offering to drive you to the nearest ATM, that was a scam too, because if they get cash they're paid immediately, while card had a delay.

So in the end, I kind of like taxi companies, especially smaller businesses, because they're overall more accessible, but Uber feels safer and has better customer service.