The United States’ mass vaccination program is now leaving its fledgling stage, with more than 2 million people getting vaccinated every day. For its own part, New York City — as of March 30 — has vaccinated 2,238,594 people, with 1,259,125 having received a full vaccine series.
Under newly announced state eligibility rules, anyone over the age of 30 can get a vaccine; as the rollout continues, an end to the pandemic seems to be coagulating from a cloudy dream to a reality. But for all the positive news and hopes, the confusion that produced newspaper headlines, spurred press conferences, and inspired “Saturday Night Live” sketches has not wholly gone away. I know because I work at the Javits Center, New York’s 1.8 million-square-foot convention center and one of its largest vaccination sites.
Ten months ago, I graduated virtually from college. Today, I’m a data entry clerk and a front-line worker.
I am humbled each day at the awesome work done at the Javits, but I have also seen day after day the administrative stumbling of its vaccine rollout. When the Javits, run by the State Department of Health, opened, I was given no job assignment and so spent my first few weeks reading books at an empty desk. Rumors floated among my coworkers that certain staff members and nurses were contracting COVID, and there was no system or requirement for staff to get tested on site. A certain number of my coworkers, despite the option, had no intention of getting the vaccine, yet they dined in the cafeteria together with no masks on.
Even after I was given an assignment as a registration attendant, my awe of the work mingled with frustration. I saw each day giddy dancing down the aisle, bleary-eyed hopefuls arriving with a friend or family member who had an appointment to see if any extra doses were left, and tears born of various frustrations as a vaccine was delayed or denied. I saw in real-time what getting — or not getting — a coveted dose meant to someone who wanted it, and wanted it desperately. I turned away would-be patients for bureaucratic or computer-generated snafus, for, it must be said, stupid reasons. I turned away some for whom a vaccine would have undoubtedly been available.
My dissatisfaction with Javits melted away on a day in early March when someone came by to ask if I might be able to help out at the nurse’s station because of an overload of patients. It was a new job for which I was untrained, but I accepted the post and took a seat behind another desk, this time alongside two health-care professionals standing ready to administer the vaccine.
I was assigned to manage the data of patients, marking which arm they received the dose in, the serial number of the vaccine, their eligibility group, and any allergies or medical issues they’d just discussed with the nurse. After confirming their information, I lifted my arm, gave a thumbs-up, and in went the needle. I watched the patients and the hours roll by and filled up slowly with emotion, sitting a few feet away from the thing we’d all put so much hope into and suffered so much for.
PHOTOSCoronavirus vaccinations around the worldMany countries have started to administer coronavirus vaccines to their citizens as COVID-19 cases top 248 million worldwide.
It is hard to convey how surreal it is to witness in real-time a nurse squeezing an arm to make the muscle relax, holding the syringe between the first and middle finger, then sliding the needle into the flesh as if it were liquid and push in with the thumb, triggering the production what would become the first protective antibodies. Watching this done again and again made my designation as a front-line essential worker finally ring true.
That night, I wondered on my way back home from work how anyone could expect or demand perfection from such a massive undertaking. Yes, we should be critical of our systems and push for them to change, but I raise the possibility that the success of big undertakings such as these, and their ability to evolve over time, necessitates the messiness.
Though I hear many positive reports from Javits, elsewhere, long lines, confusion around eligibility and appointment-making, and other frustrations still exist. I am asking for no one to put on their rose-colored glasses. But I am asking for us to celebrate this flawed system, despite its flaws and in light of them, because the city (and state and country) is succeeding at what it set out to do. That’s worth the celebration. Even when I see, day after day, the bureaucracy’s blips, I need only look right in front of me and be reminded of all that magic, that joy, that relief and promise held inside the syringe, being delivered one by one by one by one. O’Connor is a recent graduate of Columbia University and a data entry clerk at the Jacob Javits Center.