Last week I received my first shot of the 2-part Moderna Covid-19 vaccine.

The number of times in the past year that I have thought — in the middle of the anxiety attacks, in the plodding logic of survival mode, etc — “If only I could like… kind of catch covid? get the most mild case possible? Just enough to get the antibodies?”

Last year we watched The Great and saw the the court of Catherine the Great tread that same path of if-thens, coming logically to the process of inoculation. It’s a comedy, but you see even in the farce the naked terror of disease. I’ve never missed a vaccination growing up, but my understanding of things like measles, mumps, rubella, small-pox, polio, et al are the stuff of history books.

It’s both with this well-worn, erudite understanding of the mechanics of vaccination, and this sharp, newly-minted, visceral puzzling my way “out of the trap” that I brings to me fresh appreciation of doctors, scientists, and generally smart people that have made this possible.

It’s with this workaday awe that I humor the pharmacy worker who insipidly coos “now you’ve got the Fauci-ouchie.”