My ‘Reaction’ So Far
In This Episode: Two days before Christmas, I got a phone call: “Can you be here at 2:00?” asked Rebekah, our small county’s (only) Public Health nurse. Yes, I said, and by 2:30 Rebekah had injected my wife and me with the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine.

087: I Got the Moderna Vaccine
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* Help support Uncommon Sense: kofiwidget2.init('Support TRUE on Ko-fi', '#29abe0', 'L4L31K3PE');kofiwidget2.draw(); — yes, $5 helps!
* This episode is a follow-on to last week’s Beating the Vaccine Scare-Mongers, recorded when I had no idea I’d be getting the vaccine this soon. The two episodes don’t need to be listened to in any particular order.
* Some details are via “FDA to Require Covid-19 Vaccine to Prevent Disease in 50 Percent of Recipients to Win Approval”, Washington Post, 30 June 2020.
* Another source: “A Side-by-Side Comparison of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna Vaccines”, Stat News, 19 December 2020.
* There are a couple of photos in the transcript below.

Transcript
Welcome to Uncommon Sense, I’m Randy Cassingham.
Getting the Covid vaccine on Wednesday was quite a surprise. Public Health nurse Rebekah Stewart had given Ouray County Emergency Medical Services personnel a briefing on Zoom Tuesday evening. My wife and I are volunteer medics in our rural Colorado county. Our first Covid death was April 8, pretty early in the pandemic.
Rebekah didn’t even have an estimate of when their vaccine supply was arriving, but she wanted us to know the science behind the vaccine’s development. Pfizer’s and Moderna’s Covid vaccines are extremely similar, but as a small, rural county that didn’t have a freezer cold enough to keep Pfizer’s vaccine, we would be getting Moderna’s.
She also went over the expected side effects so, when it was offered to us, we’d have enough information to make an informed decision as to whether we would want it. I had decided long ago that I would take it as soon as it was offered to me.
So it was quite the surprise to get Rebekah’s call the next morning asking if we could be there at 2:00: our county’s initial supply had arrived by FedEx shortly after the Zoom call. FedEx was already working pretty late with the Christmas rush and Ouray, our county seat, is at the end of the route.
While the CDC provided suggested priority “phases” for vaccine rollout while production ramps up, states are allowed to adjust the priorities. The State of Colorado decided that “Phase 1A” would include the highest-risk healthcare workers — “People who have direct contact with Covid-19 patients for 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period,