Today is my Immunity Day! Not the day of my second Moderna dose — that was two weeks ago — but the day my immune system is declared officially up and ready to fight off those little spiky particles that are out to sicken and kill us. OK, there really is not a “14 day” timeline on this, to be sure; but two weeks is about the time when, after your second Moderna or Pfizer dose, or your one J&J vaccine, your immune system has had time to recognize and respond to the spike protein as an invader, and rev up the standing army ready to do battle if it becomes necessary.
So, I’m not going to bars. Well, I didn’t do that anyway. But also not going to dine-in restaurants, despite its being “Berkeley Restaurant Week” (however, some awesome take-outs) and not going indoors much of anyplace, either. But I did “celebrate” this morning by taking in Senior Hours at Berkeley Bowl (our renowned grocery store, which, it being two blocks away, we used to visit several times a week in the Before Times). Double masked and all that. So, not much has changed, except for the fear I felt when shopping last summer and fall, before we gave up indoor shopping altogether as the case counts rose.
For the record, I did have some side effects — mostly just a fairly low fever — starting about 8 hours after the second dose, and ending about 26 hours after that. If you haven’t done the second, “side effects more likely” dose yet, I do think it makes sense not to plan to be useful for that time period. It would take at minimum 4 hours for the spike proteins to begin to be secreted into the bloodstream, and likely more like 6 or 8 hours (the latter is an educated guess) so you don’t expect any immediate side effects other than a sore arm. But if you live alone, or share vaccine days with your roomie, you might consider pre-making a few easy meals or stocking up on power bars and fruit, so you don’t have to fuss with making something to eat. Then if you get off without the side effects, you can just enjoy the day :)
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I used this term “Immunity Day” in the comments on True Blue Majority’s diary on the 17th, and she thought it was a useful term. So, when is your Immunity Day?