Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

My travel expenses were generally kept in line by the fact that there was only so much cash I could have tied up waiting for reimbursements. The fanciest hotel I ever got was a Country Inn & Suites in Lakeland, hard by I-4.

My editor in Valdosta did me a solid right before I left for a job across the state though (and with my first-born only a month away from entering the world.) He switched up beat assignments for the state basketball tournament so I could claim the mileage from a one-and-done trip to Savannah. I did just that - and had a nice low country boil at Williams Family Seafood on CNHI’s dime to boot.

 

Fredrick? Is that you?

 

Is there anyone around here who hasn’t had at least one COVID vaccine shot yet?

 

In the late 90s, I had an SE put a $50 per night cap on hotel rooms. It suuuuuuuuuuucked to go on overnights.

 

Probably not, but we're The Media, so we're probably all libruhls who hate Amurrica and prove it by getting a vaccine against a killer disease.

 

That's been known since long before the two major vaccines were released. It was a major complicating factor, and they had to design and manufacture all sorts of specialized thermal containers to ship and store them in. That was the down side of the mRNA vax.

 

Unless you were in some Podunk that literally only had one Rosebud Inn to its name (Hello Carrabelle, Fla.! Hello Douglas Ga.!) you couldn’t find a safe clean hotel for that price even back then. Now you probably can’t even pitch a tent at a KOA for $50.

 

I guess that it's possible to find a room for under a hundred, but I shudder to think what it would be like.

 

Oh, it was Podunk for sure touring small-town Arkansas high school football playoffs. You could find some Super 8s for right at that. But most of the time I'd go over it and catch hell for a $70 Holiday Inn bill.

 

How long ago was this?

 

1997-ish or so.

 

Yeah, I think there is a lot of 'self-selection' bias in terms of who we know who's vaccinated and not. I'd say at least half of our staff got the shot on the first day it was eligible to the general public (after one of our reporters noticed that one of our local hospitals had changed the eligibility to sign up for an appointment on the day before the governor officially announced an expansion of eligibility but when everyone knew he was going to), another quarter had already gotten it by other means when everyone else become eligible (one just happened to be in the right place at the right time) and the other quarter just hasn't mentioned it one way or the other. The first eligibility day was a Tuesday. I waited until the Friday to schedule my shot mostly as a courtesy, and then after I got No. 1, the hospital moved my appointment for No. 2 up to the Tuesday with the rest of the staff because of limited Friday staff. So I'm fully protected as of this week.

Based off my limited knowledge, I'd say about a quarter of our newsroom tested positive at one point or another. No one was seriously ill, though I know symptoms have hanged with at least one in some respects for a while.