The Vaccine

 

I first arrived at Gillette Stadium near the end of February in the year of 2021. I was living in Providence Rhode Island at the time and looking for work which paid well with less of a long time commitment. I was hired by a company called Aveanna as a "Wellness Clerk" to help in the logistics of administering the COVID - 19 vaccine. My first day of work was a Friday, and I drove from Providence to Foxborough MA at 9:30 in the morning,  having never been to this large stadium before. It was a warm sunny day,  nearly in the 50s. When I fist crested the hilltop near by I was shocked at the size and magnitude of the building; I had been expecting for some reason a stadium in a more forested area. I parked in the lot and was escorted through a snake of patrons to the upper floor of the stadium. Here, a long line snaked its way through to a series of about 40 stations where a nurse sat, garbed in face shield and mask, accepting groups of individuals to receive the moderna vaccination for COVID-19. My task on this day and I presume the days to come was to direct this line forwards to the various stations,  ensuring maximum efficiency and speed. I relished the opportunity to chat with these folks for brief moments as well, but as I quickly learned,  more than a minute or so of small talk was too long before the individual had to move ahead. 

This job is deeply. fascinating for a variety of reasons. Chief among them is the sheer scale of the operation. As is evident from the moment you arrive,  the stadium and facility are designed to service enormous sections of the population,  perhaps in this case far more than the number originally intended to attend Patriots games before the pandemic. When I first arrived, I reported to a nearly frantic albeit very kind manager who failed to give me more than 2 consecutive moments of attention and no more than 3 word answers as to the nature of the job. I was quickly moved to the position where the line bifurcated, tasked with dispersing evening the unending line of individuals and handing them pamphlets detailing the "what to expect" aspect of the vaccine.  I started on Friday at 10:00 am and didn't stop until about 16:00, when I took a short break and then quickly resumed until past 19:00. During this time I must have seen thousands and thousands of faces. Thousands of shirts, bodies, and faces.  Thousands of caps, ages, races, and eyes, thousands of postures, but  and snippets of halting speech. For each, I would recite some garbled word salad of an evolving variant of directions. "Third Red arrow please."  "Go ahead and move ahead dead ahead." "Right here in the line to your right." "Straight ahead to the woman in the vest".  Over and over hundreds of times. For the first few days this seems tolerable, perhaps it will become less so in the weeks to come. As it is, I'm paid $16 dollars an hour for this simple task which several other staff have informed me I'm doing an excellent job of. Strangely, I feel I am somewhat talented at this absurdly simple,  repetitive and vital task. It's both utterly meaningless and also incredibly meaningful, seeing and speaking to every single individual passing through this massive facility. 

I suppose I derive my satisfaction from this job in knowing that I had. a direct hand in reducing the amount of human suffering existing on the world. It's a morally unambiguous task, and this is clear by the end of the day. When the last individual in the line moves ahead, and the scores of nurses, runners, medics, and helpers such as myself realize the day is done,  there is an undeniable sense of comradery and celebration, both for the end of the work day and I would assumer for the conclusion of another successful chapter in reducing the suffering of the people of massachusetts and in the world. It's a job unlike others because it deals directly with the general population, but also beyond this already broad description.  It deals with the population as the population. Admittedly it is filtered by age, vulnerability,  and other factors,  and perhaps I'm romanticising the mass of people joined together by this common cause, but seeing so unbelievably many people pass by every moment, each intent on receiving immunity from a deeply strange and futuristic disease which has changed everything, is quite profound.  

When I arrived on Friday, there was a Jumbotron in the center stadium displaying a total vaccine count of over 100,000, but just. Today, we had reached over 114,000. By my count of about 40 stations on one side, and approximately 4 minutes per vaccination, an 8 hour period of shots count nearly 5000 individuals injected daily, counting the other side of the stadium,  this is about 10k people every day, if not more. The scale of this is unbelievable. What I can't stop thinking about, is the dream factor. They say you can't dream a brand new face, so every face your dream is someone you have once seen. Seeing around 5 thousand people daily for weeks will certainly engorge my dream vault of faces in ways I cannot predict.