First Dose

I had my first COVID vaccination this morning, and I've got to be honest and say that I was thoroughly impressed with the operation at this site.  I was in and out of there in less than 30 minutes, without leaving my car once.  And it was a less than 15 minute drive to get there from my home, without even needing to go on the freeway.  It wasn't clear which parking lot on this college campus I needed to go to, but I guessed correctly and once you're there you follow the directions and it's clear where you need to go.  Basically, there are 3 stages to the process - they register you, they vaccinate you, then you are asked to wait around for 15 minutes to ensure that there are no side effects (and I haven't experienced any yet - though apparently the second dose is supposed to be worse).  All the nurses and volunteers there were nice and friendly.  And I was quite surprised that it didn't seem nearly as busy as I thought it might be - I feared I might be queuing up or waiting around for ages, but there was none of that.  Makes me feel very lucky that I snagged my appointment when I did.  And this is what you get at the end of it:

A somewhat disappointing sticker - I rather hoped it would be something similar to the iconic "I Voted" sticker.  But yes, you also get the all important vaccination record card.  Washington state is one of the few states that keeps electronic records of vaccinations for everyone (and I just registered on the website to confirm that this shot, along with the others I've had such as flu shots, are on there which they are) - which is maybe why they just give you a blank card to fill in yourself.  But I think this COVID vaccination record card might be so important because it will probably be the primary way to confirm that you're vaccinated if you ever need to prove it to travel or even to return to the workplace.  Without any sort of centralized national records, this is the closest we're ever going to get to the "controversial" vaccine passport (even though you fill it in by hand!).  So you don't want to lose that card!