Hope

March 22, 2021

Hope

This week saw a very hopeful moment for me personally as I was finally able to get my first Covid-19 vaccine shot after literally weeks of trying to get an appointment and much stress and consternation about being able to get my appointment. It has been something of a cluster as the vaccine roll-out has been hit and miss since January, especially here in Florida, but there definitely seems to be some movement of late as the vaccines are becoming more readily available.

The spread of the virus has slowed nationwide as well and once again the Florida Keys are ahead of the curve as we are doing better here than in much of the country, even though our streets continue to be absolutely packed with non-compliant spring breakers and vacationers who are lax to say the least about adhering to the CDC guidelines. As of today, there are 29,630,884 confirmed cases in the United States with a staggering 538,380 deaths. Here in Monroe County there have been 6,192 confirmed cases with 2,966 of those being in Key West and we are still at 47 deaths here

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Kathy and I continue to stay as isolated as possible, wear masks and socially distance wherever we go but there is light at the end of the tunnel it seems. I have spent much of the past few weeks trying the lottery system every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning at 7 am, when the vaccination appointment portal at the Publix grocery store opens to make reservations. I also registered with the county and have tried a similar but less organized Winn-Dixie portal to no avail.

It is something of a lottery and sort of similar to waiting online to get popular concert tickets as the spots at the local Monroe County Publix locations fill up super quickly. There were only two locations in the Keys initially at one Publix here in Key West and one in Islamorada. Being constantly shut out f getting either of those options, I finally decided to just take an appointment at a Publix location in Miami at the Pinecrest Publix.

This of course entailed driving to Miami to get my appointment, but I did not care and Kathy and I decided to make a day of it and had a rare adventure off the island on the day of my appointment. We started our day by driving to the Miami Zoo where we rented one of their four wheel bicycles and drove around the zoo on a lovely day observing the animals, enjoying being outside and out of our house and off the island.

It was an awesome day at the zoo and afterwards we drove to one of Kathy’s favorite Miami restaurants, Caribbean Delight where we often stop because they have some of the best island food from Trinidad and Tobago that you can get. Family owned for 25 years by a Trini couple, they make the best Roti in Miami and we just love going there. Per Covid, they are only doing carry out so we got our food to go and enjoyed a feast before heading over to get my shot at Publix and heading home.

Back in Key West, we resumed our mostly hermit-like existence and I only ventured out to catch a couple of more Key West High School lacrosse matches. I am tremendously enjoying attending these games, even though I am quite the novice as far as knowing the game. Maybe it’s just being outdoors at an event that I can watch safely and have a few nice interactions with friends.

Hopefully things will start heading towards a more normalish situation and the virus will not have another surge and the variants will be kept under control as well. There are a lot of big questions and concerns still, but after the year we have had, we will take whatever progress we can.