The Vaccination Eclipse

 The Vaccination Eclipse

All my childhood, I had been fascinated by solar eclipses. For a long time, it was the mystery about these days that got me excited. Also, the ‘don’ts’ associated with it – don’t go out, don’t look at the sun, don’t eat, don’t this, don’t that. Of course, children are more curious about the ‘don’ts’ than the ‘do's'. It must have been in high school that I got to understand the phenomenon of the solar eclipse, or in other words, the science behind it. This got me even more excited and eagerly waiting for further eclipses. I still remember trying to catch the eclipse on a wall and all that.

(Image Credits: Open Clipart Vectors and Alexandra Koch, Pixabay)

It was with similar excitement and curiosity that I awaited my first dose of Covid-19 vaccination. Like in the case of eclipses, this particular vaccine also carries a fair share of mystery with it – it is all a hoax, this is China trying to conquer the world, the government is going to track us, you will die soon, and so on. Well, I’m not one to comment on these allegations. However, I tried to understand the science behind vaccines.

All of you might have heard of mock drills. Some of you might have even witnessed or been a part of one or two. Like the ones where they assume that a building is on fire and raise an alarm and the fire force gets into action and all that? Vaccination is a similar process taking place inside our bodies. The vaccine triggers a false alarm that makes the defense department of the body get into action to fight an intruder – the virus. The soldiers go running here and there in search of their weapons. You know, they have been sitting idle for quite a long time! It’ll probably be utter chaos. Soon enough, they’ll be ready with a strategy to go to war with the enemy.

“Load your guns.”

“Fir…”

“Wait, that was a false alarm.”

“But stay on alert.”

It is this hustle and bustle of the soldiers in our body that supposedly results in fever and tiredness after the vaccination.

Quite interesting, right? Well, our body is in fact a package of such wonders.

Last Monday, I got my first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. I had been counting my days to it, as there was a prescribed wait period after testing positive. After getting vaccinated in the morning, I waited anxiously for my soldiers to get into action. At around six in the evening, I heard a rhythmic marching from a distance. They were getting ready. Abhi, Appu, and I were in our routine book reading session (routine might be an exaggeration, as we have had only three sessions so far). At one point, I started mixing up characters from two different books and this signaled that the military force was almost getting into action.

It was a hell of a (mock) war after that. I was down with a high fever. Fortunately, I got to sleep through most of it. The next morning, though the pseudo-war was over, the dust hadn’t settled. I was quite tired all through the day. However, when I woke up today (the second) morning, it felt very calm – the kind of calm you feel when you wake up to a bright morning after two days of heavy rain.

Kudos to my soldiers!

I’m eagerly waiting for the next eclipse.

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