After a year of stay-at-home orders, quarantines, and isolation, the COVID-19 vaccine is now available in the state of Minnesota. As of March 2021, it is available to healthcare workers, adults 65 years old or older, educators, childcare workers, people with specific underlying health conditions, essential frontline workers, and anyone in the food service. Many teachers from Blake received their first of two COVID-19 vaccine shots in the past weeks at the Minneapolis Convention Center located in downtown Minneapolis. However, some Blake teachers’ appointments were delayed due to the recent weather chaos in Texas.
Vaccine circulation around the country was interrupted from the winter storms in Texas throughout the month of February and delayed many vaccine appointments. Elizabeth Lehtola, a Blake mathematics teacher, was among the lucky and the few who received the first half of her COVID-19 vaccine prior to the Texas power crisis. Lehtola said, “the process at the [Convention] Center was efficient and I was able to get vaccinated quickly, easily, and painlessly.” The pain that Lehtola received in her arm following her vaccination was “mild and bearable” too.
Paul Menge had a similar experience, his vaccination was “absolutely seamless, the whole process took no more than thirty minutes and I felt completely safe the entire time.”
Lehtola and Menge were grateful and lucky to receive their vaccine on schedule, but Michelle Baroody, a Blake social studies teacher, had to delay her vaccination due to the Texas power crisis. Baroody has been taking extra precautions to ensure the safety of everyone in her classroom such as proper air ventilation, hand sanitizer, and open windows. So, to say that she was ecstatic about a COVID-19 vaccination would be an understatement. Much to her regret, Baroody’s appointment was delayed. Nonetheless she described how “relieved and happy to finally get the vaccine”, even though she got it much later than her original appointment date. Two million doses of the vaccine have already been administered in Minnesota, taking us all closer to our “normal” lives again.
