I got my first Covid-19 vaccination last Wednesday, the Pfizer version. After a few months of watching my elders and friends in healthcare get their shots, it felt strange for it to suddenly be my turn. I was giddy as I chose the dates for my shots and confirmed the appointments.
My arm was sore and was really tired for a couple of days after the shot, and I napped a lot. It reminded me a lot of when I get flu shots. Other than that, I felt fine. I expect the next one will have more side effects.
Although I have a number of health conditions (fibromyalgia, thyroid disease, etc.), none of them qualified me for the vaccine. But my weight does.
That made me feel really conflicted. On the one hand, weight and health are not strictly correlated. I don’t have any of the diseases commonly associated with weight gain. My blood sugar, cholesterol, heart and lungs are all healthy.
While it’s true that many bigger-bodied people have heart disease or diabetes, it’s more likely that weight gain, heart disease, diabetes (and others) stem from the same causes: chronic stress, especially coupled with traumatic childhood experiences, such as divorce, abuse, loss of a parent, or living under systemic oppression. Nadine Burke Harris, California’s Surgeon General, writes about this in her book The Deepest Well.
On the other hand, one study shows that people with higher weight/BMI had worse outcomes when they contracted Covid-19. But most of those didn’t just have higher weights; they also had high blood pressure, heart or kidney disease, or another risk factor, so it’s tough to say for sure that weight alone was the issue.
Also, we don’t know how many of those people might have avoided their doctors early on in their covid infections because they’d been fat-shamed and dismissed in the past, or how many avoided hospitals until they couldn’t anymore, knowing that overwhelmed hospitals may de-prioritize them.
I don’t know whether I agree that weight alone makes me more vulnerable to covid infection (and there’s also the chance I already had it), but when California said it was my turn to get vaccinated, I was glad to sign up. I’m relieved to be on my way to protection -- not just for myself, but for my family, for the kids in my child’s classroom, and for the employees at the stores I visit. I’m looking forward to it being your turn soon, too.