Health care workers talk about the COVID-19 vaccines.
Latinx doctors, nurses and promotoras on why we need the COVID vaccines and their hopes for the future.
A lot of the mission that we have in our practice, my colleagues and I are all Latinx, and that was our goal going into medical school, was to come back and serve in our community—inspired by our families. I think that instinct to say, “Stop it,” to protect my community, it’s what’s playing in now and why I’m really going out of my way to talk about the vaccine as a way to say, “Enough.” I was very concerned about COVID because I felt like our whole life had changed, my personal life, my community life, my family life had changed because of it. When the opportunity to get vaccinated and be able to prevent this disease came about, I just really became incredibly passionate about making sure that I could do whatever was within my power to get people vaccinated. The day I went to get the vaccine, I was ecstatic. You know, we got into the hospital, the healthcare workers were lined up and honestly it was like a party up there. And after I got my vaccine, I literally danced because I had been living in fear for so long. I cried. I was not expecting to, but yeah, that was kind of overwhelming. We were screaming throughout the hospital units. We were all cheering and we were clapping, and we just felt that there was a light at the end of that tunnel. Oof. I am getting chills. It was a lot of emotions. I had the feeling that I’m getting my shot and yes, I’m a doctor, front line, but I had the faces of my wife, my kids in my brain. I have the faces of my parents. They were like thousands of miles away. I think as more people go for the vaccine, it will allow us more, to be more close to each other. To have those gatherings and to have, to keep developing memories around Christmas or special days in the family. I can’t wait for the day that we all are able to gather and enjoy each other without thinking about this virus. It felt amazing to eat, have some wine, have some discussion, have some laughs. We had all been vaccinated and it was, we forgot, like it had been over a year for some of us that had that experience. I felt good that I was getting it, but at the same time, you know, I want to share this as fast as I can with everybody else. It’s a social responsibility, a civic also, you know, job for us to do to be able to get over this COVID pandemic. I want to hug my family, sorry. I want to—I want to go back to my daily routines. This is our chance to move beyond this and to protect ourselves, protect those we love, and protect our community so that we can start to heal. The only way that we’re going to be able to be together for those Christmas dinners and those baptisms and everything else, and not have to fear getting sick or making our grandma’s sick is if we get vaccinated. So this is about returning to our roots, to our families, to togetherness, to being able to be safe and not live in fear.
