Dominoes
Eli 21.5 is going to Libera in three weeks to finish research for his honors thesis. There are other details, but that's what matters to this story.To go to Liberia, he needs a yellow fever vaccine.
This is why I was machine-gunning phone calls today, calling every medical office listed on the CDC website within 50 miles of Ann Arbor. He had an appointment on Friday, but it was in Cleveland (three hours away) with a clinic that could fairly be described as "sketchy."
The CDC website listed well over a dozen locations in the 50-mile area, but almost every number I called was either disconnected or closed. Many of these places were "travel clinics," and they made most of their money from vaccinating travelers who were going abroad.
I couldn't understand why all these places were closed, and then it hit me: COVID. Any business depending on travel basically had no revenue for over a year, and reduced revenue since then. Almost no one survived.
It's easy to see the big ways we were impacted by COVID. Usually, I forget about the smaller domino effects, but I was reminded today.
After 20+ phone calls, I'd wrangled an appointment 40 minutes away for him when he called and said he'd walked into the health center on campus (after being totally refused on the phone) and talked someone into giving him an appointment tomorrow for the vaccine.
Like I said, one of his best qualities is that everyone who meets him wants to help. I've never seen anything like it.
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