Ready with my luggage in hand and my passport in tow, my eagerness to board my flight to France quickly dissolved into disillusionment as an American Airlines representative denied me entrance. Why? She claimed I needed another dose of vaccination because my most recent shot was more than nine months old. She refused me entry and continued to declare that I would not be allowed on the flight because it was “the rules.”
She rescheduled my flight for the following day but said I first had to do one of two things. I could either get a booster shot at a CVS or Walgreens pharmacy before my scheduled boarding time, or I could show proof of a negative PCR test. I opted for the booster.
But the next day, a different representative at American Airlines didn’t even look at my vaccination card. This representative told me that I needed to fill out an EU Digital Passenger Locator Form — something that the representative from the night before had not mentioned. So, in two days, two different people told me two different things that were supposed to be absolutely mandatory as part of COVID protocols.
After finally being given a clearance, I boarded the flight to France. When I landed, I was equal parts relieved and excited, though I dreaded what I thought was coming next — showing French officials my COVID documents. Surprisingly, no one in France asked me for my vaccination card or the Digital Passenger Locator Form. Everything I was told was necessary while in the United States, no one cared about in France.
Around the same time I was experiencing the weird and inconsistent world of COVID protocols, Dr. Anthony Fauci resurfaced publicly to claim that COVID vaccines do not work “overly well” in stopping the spread of COVID.
So does anyone know what they are doing regarding COVID anymore? Has anyone ever?
“One of the things that’s clear from the data [is] that even though vaccines — because of the high degree of transmissibility of this virus — don’t protect overly well against infection, they protect quite well against severe disease leading to hospitalization and death,” Fauci said. “So my message to people who seem confused because people who are vaccinated get infected — the answer is if you weren’t vaccinated, the likelihood is you would have had a more severe course than you did have when you were vaccinated.”
Between the limited efficacy of vaccination and the inconsistency in precautions, why should anyone continue to listen to what any “expert” says about COVID anymore? The question of whether to mask up has essentially become a political argument. For some people, even vaccination is just a debating topic.
Rules are changing all the time, or else they are ignored by regular people and authorities alike. We are more than two years into the pandemic, and there is still a significant level of chaos and confusion. At this point, I think most people would just like to move on from COVID altogether.
