Getting the (Second) COVID-19 Vaccine While Autistic

March 26, 2021January 31, 2022 by Shannon Des Roches Rosa

Photo © bcgovphotos | Creative Commons / Flickr [image: Person with light skin and dark hair in a ponytail, wearing a blue surgical face mask, at a desk with hand sanitizer and vaccination paraphernalia. They are looking at someone off camera, and pointing to their right.] By Kate On Monday, March 15, I was lucky enough to receive my second dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. My experience in getting the first dose of the vaccine had gone pretty well, but I have never been an optimist or a pessimist. I am a realist. For me, the glass is not full or half empty. For me, the 16 ounce glass contains 8 ounces of 52° tap water from Concord. (And yes, that town is deliberately chosen, because I have serious opinions on the taste of various places tap water, and their tap water does not taste that good to me.)…

Disability

Getting the COVID-19 Vaccine While Autistic

March 2, 2021January 31, 2022 by Shannon Des Roches Rosa

Photo © VCUCNS | Flickr / Creative Commons [image: A person wearing a black tank top getting a vaccine injection in their shoulder.] by Kate On Monday, February 15, I was lucky enough to get my first dose of the new Moderna vaccine for the COVID-19 virus. I say lucky, but in reality, it was a matter of various privileges, such as race, class, and education, all combined with the fact that I moved into a certain type of housing last summer. I had been communicating with a staff member for my local health department about something else related to the pandemic, and when the subject of vaccines came up, this person told me that I qualified and I should make an appointment right then. So I did: CVS, a local pharmacy chain, had just been allocated a large number of vaccines, so it was fairly easy for me at that…

Disability

Have We Finally Entered the Post-Vaccines/Autism Fear Mongering Era?

March 20, 2016January 31, 2022 by Shannon Des Roches Rosa

Shannon Des Roches Rosa www.squidalicious.com [image: White adult holding the hand of a toddler, in the wave zone of a beach.] The times, are they finally a-changing? Are we entering the era so many of us science-heeding autism-focused writers have hoped for, in which mainstream media outlets assume readers already know the autism-vaccine link is total bunk, and get to focus instead on reminding people why it’s so important to vaccinate their kids in the first place? I’d really like to say yes, going by two recent articles about the terrible real-world consequences of the vaccine avoidance movement: Over Half Of Measles Cases In U.S. Outbreaks Are Unvaccinated — Often Intentionally by Tara Haelle, at Forbes; and Why Vaccinating Your Kid Shouldn’t Even Be a Question by Maressa Brown, at Cosmopolitan (of all places). Neither article mentions autism once. Reading vaccine articles that don’t include at least one mention of…