The stress of constructing enormous infrastructure on the fly is not insignificant. A week ago Saturday, Dodger Stadium was home to what was believed to be the United States’ largest testing site for Covid-19, possibly the world’s, with over a million people tested since March. A week ago Sunday, it was announced that testing would end at the stadium and Dodger would go vaccine-only, to become one of the nation’s largest vaccination centers, a drive-through “super site,” with approximately three days to prepare.
Since August, I have spent my Saturdays volunteering as a tester. (I wrote about this in October for the Quarterly.) It’s been a selfish highlight of lockdown, to have purpose, to work alongside other people in masks and paper gowns and plastic face shields that fog up. They’re all colors, mostly young, late teens, twenties and thirties. No one had done this before; somehow, we found our way here. Prior to, people were students, bartenders, employees at Disneyland. One woman managed rock tours. One guy worked for the Census. I’m forty-three, I haven’t been friends with this many nineteen-year-olds since the twentieth century.
Friday was the first day of vaccinations. Several thousand appointments were spread over twelve hours. Traffic cones had been moved by the thousand, tents erected, signs hastily printed. Systems upon systems were configured on the fly, and by Saturday morning, reconfigured; by next Saturday, they’ll be changed again, I’m sure. Shots are administered by clinicians, nurses and nursing students. The fire department runs logistics. But several thousand people don’t get vaccinated without enormous support. Registration, screening, traffic. Operations, supplies, contingency plans. How many coolers do we need, how many iPads? What happens if a person’s car breaks down, the wifi quits? What do you do if people not yet qualified to be vaccinated show up and demand their jab, or offer bribes, or insist they won’t turn around short of calling the police?
The plan I’ve heard is to vaccinate more than ten-thousand people on site per day in short order. Soon after, many more, and perhaps around the clock, 24/7: roll down the window, get a shot, wait a moment under observation, drive home. It all feels thrown together, but how else could it feel, and what doesn’t these days? Much of the staff work fourteen-hour days, still the mood is always positive, even jubilant. On Saturday I saw folks getting vaccinated who were overjoyed, pumping their fists as they departed, and we all pumped our fists, too.
To witness massive facilities and systems be assembled on the fly is impressive. To see the resilience of so many young people performing the labor of it cleverly, charmingly – for a gray-haired humanist like me, it’s close to spiritual.
What is this? A weekly newsletter by Rosecrans Baldwin consisting of (very) short essays about beautiful things. Any books mentioned can be found in a Bookshop list. Rosecrans’s next book, Everything Now, is available for preorder.
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