Daisy Garner talks with students about their vaccine experiences — successful and unsuccessful. Continue reading to learn more about how Virginia’s rollout has affected the College of William and Mary’s students.

About a year ago, students at the College of William and Mary thought they were having an extended spring break. Students felt bad for friends who had to return home early from study abroad programs, and while the transition to online classes felt bumpy at times, some people thought it would only last for a few weeks at most.

On the news, photos and stories about what impact the coronavirus was beginning to make in cities around the world began circulating — in Italy, people wearing full hazmat suits were spraying down boats that ran through the canals in Venice, and in Wuhan, more stories continued to emerge about some of COVID-19’s first victims. Around the world, COVID-19 cases were dramatically and rapidly rising.

The US was no exception — the number of cases exploded in only a few days. It did not take long for it to become clear to students that they would not be returning to campus anytime soon. Memories of 2020 became filled with images of crowded hospitals on the news, distanced and outdoor hangouts, and friends and family members getting sick.

Now, the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines offer a glimmer of hope for a better year. One by one, students at the College are getting vaccinated. 

At the time of writing, all counties in Virginia were still in Phase 1b, which primarily includes the elderly and frontline essential workers, ranging from teachers to cleaning staff to law enforcement officers.

Kellie McDowell ’23 falls under Phase 1b group. An emergency medical technician in Williamsburg, McDowell received an email from the professor of her EMT training class instructing her to email him back within 24 hours if she wanted to get a vaccine. McDowell quickly replied, and a few days later, she found herself waiting in line at a health building in Newport News to get her vaccine.

McDowell, who usually finds vaccines painful, considered the initial pain from the COVID-19 vaccine to be more tolerable.

“Normally I can feel the solution, like, going into the muscle, like with flu shots and stuff,” McDowell said. “But I didn’t feel the COVID vaccine at all. I know some people say that it burns, but I didn’t feel anything.”

Not everyone in McDowell’s EMT training class who was offered the opportunity to get the vaccine was eager to take it.

“This one guy, he didn’t say why he didn’t get it, but he’s like, ‘You got it?’ I was like, ‘Yeah,’ and he was like, ‘You’re brave,” McDowell said.

Nevertheless, McDowell feels confident in her decision to get a vaccine.

“People were waiting, like, months to get vaccinated,” McDowell said. “And I had the opportunity to do it now. I don’t [know] why I would pass that up. Yeah, there are risks with vaccines, especially newer vaccines — we don’t know any long-term consequences from it. Boy, you also don’t know what the long term consequences are of getting COVID, like the chickenpox later in life — you can get shingles, right? So, we don’t know if there’s anything like that with COVID. So avoiding COVID to begin with is probably smart, regardless of the side effects or after effects, or whatever you want to call them.” 

Like McDowell, Morgan Buzzo ’21 also falls under Phase 1b due to her student teaching role through a teacher training program at the College’s School of Education. Like McDowell, Buzzo had to respond quickly to an email —in her case, from Williamsburg-James City County Public Schools, to get her vaccine.

“They emailed us at 10am and said ‘We need to know if you’re coming or not by three today, and your time will be at 9:30 in the morning,’” Buzzo said.

Buzzo also found the process of getting the vaccine to be efficient. She had to wait in her car until her appointment time, and closer to her scheduled slot, was supposed to wait in line, six feet apart from others. Buzzo noted how bringing a guest was prohibited unless someone was severely concerned about an allergic reaction.

When inside, workers first checked Buzzo’s temperature, and she went through several check-ins before sitting down to receive her vaccine. Something that stood out to Buzzo was the different volunteers at the vaccine site.

“My person, I think, was a nurse, but the person beside me was a firefighter,” Buzzo said.

After double-checking Buzzo’s information to ensure she did not have concerns about an allergic reaction, she was inoculated.

“It was really quick and easy,” Buzzo said.

After receiving her shot, Buzzo had to wait in an observation room for 15 minutes, but she pointed out that if someone has allergy concerns, they have to wait in the room for 30 minutes. As she was leaving, people checked her vaccine card that read the time of her shot to make sure that she was not leaving too early.

However, leaving the vaccination site is not where the vaccination experience ends. Buzzo experienced some side effects post-vaccination.

“About 12 hours after I got the shot, I had a headache. I was insanely cold, like teeth chattering cold — we think maybe a fever; I never actually checked my temperature. I was just kind of really feeling sick all day and didn’t get out of bed. But other than that, once I woke up in the morning, like, I felt fine after that,” Buzzo said. “Obviously my arm was really sore for about a week. I did feel a little queasy and like a headache that first night but one sleep, and I was fine.”

Tatiana Montes ’21 thus far has had a vaccine experience that has been both complicated and unsuccessful. Montes, who found out that she was also in the 1b group after taking the Virginia Department of Health’s sorting quiz, has been eagerly awaiting a vaccine but still is yet to be vaccinated.

Originally, Montes was told to reach out to the VDH after contacting Riverside Medical Hospital. After speaking to an automated messaging system on the VDH’s line, she finally reached a human and was then told to call the health department in the city she resided. She then had trouble getting in contact with her local health department. Eventually, Montes found a Google form through the James City County government website. She is hoping this will be successful and that someone will soon contact her so she can receive her vaccine.

Montes holds on to hope that she will be vaccinated soon.

“I just think it’s super encouraging that I keep hearing more and more people that are getting it and having relatively few symptoms, including my family,” Montes said. “It’s just really encouraging to know that people are doing their part, for the most part ... When the vaccine first came out, it was kind of like a light at the end of the tunnel. And while it’s sort of a botched system right now to try and get it, I think eventually we’ll get there. And the trends nationwide are sort of starting to show a decrease because of that. So I’m just feeling optimistic about the future.”

No one knows what next year will look like, but like Montes, many students have a renewed sense of hope for the future, especially as more friends and family members become vaccinated.

Update: As of April 18, the Commonwealth of Virginia has moved into Phase 2 of COVID-19 vaccine distribution. This means that “everyone, 16 and older, who lives or works in Virginia will be eligible to get the COVID-19 vaccine.” Please visit vdh.virginia.gov/covid-19-vaccine for more information. Additionally, students at the College have been asked to update their vaccine information in the personal information questionnaire in Banner Self-Service so that the COVID-19 response team may continue to effectively connect students wanting the vaccine with opportunities to do so.