Literature
After the Pandemic
Alicia was just about bouncing up and down on the examining table. She was finally getting it, the thing that everyone had hoped for during the months of isolation, social distancing, and working from home. The holy grail. The thing that would make everything go back to normal. The vaccine. As infection rates tailed off, things had gotten better as many features of society returned, but there was still an edge in the air. People almost jumped out of their skin every time someone coughed in a ten-foot radius of them. Was it the virus coming back? Would it all begin again? But that was over now. The federal government through the CDC, the FDA, the NIH—not to mention WHO and health agencies around the globe—had confirmed it: the vaccine worked. It was real. Through the Defense Production Act, the president had ordered major pharmaceutical companies to begin widescale production so the country and world could get inoculated as fast as possible. Alicia had immediately put herself on the