Pandemic Needs

 First published, not published, in mid-March 2023

“So grateful for vaccines. So grateful for vaccines!”

My running mantra the entire 8 days of my recent COVID quarantine. This first-timer spent a lot of time on the couch, getting little done yet deeply grateful that every vaccine and booster did its job, kept me from feeling so much worse and now fully recovered. Coincidently, my 85-year-old mother and 25% of residents and staff at her assisted living home were going through the same. So grateful for vaccines!

I was prepared to get COVID one day. I wasn’t prepared for how easily my brain substituted “HIV” with every test result and my vaccine gratitude. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise given my near constant appeals for HIV vaccine funding over the last 3 decades. It was humbling, just the same.

Yes, I’m peddling HIV/AIDS vaccine research progress at Emory Vaccine Center. Yes, I ask for your donation to keep that research pressing on to the same success EVC contributed to COVID vaccines. And yes, I’ll pedal my bike this May in Action Cycling Atlanta’s AIDS Vaccine 200 cycling event. In its 20^th anniversary year, participants will press on to bring attention to a need still with us, a virus that still kills at pandemic proportions despite much-welcome advances in treatment and prevention strategies. COVID put a crimp in my training schedule but boosted determination to make my COVID mantra relevant for a world affected and at risk for HIV/AIDS.