The Hot-Person Vaccine

I hope we can all agree that “vaccine culture” is a bit depressing. The idea of wearing an evening gown to a COVID-19-vaccine appointment is objectively sad, and speaking from personal experience, taking an hour-long bus ride to a CVS at the dead center of Staten Island, New York, for medical treatment is not fun or exciting except by dramatic contrast to events prior.

And when vaccine culture isn’t dismal, it can get extremely weird. At the moment, the internet is full of jokes about all the things you still can’t do after you’ve gotten vaccinated—like taking my hand and dragging me headfirst, which is part of a Taylor Swift song from 2008; removing the green ribbon from around your neck, a reference to a disturbing children’s story in which a woman named Jenny does that and then her head falls off; or emerging “from the soil after 17 years to shed your outer cuticular layer & scream,” which is a subtweet of cicadas. I’m laughing, but what are we talking about?