ON THE COVER
Saturday Morning Shots
RN’s Tina Wood, left, and Tina Morais load does of Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine into syringes on March 28 at the Pacific Union School campus in Arcata. The clinic was aiming to vaccinate 1,500 people.
Inside Mad River Community Hospital’s mass vaccination clinic By Linda Stansberry
newsroom@northcoastjournal.com
Photos by Mark McKenna
T
he vaccine clinic starts at 9 a.m. By 8:45 a.m. the lines stretch from the breezeway of Pacific Union School’s main building in Arcata all the way through the parking lot, then the adjacent parking lot, to Janes Road. A young woman with blonde hair stands just inside the school’s fence, her arms crossed against the early spring chill. The morning is overcast, the sky the color of cement. A slightly harried-looking volunteer wearing a white Rotarian shirt is directing traffic at the en-
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trance, helping people with mobility issues pull around to the back of the building, where staff with the Area 1 Agency on Aging wait to assist. A small boy wearing a Mario costume clings to his mother’s hand. The mood in the crowd is subdued, anticipatory, its masked participants not talking to one another but watching the action at the front of the line where, in the grade school’s breezeway, staff with Mad River Community Hospital bustle back and forth. There is an atmosphere of excitement mixed with slight disbelief.
NORTH COAST JOURNAL • Thursday, April 1, 2021 • northcoastjournal.com
For many, today is the day they’ve been thinking about for more than a year, the day they can take that first necessary step toward to pre-pandemic life. Dennis Chase, 68, and his daughter Sara Gossi, 41, both of Fortuna, stand in the shorter “second shot” line, waiting for their chance to get to the front and receive their second and final jab of the Pfizer vaccine. They were alerted to the Mad River vaccination clinic by Gossi’s inlaws. Chase is a rancher, Gossi a grocery store worker.
“The first time I was nervous,” Gossi says. “I’ve heard you can get sick. A friend got sick afterward. But this time, no problem.” Next to them, Leena Dallasheh, an associate professorat Humboldt State University, says she got her first shot at a College of the Redwoods clinic. “I’m really happy to be finally getting the shot,” she says, saying there was some confusion about whether she and her colleagues were eligible but it was resolved. At the head of the line, Jacqueline
