April 3. Vaccination hall at the horse racing track. There are no lines, it just goes through briskly with a precisely calculated workload. I am met by young men from the National Guard – or are they Marines? In any case, they are from the government and in camouflage gear – and each performs exactly one action, asks exactly one question, wishes to see exactly one document, and points to exactly one next person to go to, to the exactly next question, and to the exactly next document.

Eventually there are thirty vaccination places. Someone asks the questions and fills out the slips, someone else vaccinates. I ask my vaccinator about her shift length – twelve hours, and that’s not even her main job, she’s actually learning to be a nurse, but she wanted to earn a little extra money – and how many vaccinations she manages per shift – about a hundred. You didn’t even bleed, she says as she puts the band-aid on. – One hundred, I calculate later, that’s seven and a half minutes per vaccination with asking questions and filling out slips, makes three thousand a day for all vaccination places. Waiting area for anaphylactic shock, thirty minutes.

I rode the subway today for the first time in a year, took an Uber and the Long Island Railroad. I was unpracticed at it, figuring out how Google Maps has changed over this year and not sure I would get the transfer right. And euphoric.