The vaccines aren't a force field that ward off all things COVID-19. They were given the greenlight because they greatly lower your chance of getting seriously ill or dying. But it was easy for me — and I'm not the only one — to grab onto the idea that, after so many months of trying not to get COVID-19, that the vaccine was, more or less, the finish line. And that made getting sick from the virus unnerving.

I had a breakthrough case of COVID-19 — despite my two shots of the Pfizer vaccine, the second one in April.

the realities of our still-raging pandemic, where even the vaccinated can get sick