Yup, well, predictably, I caught Covid from the Husband. I mean, really – unless you know someone’s likely infected you, everyone who’s vaxed and boostered thinks – oh, I’ve caught a cold. So you don’t mention it, until a couple of days later, when it becomes obvious. Which usually means: worse.
There’s no way to effectively disinfect a small house, especially in the winter, when it’s too cold to open windows for ventilation, you use a woodstove for heat which not only dries out the air but adds a fair amount of ash and dust to it, and the only full bathroom’s in the downstairs living area, one room amongst four very small rooms with no doors between them except on the bathroom. So even though I chased the husband upstairs to his bedroom and told him to stay there, by then he’d spread the virus through the downstairs pretty completely, and while I disinfected what I could – how do you disinfect a household, really? You can wipe horizontal surfaces and door handles and phones and tv controls and sinks and toilets and faucets and anything else the one with the plague may have touched, but what do you do about the afghans and throw pillows and piles of paper, and lampshades and sofa and cloth-covered chairs and CATS and stuff you don’t even think about that the pestilence coughed out by the culprit has landed on? Short of a bonfire of your entire house contents, that is. I considered it and rejected the idea.
So predictably, I caught it exactly three days later.
You don’t want to catch this virus. There were 36 hours of what felt like swallowing shards of glass, and nothing, NOTHING, touched that pain, western or Chinese. Not everyone has that symptom as badly – Husband says his sore throat lasted longer but wasn’t as bad, and an NSAID worked for him. Nothing worked for me, including Chinese meds, cursing, and cursing some more. I heard from a patient whose relative – vaxed if I remember correctly, but not boostered – had the glass shards sore throat for 10 days, during which time he couldn’t eat or drink and lost 10 pounds. I would have killed myself if it lasted that long. The other part of that misery is that the sore throat causes coughing which makes the sore throat worse which causes more coughing…and one couldn’t sleep, because too sore and coughing. Wracking coughs. Continuous, wracking coughs. For hours. Mostly at night, for some reason. Probably because that’s when the evil imps that lurk in the shadows in the corners of bedrooms and hallways are busiest and most creative.
So friends of mine, you who claim to have had this and insist it was no worse than a cold and it was over in 3 or 4 days? I DON’T BELIEVE YOU. You now reside on my mental list of people who forget how awful something is, once it’s over – along with women who have gone through childbirth.
So it’s true that depending on what variant of this sneaky virus you catch – and you won’t know – and how excellent your immune system is at the moment; and what version of the vaccine you got (J&J people, you’re doomed); and whether you’ve been boostered; and how long ago you got vaxed and boostered; and whether you have a living situation that lets you easily and completely isolate the sick person, and whether they went into isolation as soon as they realized they were coming down with something – all those and a hundred other variables – you might experience something that’s only as bad as a bad cold and you might get over it in ---let’s say 6 or so days. But – you won’t know ‘til you catch it and the fun begins.
And then, you have to remember you were able to transmit the virus for three days prior to having symptoms, and you’ll be able to transmit it for at least three days after your symptoms have completely disappeared – so to do the right thing, you’ll call everyone you came in contact with maskless for those three days prior to showing symptoms to give them a head’s up. Do this before the coughing and glass shards throat kick in on day two or three. You’ll most likely hear horrifying stories, as the Husband did, of dozens of local people who also caught it from the one place he regularly went and didn’t wear a mask. In his case: Old Farts Tennis. Yup, I know, but you can’t tell Old Farts anything, and it had been safe and the place had been carefully disinfected daily and monitored until just about a month ago. And then it wasn’t, because everyone got sloppy and decided Covid was no longer a risk. Surprise!
When you do get ready to go back out into public, here’s some more advice from the sickbed: until your symptoms are completely gone – and that means completely gone, not that you’re feeling better and even though you’re still harfing up a hairball every so often you figure you’re safe – you can still give this little giftie to someone else for at least the next three days post symptoms. This advice has changed several times during the two years we’ve been inflicted with Covid, partly because we know more now, and partly because the different variants all act differently and have different rules – so just believe it, you’re still contagious. WEAR A MASK. Everywhere.
So now I’ve had personal experience with the rapid Covid tests, here’s what I can tell you:
No point in wasting one before you have symptoms, you’ll just get a false negative.
If you suspect you’re coming down with something but don’t actually have symptoms yet, don’t go anywhere in public without a good mask on, keep your hands sanitized/well washed, and isolate at home after telling your spouse what you suspect. It won’t kill you. Two or three days later, if you have symptoms, use a test.
If your test is positive, you’ve got it. Stay isolated. Wear a mask when your family comes to feed you. Don’t touch stuff they’re going to touch. Don’t cough/snot/harf all over everything, and put your used rapid test and all your snotrags in plastic bags that you can seal up once they’re full so the trash folks don’t have to touch them, either.
Stay to hell in your room until you’re really, truly over this. If you have a fever, take acetaminophen or ibuprofen or aspirin; ditto for the sore throat. My personal experience is that only 3 ibus worked and not perfectly, I had no fever worth mentioning, and from a Chinese medical point of view, this is a truly bizarre virus, and weird mix of cold and hot invasion and pretty much nothing has made an obvious difference. I finally tried a fire-toxin formula which may, or may not, have helped the sore throat. Or, it may be that it just stopped hurting when the virus decided to change symptoms. I have no idea.
Should you take a second rapid test? Don’t be confused by the instructions that come with the test: the 2nd test they refer to really means IF you get a negative result after the first, BUT you develop symptoms in the next few days while you’re carefully wearing a mask in public to protect the innocent, THEN take a 2nd test to see if the antigens have built sufficiently to test positive. IF you still get a negative result, you most likely do actually just have a cold, but wear a mask in public or even better, stay home, because your cold symptoms are going to freak everyone out and no one wants to catch that from you, either.
At the end of your ordeal, if you’ve isolated ‘til symptom-free PLUS isolated an extra 3 days minimum, no point in taking a test. You can get a positive test for months after having Covid, but it won’t mean you’re still contagious. Yes, you personally will gain some limited extra immunity from the variant you personally contracted – could be for 2 weeks, could be for 3 months – but you don’t know how long, it’s very individual, and you don’t know which variant you had, and you don’t know which variant everyone else is spreading around, so don’t take a chance – WEAR A MASK IN PUBLIC and around anyone you don’t know for certain is masking and vaxed and boostered and being careful.
WHY does the CDC now say you don’t need to wear a mask? Because they have no idea how many people are still catching the virus. All they know is how many people who caught it needed to be hospitalized, and how many of those died. The CDC doesn’t know about the local break-out of dozens of locals who caught it: rapid test results aren’t reported.
And maybe no one who works at the CDC has actually experienced a rotten case of this virus in their own body or the body of someone close to the, and they actually believe the thing is “no worse than a bad cold” for vaxed and boostered people. That’s true for some people; it’s true for part of the time you have it; but it ignores that getting it, bad cold symptoms or not or worse, disrupts lives – sick people can’t work, sick people’s families often can’t work, sick people give it to other people, and some of those people will indeed wind up in hospital or dead.
Yes, mask wearing is a pain in the butt. Proper mask wearing and sanitizing is a worse pain in the butt. But worse things could happen. How many really sick people, how many days of someone else’s lost work, how many hospitalized and dead people are you willing to be responsible for in order to not wear a mask?
Personally, I’m not ready to risk even one. And I hope the person who did the bad thing which gave the Husband Covid, which gave me Covid, which has caused already 10 days of him not being able to work, and me 8 days of not being able to treat patients, and another week moreat least of neither of us being able to work – should I add those dollar amounts up for you? – plus the days and nights of real discomfort, the risk and trouble to family and friends who have had to run errands for us, the civic work that had to be cancelled, the volunteer work that can’t be done --- you’re getting the idea, right? I hope that person who wasn’t careful who handed the virus on to me and he and the dozens of others who caught it – I hope someone slaps that person upside the head. Hard.
So, this is my contemplation from the middle of my own Covid world. Think twice before deciding it isn’t your responsibility to wear a mask.
And when you catch it, don’t give in to the urge to take your unmasked, Covidy self to visit the vax-denying, mask-refusing friends and relatives who think they’re immune. Just to cough a bit in reflective thought, and see what happens.
Because it won’t be just them.
For the blog: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com 8 March 2022
All art and photos Deb Marshall:
Me; Two of a Kind (Rasta and Lynx); All Duded Up; Thinking About Stuff; Lynx
