Three and a half years

Well, it took three and a half years, but COVID finally caught us. We’re all fully vaxed and boosted, and by all accounts we had a pretty mild time of it, but my goodness, that’s by far the sickest I’ve ever been. It’s a hard disease to complain too much about, because while sure, I was as sick as I’ve ever been, this thing has killed something like 27 million people worldwide, and mostly all I did was sleep for a week?

I only seem to have two lasting effects, and I’m not totally sure either one is directly COVID’s fault. Weeks later, I’ve still got this lingering cough, but it’s the sort of cough where I’m coughing because my lungs are irritated, and they’re irritated because I’ve been coughing so much, and that’s gone full recursive. As as result, I’ve been living on Ricola cough drops. My second lingering symptom is that my stomach is constantly upset, but I’m not sure that’s the virus as the fact that its been permanently full of the contents of a Swiss apothecary.

One positive lasting effect of the pandemic, if you’re willing to work to turn the frown upside down, is that it is way easier to be sick than it used to be. The home grocery delivery infrastructure is still in place, and you can still genuinely stay inside, not interact with anyone, and get everything you need delivered. (As long as you don’t look at the bill.). The kids’ school has a well-tuned system for reporting that the kids had COVID and would be out for a while, and even work was an easy conversation to the extent of “sure, take the time, let us know when you’re better.” This was not the experience we had when we all got the flu in ’18!

But.

The reason we got it in the first place was that the schools have been stripped of any meaningful way to prevent the spread, and so in a period where cases are spiking they had a gum full of teenagers without masks in close quarters. The only thing worse than shivering through a multi-day fever is knowning you only have it because people you never met don’t care enough to keep it from spreading.

All through the main pandemic, and the “cold pandemic” we’re in now, I’ve been pretty determined not to catch it. And hey, anecdotally, three and a half years is the best run of anyone I know. But now that I have had it, I’m even more determined not to catch it again. I don’t understand anyone who could go through this and then not think “wow, I’m doing whatever I can to keep that from happening again.” If it weren’t for the fact that the school is the vector, I might never go outside again!

So. People. It doesn’t have to be like this. It still not too late to choose a different future.