So it’s finally happened: after almost two years of dodging CoViD-19, the virus finally caught me and mine.
We found out with some certainty by way of home testing kits last weekend, as a matter of confirmation following a succession of fevers and coughs in the family.
I would have liked to say that the decision to test was a matter of prudent precaution, but in hindsight, maybe I was anything but. Then again, one can only live in a bubble for so long.
Before I proceed any further, it would be appropriate — and prudent! — to warn you all that I am not a medical professional, and nothing I say here should be construed as medical advice.
I’ve tried to be selective about my sources of news about the pandemic, eschewing the sensational and the conspiratorial, and taking government reports with copious grains of salt. But more on these some other time.
The first sign I should have noticed was when our daughter D– caught a mild fever on Wednesday. We started counting backwards to any possible encounters, and decided the closest ones were too recent, or happened outdoors where transmission was supposedly less likely.
So we wrote it off as some other common childhood ailment, and waited for other symptoms. By Thursday, she was her usual self, thus, allaying fears of infection.
We went about our usual daily routines for the rest of the week, myself meeting a few people in the office for an hour on Friday, and driving my mother for another hour after that.
If all this sounds unconscionably risky, I would merely debate its unconscionability: as I said, one can only live in a bubble for so long. At some point, whether for work or for mental health, we do have to start venturing out.
To be honest, despite the typical fear-mongering of news channels worldwide, the Omicron strain actually sounded hopeful for me.
My trusted source for CoViD analysis, Dr. John Campbell, had been tracking it since early December. Omicron was highly contagious, he reported, as contagious as chicken pox; but its symptoms were mild, and as far as hospitalization and mortality data from South Africa and the UK looked, it looked to be less severe than previous strains. Potentially, this could signal the end of the pandemic, and a shift into the endemic, i.e. something you live with it.
Following Dr. Campbell, too, I knew I would eventually catch Omicron. “Not if, but when,” he warned.
Still, all the other precautions remained in place: masks, adequate distance, staying in well-ventilated areas, hand sanitizers, and booster shot. But these were just means to forestall the inevitable, to catch it as late as I could.
So catch it I did. Not to be blasé about it, without minimizing the suffering of others, and certainly not encouraging others to actively catch it: Omicron has thus far been…kind.
The fever came on and off for all of two days, never going beyond 37.5, and after that, went away completely. Any congestion has been limited to my throat, not going (thus far) to my lungs.
In this regard, this is way milder, and better behaved than some previous bouts with flu that devolved into bronchitis and required antibiotics.
Per the guidelines, we’ll quarantine for a few more days, then test again to be sure before we go out into the open.
On the plus side, this means extended family time. D– is as sprightly as ever, though she misses our morning bike rides. I’m able to put in work hours to move some projects along, plus moments of rest.
Hopefully by next week, we’ll be back to our regular routine. And over the horizon — hopefully some natural immunity and an end to pandemic rules. Puhon.
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