After six months of being paid by the government to not work, next week I am finally returning to work. My furlough is over and whilst it would have been nice to carry on getting money for nothing, it will be great to enjoy some kind of normal in my life. There will be masks and there will be loads of hand gel, the latter of which I’ve been using anyway for 20 years at work, but otherwise it will be the same old same old. But what if I get ill?
Like most folk, I do get the odd winter coughs and colds. I usually brush them off and carry on regardless. I have to be feeling like death to take sick leave, although it wasn’t always like this. However, what if, this autumn and winter, I get a persistent new cough and no other symptoms? I usually do.
Respiratory infections are normally a minor nuisance to folk like me who also have long term asthma, which is medically defined as chronic asthma. If I start spluttering regularly, suffer shortness of breath and because I have a stinking cold, it’s likely I’ll have a coronavirus. The problem is which one?
The common cold can be a coronavirus and it probably isn’t going to kill me. Your senses of taste and smell are affected by – and I am sorry if you are eating at the moment – gallons of snot. A hacking cough, breathlessness and the loss, partial or otherwise, of taste and smell. Should I get a test? Should I self-isolate? The decision will be 100% mine and working, as I do, with people who are, remarkably, even less fit than I currently am, I’m going to err on the side of safety.
I am not especially scared of catching the virus, although perhaps I should be. As my mental health has improved in recent weeks, I’ve been working harder with my physical health, to at least give me a fighting chance of avoiding a ventilator if I attract the lurgy. We’ve lost a close family member, plus a couple of friends, one of whom was far from ancient and had no underlying health issues. I know people with what’s being called long term COVID, who frequently suffer from continued breathlessness and exhaustion. I wonder whether, back in February, when I suffered from a persistent new cough, breathlessness, exhaustion and severely aching joints, I may have been an early victim? A few weeks later, one of my sons went down with the virus, which he swotted away as if it was an irritating bug. Did I give it to him? We may never know.
Poor and incompetent national leadership has not helped. Empty slogans and mixed messaging have eroded public confidence and support in the government. Most of us know that COVID-19 is a very serious virus that has killed between 60,000 and 70,000 people in the UK alone, but increasing numbers are weary and, more worryingly, many people are beginning to swallow the lie that this is all a hype, some kind of world conspiracy invented by the lizards David Icke says control the world. And, need I add, the arrogant flouting of the regulations by Boris Johnson’s organ grinder Dominic Cummings, who indeed was instrumental in creating them, did more than most to damage the public’s confidence in government.
I’m going back to work again and looking forward to it. But it’s at a time when the virus is spreading again and, unless the government gets a grip, we’ll soon be heading for more restrictions, maybe even a full national lockdown, I have no idea what happens next. Have I had it? Will I get it? Will I get it again this winter because, it seems, having the virus once doesn’t mean you can’t get it again? Does Boris Johnson know what he’s doing? The only clear answer to any of these questions is, no, Johnson doesn’t know what he’s doing.
My main ambition is that you and I will still be here this time next year, having got through the worst COVID-19 could do to us and in a world where a successful vaccine has begun to be rolled out around the world. I’ll probably conclude I have the virus every time I get a cough and a cold and I’ll be making numerous decisions as to whether to go for a test. We will have to live with this virus for years to come, if not forever, not least because large numbers of people have decided to believe the lies of the evidence-free conspiracy theorists instead of science. They’re the ones who should be told to stay at home, not me.
Six months in and it feels like COVID-19 has been here forever. I just wish I could wake up and find it was all a long nightmare. Sadly, I’m not Bobby Ewing and this isn’t Dallas (one for the teenagers there) and it turns out I was awake all the time.
