Among the ‘memories’ appearing on my Facebook account are those pertaining to the dim, dark past, or 2020 as it’s otherwise known. How can it be three years since Boris Johnson told everyone to stay at home because a coronavirus which has to date killed over 6.8 million people around the globe gripped the country? Along with many other folk, I was a recipient of the government’s ‘furlough’ scheme which paid people to stay at home and so stop the virus spreading. I finally caught the virus in January 2022, waking up one morning with a persistent and irritating cough, and immediately testing myself with the free testing kits. I knew it was Covid and of course it was. I was still testing positive 15 days later but all in all, I escaped lightly, unless there are unknown future effects we don’t know about yet. Anyway, earlier this week I woke up to a persistent and irritating cough. Did I have the virus again? There was only one thing to do: nothing.
This is not to say I wilfully ignored the symptoms because at the time it genuinely didn’t occur to me I might have Covid. I just thought my cough was nothing more than that. I’m a chronic asthmatic (which means I have had asthma for donkeys’ years, nothing worse than that) and I wondered at first if this coughing was down to that. But all week, it has just carried on.
On Wednesday, I met up with a mate for a few pints on King Street in Bristol. As I turned the corner from Welsh Back I breathed in an enormous waft of gunk from someone’s electronic cigarette and had a coughing fit so bad I ended up with tears in my eyes. As an aside, the scientific jury is still out on whether vaping is seriously damaging to one’s health, but my reaction suggested at the very least that vaping isn’t good for you. But that cough. Ouch.
Yesterday, I worked at the food bank, spluttering occasionally from time to time, but nothing catastrophic. Even then, it had not occurred to me I might be re-infected with Covid-19. This morning, with my cough far worse, I thought, sod it: I’ll do a test, if only for my own satisfaction.
We still have a few kits left from the initial pandemic so off I went, trying to remember how to do something which became automatic just a couple of years ago. Coughing and retching my way through the test, I waited for the result. Within a few minutes, it was crystal clear. I didn’t have Covid-19 again.
My feeling after taking the test was quite simple: why did I take it? What good would it have done? There’s no obligation to test. I’ve always said to myself, “I’m not testing anymore. I’m going to get on with my life and I am not going to force myself into self-isolation.” Yet my curiosity was too much. And the possibility I might kill someone vulnerable. In other words, guilt. People are still dying of Covid. Not so many as before but it hasn’t gone away, it never will.
So, today I am spluttering and I haven’t got Covid. It’s Man Flu, or a version of it. It’s a virus but not THAT virus. But what it has brought home to me is how the world stood still back in 2020 and how quickly I’ve moved on. On that note, I’m off for a cough and a splutter. Don’t stand so close to me.
