I was interested to see a new opinion poll in which people were asked what they would do if they tested positive for Covid-19. As ever with opinion polls, there is the need to include caveats and to explore the various nuances because this particular question – ‘what would you do if you tested positive for Covid-19’ – and its options require both. Anyway, set out in its most raw form, here is the poll:
On Sunday 30th January 2022, I woke up earlier than usual with Covid symptoms. A quick lateral flow test quickly revealed what I had already worked out: I had the virus. I managed to avoid it for the best part of two years but any Trump-like delusion that ‘maybe I’m immune?’ proved unfounded. So what did I do?
Of the options given in the opinion poll – and given the law was that I should do any of them anyway – I did and didn’t do the following:
- I didn’t got for a walk outside, except briefly in my back garden
- I didn’t leave my house except to walk briefly in my back garden and to put the recycling out
- I didn’t go to a supermarket or shops
- I didn’t go to my place of work, not least because I am unemployable/unemployed
- I didn’t travel on public transport
- I didn’t visit elderly relatives because mine are all dead and have been for years and I didn’t visit anyone else’s
To be fair, it was easy for me. I had no need to do any of these things, but for people of working age – which I technically still am, but only technically – it’s a very different story or perhaps a patchwork of different stories.
The message from Al ‘You can call me Boris’ Johnson is that the virus is over and life can carry on as before. Over 1000 people a week are still dying of Covid but that’s the price we have to pay for living with Covid, as long as we are not among the 1000 people who are dying every week. Johnson commands that the future will depend on our ‘personal responsibility’, something for which he has never been associated. If you are worried as to whether you have the virus, then take a test at your own expense which will not be counted on any national record. Only £6 per test – bargain. Well, if you’re loaded, six quid is nothing. If you are a minimum wage worker trying to make ends meet, six quid is a fortune. Who do we think will be more likely to become infected and die under our new found freedoms? Why, only the lower orders, the riff-raff; scroungers every one.
As for going to your place of work if you were positive, what if you were honest and told your employer you were asymptomatic? Would your employer take a kindly attitude and tell you to stay at home until you were testing negative, testing at your own expensive, mind, at £6 a pop? In short, would every employer in the land keep you on full pay while sitting at home when, on the face of it, there was nothing wrong with you? Of course not. And many employers regard sick leave as being part of the disciplinary process. Does this look like a mess? That’s because it is and that’s how this awful government wants things to be.
During my working life, staff were praised for coming into work when they were sick and others disciplined when they didn’t. If X could stagger into work whilst suffering from a debilitating virus, then why can’t you? Just remember what might happen when the manager compiles your annual report or when you apply for promotion. Some staff would even show off about their perfect sick record – “I’ve never had a day off sick” – which would always remind me of a colleague who took a lot of sick leave, but also staggered into work when they shouldn’t have, when they suffered from the cancer that would eventually kill them but not before they got a disciplinary warning for sick leave.
Covid is over twice as serious as influenza – and if you have ever had the flu, rather than a ‘flu-like illness’, you would know about it. And it’s far more infectious than the flu. Even in its Omicron form, it’s still a killer, and if you go to work, where there will likely be vulnerable folk or a care home which will have nothing but vulnerable folk, it may not end well.
But, you may ask, what’s the alternative? Trust me: I’m more than sympathetic with this question because I could not stand much longer being locked down. My preference would always be to continue with free testing, with people being asked to isolate without being compromised financially, until such time as the virus is no longer such a major threat. However, this is not going to happen. We are where we are and freedom, warts and all, is the word of the day.
When and if I catch Covid again, I’ll be inclined to isolate, but then, how will I know? I am not forking out £6 per test to line the pockets of Boots the Chemists’ shareholders. I’ll probably self-diagnose. I’ll deal with the ‘what if a band I have been waiting a lifetime to see tour Britain’ question another day.
I repeat: living with the virus means, at the current rate, 52,000 people a year dying from or with it. There is probably no alternative but it is a chilling thought that among that 52,000 could be you or someone you love.
