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Hey guess what… it’s STILL FUCKING HERE. Yesterday Peter tested positive for Covid (so far I’m still negative). His symptoms started on Sunday (feeling tired, chesty cough) so we did a test on Sunday evening – negative. But Monday morning there it was. Fuck. Obviously since the positive test result Peter has been keeping to his room, wearing a mask, with the balcony doors open for ventilation… and of course he cancelled his tours this week.
I also got in touch with my clients booked for this week. Told them the situation, that I had so far not tested positive (and of course would test on the morning of the tour) but they have opted to cancel. Fair enough. I wanted that to be their choice, it wasn’t mine to make for them, thinking I was fine, it was theirs to make based on the possibility that I might not be. Totally respect that.
And yeah, it sucks to lose work and income. But I don’t get it. How do people who KNOW they are Covid positive still keep going out and about, keep going to work, keep meeting friends for dinner, going on trips, etc etc fucking etc??? Then there are the people who are in denial, who refuse to test, refuse to acknowledge they may have Covid because… who the fuck even knows why? It makes no sense to me.
There is no such thing as “just a cold” in my house any more. Because there is no such thing as “just a cold” pretty much anywhere in the world any more. In fact, I haven’t had JUST A COLD since December 2019. Gee must’ve had something to do with everyone wearing masks, washing hands, paying attention… though I did finally succumb to Covid in October 2022, just two weeks before I was scheduled for the second booster (fuck fuck fuck). “Mild” symptoms, ten days testing positive, twelve days spent at home until I got two consecutive negative tests, so as not to infect other people. I don’t understand why this is a hard concept to take in, or why people think it’s somehow okay to infect others with a potentially fatal illness, or one that could result in life-long incapacity.
I do understand that we all can’t afford to take time off (god knows I can’t) and I fully acknowledge I take some personal risks that I probably shouldn’t but I have to work and, just like everyone, I want to have a bit of my old life back. Those are my personal choices that I make for myself. But for me to decide… hey, flatmate is down with Covid but so far I’m okay so I’m not going to tell anyone unless I have to… who the fuck even thinks like this? The mind reels. And the heart hurts.
casa azahar 
Oh man, this is the first Covid case among people I know for a week. I was starting to hope it was over. Still masking up in the grocery store. Thanks for the warning.
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I’m still masking up in shops and even outside if I’m in a crowded street. It’s not hard to do.
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I agree, ounce of prevention…
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It’s still here folks….and will be a constant for the foreseeable future. Noticed at a HOSPITAL visit today that not everyone visiting was wearing a mask….signs were on the wall but no one enforcing it….and the sanitizers were being ignored too. REALLY!! At least folks should be taking these basic precautions in a medical setting (and on public transport and other crowded places to my mind). But then I care about passing the virus onto vulnerable people….and, as I am one of them too….catching it myself!
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So-called “vulnerable” people have been marginalised with “healthy” people saying they should just stay home. The irony is that any of these healthy ones could end up with Long Covid and suddenly they’d be vulnerable too. So selfish.
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I just got a cancellation e-mail from one of my carefully curated remaining clients, who has been caring for her mother in her last days and deploying every strategy — HEPA filtration, testing caregivers on each and every arrival, masking, even helped me get the far UV light that now teams up with the Corsi-Rosenthal box in my studio. After the mom died and she managed the inevitable afterwork, she decided to go diving for a mental health break. “My roommate got a cold and gave it to me and I can’t shake it, cancel my appointment.”
RIGHT. A cold. Mentions nothing about testing at all. It’s like people get possessed by walk-ins. I won’t be seeing her for at least two weeks.
In other news, the manager of the repair project on my back porch, in process since last October, “died suddenly” and the start of construction will be, ahem, delayed. We don’t know how he died, but people in their 20s, 30s, 40s have been checking out with massive heart attacks or strokes in abnormal numbers since the Great Unmasking– teenagers, even, sometimes.
No, it’s not going to be over for a long time.
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Peter tested negative today after 7 days, but won’t officially get out of Covid Prison until he gets two negatives in a row, so hopefully that will be tomorrow. The “just a cold” people make me crazy. Peter’s symptoms were totally like “just a cold” with a cough, runny nose, etc, no fever. If he hadn’t tested he would’ve been working, infecting people all over the place.
Yes, all the sudden deaths everywhere are hard to ignore. Well, except most people are.
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I know right? I mean, dumbass (I want to tell them), if you’d een doing what you ought to do to avoid Covid then you wouldn’t have “just a cold” either, which incidentally I also don’t want.
I wish it were called something else. People still think a “cold” is something you get from being cold and not from a goddam rhinovirus. I follow a chaplain on Twitter who regularly catalogues the dismal ignorance about the pandemic and the actual frequency with which people try to pretend away their own symptoms or the illness and death around them. In one installment he described a woman who wanted to shut off the Corsi-Rosenthal fans that were cleaning the air in the room “because I might catch a chill from the draft.” It’s astounding that in the 21st century we deal with this level of dummheit.
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