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Category Archives: covid

don’t test don’t tell

17 Wednesday May 2023

Posted by azahar in coronavirus, covid

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

covid

dont test dont tell

It’s getting so that parody Twitter accounts like The Onion and The Vertlartnic don’t seem that far removed from reality any more. We’ve really all been thrown under the bus, every human for themself, etc. Without guidance or information. The so-called vulnerable being blamed by the presumed healthy for holding them back from enjoying their normal lives again. But what these “healthy” people don’t realise is… WE ARE ALL VULNERABLE. We’re being lied to left, right and centre so don’t hear about all the previously healthy people who have died or are suffering from Long Covid. I could go on but this just makes me so sad and tired. It’s all been said before but nobody is listening.

covid 2023

02 Tuesday May 2023

Posted by azahar in coronavirus, covid, health, health & happiness, sevilla

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

casa azahar, covid, sevilla

covid 2013

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.

three years on…

14 Tuesday Mar 2023

Posted by azahar in coronavirus, covid, home

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

covid, lockdown

three years

Three years ago today the world changed. Looking back on my first Covid-related posts here they sound so naïve and even crazily optimistic. Especially this first one where I said the lockdown was officially going to last a minimum of 15 days, and perhaps longer. Ha. Try three months. I also remember then talking with other friends who were concerned about losing work during one of the busiest times of the year, but hoping we’d be able to recupe some of that by summer. HA. Hahahaha. The only thing that happened by summer was that I was cut off from the meagre government assistance I was initially promised. Little did I know on that mid-March day in 2020 that my business was about to completely shut down for a year and a half. Good-bye savings, hello debt.

During that first year a few very kind and generous friends pitched in to help me with paying rent and bills and for that I will always be grateful. I finally got back to work in September 2021 (after getting the first two vaccine jabs) but then shut down again Dec-Feb when Omicron hit. And after that… well after that was when we started getting cut off from any useful information about Covid as governments stopped testing and publishing statistics. That was about a year ago. We’ve been flying blind ever since.

To wit… I can only do as much as makes any sense to me. Which is to mask in as many situations as possible and not go to crowded spaces, to sit near open windows and doors when I’m out at tapas bars (it’s my job!) and otherwise try to reduce risk. I have barely travelled since early 2020 and all those trips have been work-related. I haven’t been going on holiday. In part because I’m broke, but also because going on holiday isn’t actually necessary. Because guess what? We are still in the midst of an ongoing global pandemic. IT IS NOT OVER.

I realise I am now in the minority as the rest of the world has decided to embrace the “new normal” state of total denial that millions of people horrifically died from this virus, and they continue to do so on a daily basis, so that they can pretend this never happened. It’s over they say. Because that’s what they want to believe. Hey, I’d love to believe it too but you know what? It’s not over. It is so not over in so many ways that I sometimes feel like I’m living in…. actually I don’t know what I’m living in. What is this world? What happened to it or was it always this way? Were people always this selfish and uncaring? I’m beginning to think that yes, people have always been like this, only “generous” as long as they aren’t inconvenienced in any way.

I managed to avoid getting Covid for about two and a half years but finally succumbed in mid-October 2022, just  two weeks away from my second booster. Dammit. And okay, after one feverish night and a couple of days feeling a bit crappy that was the “worst of it” though I tested positive for over ten days. During which time I stayed home and kept all the windows open. My flatmate and I stayed in separate rooms and wore masks when having to use communal rooms like the kitchen and bathroom. It was what most people would call “mild covid”. Well fuck that shit. There is no such thing as MILD COVID.

Covid is SARS-2. Which is scary as fuck.Which the media has played down since day one. It’s a Biolevel-3 airborne virus, which means you cannot get near this thing in a controlled scientific setting without total PPE including a full body suit, glasses and gloves, Hepa filtered powered air-purifying respirator and what not… yet we were told it’s totally fine to go out if we keep 6 feet away and wear masks. Oh, and wash our hands.

And then shortly later we were told it was okay to stop wearing masks. That thanks to the vaccine the risk of actual DEATH if you caught Covid was reduced and so that was okey-dokey. Reduced. Well try telling that to the hundreds still dying every week from Covid… oh wait, you can’t.

I know people who have now had Covid multiple times and who think that’s fine because they only had “mild” cases and feel they somehow dodged a bullet. Some even think they are building “herd immunity” (which doesn’t actually exist btw).

Hello Long Covid and all that hardly anybody still knows the fuck about includes. Hello immune system being totally fucked over making way for forgotten viruses to totally fuck YOU over.  Hello young previously healthy people dropping dead from strokes and heart attacks. Hello I can’t move my legs, I can’t hear, I’m too tired to get out of bed, I can’t remember anything, I can’t smell or taste, I don’t know how to go on. All after having had “mild covid”.

These days I am living a “between here and there” life. “Here” is where I  feel relatively safe, so mostly at home. Or out walking and shopping (still masking in all shops). “There” is when I have to work or do work-related things that involve meeting with other people, travelling, being in groups, often in situations when masking isn’t possible. At those times I just decide fuck it and hope for the best.

So between being extra careful day-to-day and the sometimes throwing caution to the wind when it means having to work or travel or attend a work-related event… I keep hoping I’m striking a (lucky) balance. And so far – except for that one time! – I have avoided the dread virus. I keep testing once a week, just to be sure I’m not positive (in which case I would stay home until I tested negative again) and I test before I travel. Least I can do.

Sometimes I’m almost nostalgic for those early pandemic days when everyone pulled together, when it honestly felt like we were all in this together (BECAUSE WE WERE) and we behaved like we all cared for each other. In many ways that was quite a beautiful time. But then suddenly everyone remembered they somehow DESERVED their summer holiday abroad and all was lost.

It’s been three years. Three years today. And I just feel this immense sadness that we didn’t learn the most important lesson from this terrible global catastrophe… that we should be caring about each other. Because we’re not going to make it otherwise.

it’s done!

09 Thursday Mar 2023

Posted by azahar in coronavirus, covid, sevilla

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

covid

bivalent

Got my second Covid booster today – Pfizer bivalent. It had been scheduled for last November but then I GOT COVID in October, so had to wait five months. And well… so far so good? Barely a sore arm and no other reaction yet. Let’s see how I feel mañana.

wait, what?

20 Friday Jan 2023

Posted by azahar in coronavirus, covid, sevilla, spain

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

covid

no more masks

This morning I found out that Spain is considering removing the mask mandate on public transportation as early as the beginning of February. The previous government update on this (last December) said that the mask mandate would remain in place until March 2023 at which time it would be reviewed again. And suddenly all these media outlets are shrieking “it’s almost over!” and saying we could all be mask-free much sooner than that. Well, it’s not THAT much sooner (one month) so what is even the fucking point of this? Why the rush? Also, and this is huge for me, I’ve just booked flights to Bilbao the first week of February. Fuck.

Yes, it’s another work-related research trip. And it will be the first time I’ve boarded a plane since… 2019? My first impulse was to just cancel everything, but then I calmed down and tried to work out how I was going to move forward, and keep living, in this new mask-free Spain. Truth is, I really don’t know yet. I mean, I still go out and live my life (as carefully as possible), and I am still doing my tours (though I put a hold on them during Christmas and January to see how the latest variant evolved). I still wear a mask when I am indoors, other than when I’m eating in a tapas bar of course, but then I sit next to an open door or window and I’m not there long. But in shops and especially on public transportation it just makes sense to mask up.

I wonder how all the minimisers and anti-vaxxers are going to feel once they become the “vulnerable” that they disdain so much, which seems inevitable at this point. May not happen overnight but karma is totally waiting for these selfish assholes. Just seriously sad that by the time this happens they will have taken down so many people who actually cared.

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