Summer COVID
Advised by an old friend who is a doctor to take the test despite mild symptoms….here it is. Positive.
Tracy has started with the same mild symptoms I had last night, minus the fever, so the assumption is that we’re both positive, and we’re isolating. We got what was then the most recent booster on May 2nd, and we’ll be first in line for the new booster when it arrives in the fall, but this positive test proves that the late summer bump in COVID is real. We go out in public a lot and stopped wearing masks about the time we got boosted in May, so you reap what you sow, as the saying goes. I hate the phrase “new normal,” but I’m afraid that’s where we’re at. COVID has become a form of the flu, and like the flu, it can sometimes be deadly. If you are vaccinated and boosted and you’re up to date, coming down with the disease is unsettling and inconvenient and quite awful when you’re coughing and running a fever, but it seems to have become a part of our lives, like a political figure we would rather be completely immune to but must tolerate because he and his diseased politics have come to infect our nation and our lives.
As my friend Kevin Sessums says with such marvelous aplomb on his Substack, which you should read — onward.
So sorry. . . I am duly alarmed. And here I am, 10 days traveling and out and about. I encountered a Trumpanzee at the hotel who made a snide remark re: Hunter Biden, and I let him have it in front of the morning buffet crowd. He nastily said, “I bet you got all the covid shots” and I let loose. “You’re damned right I did and I can hear you’ve either got asthma or COPD . . . .yada yada . . . .I literally sent him running with a parting volley: “and You can be sure YOUR MOTHER WAS GRATEFUL TO GET YOU VACCINATED FROM POLIO!”
So here it is again.
And so here they are, too.
But don’t be polite or cowed by the tRump bullies. They even sound delusional to themselves.
I think the administration and public health have let us down terribly by not admitting that Covid is still here, (and will be for the indefinite future) and that we should all still mask up where necessary and stop thinking the pandemic is over.
It is NOT. Covid and RSV are both very contagious and prevalent right now. It's why I hate going to the store, anywhere that I know they've dropped the masking requirements, and that includes my health care providers.
It is not a form of the flu-it is worse than the flu and the latest RSV disease combined with it will make one very sick or dead.
Complacency kills.
Long Covid exists, too. From what I've read of it, that's not what you want-it's a mind destroying syndrome with no cure except perhaps time.
Be prepared to be vaccinated for all three this year-Flu, Covid, and RSV for the remainder of your lives.
It's not getting better because now that climate change has finally started really impacting us there is no 'new normal' for anything-Florida now is home to endemic malaria and plague.
It's all 'daily disaster' time for all of us.
Welcome to the future. It was a good world while it lasted.
Hope you and Tracey get over it soon! Take care and get those shots!