Hello there online traveller! I have not written in a long time, so it is good to see you're still here! It has certainly been a wild ride since we last corresponded. Like many of you, I made it through 2020 without contracting SARS-CoV21. (yay us!).
I also know a few folks who, either due to COVID-192, or other events, did not make it to 2021 with us.
It's interesting that, approximately one year after I first started hearing about this novel coronavirus, that I would get it. Yeah. I read that article over a year ago and thought to myself, "Glad that's in China and I don't have to worry about it. That sucks for them though. It sure would be a lot likelier for them the find treatment if it affected a wider audience."
Hah! It pains me to be so right all the time.
Don't worry this isn't one of those crazy conspiracy theory posts. The fact that we have vaccines so quickly can be simply explained by the one thing that drives all pharmaceutical companies: money. Western companies have the abundance of both money and skilled personnel needed to research and develop vaccine creation. Likewise, western countries have the deep pockets to pay companies for said vaccine.3
But fast-forward a year and my wife tested positive last Friday, after displaying symptoms. She hit all the common notes: fever, some difficulty breathing due to a stuffy nose (but still able to breath on her own, orally), coughing, loss of ability to taste, lethargy.
After testing positive she was quarantined in our room but I still slept in the same bed and didn't wear a mask. You know, living that YOLO! life. I started displaying symptoms 3 days later. I was hoping I didn't have it since my symptoms were pretty mild: headache, fever, irritability (though really, this might've just been me).
Nevertheless 3 days after she tested positive (one week after she was exposed) I also started displaying symptoms. Here's how my week broke down, minus all the boring details:
Day 1
It was ok, but by night time I was "not feeling great". I had the chills, like a fever was coming. I can always tell which, incidentally, makes for some very interesting conversations with employers. "I'm going to be sick tomorrow." still isn't as well-received as I'd like.
Day 2
I woke up with a headache, and low grade fever.
Day 3
The headache blossomed to maturity and my fever transformed into a raging monster, which drove me to bed at 8:30 p.m. instead of my usual post-midnight bedtime. As I still had to take a care of my wife, I prayed for God to heal me.
Day 4
I awoke very wet. And moist. Very moist. It is not an understatement to say that my clothes were soaked. Because they were. Besides that, I felt much better. Prayer answered!
Day 5
This was the day my COVID-19 test was scheduled for. I was feeling back to my normal self. The test confirmed that I had COVID-19.
In the days after I haven't lost my sense of smell, taste or anything that I didn't have before4, so I'd say I'm back to normal and don't have to worry about vaccinating. The choice has been made for me.
Overall, I'd say this was nothing to worry about, but then I see the my wife who's still recovering, and realize it could have been much worse. And then I remember all the folks I know who've lost loved ones from this and thank God this is all we had to go through.
Shit coulda been worse.
SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
COVID-19 is the sickness caused by the SARS-CoV2 virus.
The original SARS-CoV (OG SARS?) still has no vaccine, or at least no human vaccine that I know about, and it first appeared (again, in China) in 2002.
I was unable to completely breathe out of both nostrils before, and that has remained the same and not gotten appreciably worse.