I was explaining to my sister on the phone that I struggle to understand why people are not more aware of just how contagious this coronavirus is. I am even more perplexed when people say that it is just a conspiracy to kill off the elderly or it is the government just wanting to keep us all under control. During the past ten months, I have even heard that it is the work of Microsoft’s Bill Gates wanting to inject a chip in us all during the vaccine process... honestly!
I think I have a better understanding of the coronavirus because of the knowledge that I have learned about HIV and how it can be transmitted, the incubation period and how that leads to false blood test results. It occurred to me that when someone gets tested for COVID-19, the result is negative for that moment in time. I wonder if some people believe that the negative test result is in some way also a vaccine. The calm and relaxed attitude of someone with a negative test result seems to give a false reassurance that life can just carry on. Few people seem to realise that the virus can be contracted on the journey home from the test centre where they received their negative result. And then, because of the incubation period being between 7 to 10 days, and in some cases up to 14 days, if they get tested again as early as the following week and that result may also give a false result. And yet, understandably, the confidence of seeming virus-free gives the perception that they are safe.
As far as I am concerned, I believe that the virus can be contracted not just from saliva droplets sprayed into the air as someone speaks, or from them sneezing or coughing, but also from door handles, surfaces, seats and handrails, food packaging, letterboxes, money and much more. Although we are taught that the virus is not airborne, I have this constant belief that we should all behave as though it were.
Jezz and I were wearing the correct protective masks just two weeks into the news breaking in March of this year. So soon that everyone thought that we were behaving a little ‘over the top.’ We passed through every reaction and emotion, from fear to paranoia, from careful with hygiene to disinfecting the post. I realise now that we have not stopped behaving this way, it has just become so commonplace with everyone else, that it does not look odd anymore. So... we stay at home. We do not go shopping anymore if we can avoid it and instead, have a monthly grocery delivery from Waitrose. I bailed out at the last moment with an arrangement to meet with the family but it did keep within the government guidelines and restrictions. Over Christmas, we only agreed to see the family at a doorstep, masks on and staying sanitised before and after.
Well, we have not got ill and I am sure we have either avoided the virus so far or have actually had it and it has passed.
We both went for an anti-body test on 1 September and it was confirmed that neither of us had contracted it back then. We were also advised at the time, that it would only confirm that we had not contracted the virus recently. That meant that it was possible to have caught the virus months beforehand, been asymptomatic and recovered, unaware that we had it at all. And, if there were an undetectable amount of antibodies, the blood test result would be negative. It is still not known how long before the antibodies die off.
So, my conclusion is that we sit tight, wash our hands regularly, hibernate away for what feels like a lifetime and wait to be vaccinated.
In other news, it has been a testing time for everyone who lives with their loved ones as lockdown continues into 2021 but Jezz and I have managed easily to get on and work as a team, respecting one another's time alone and the get-together moments that remind us both of the love, dedicated and meaningful companionship we have with one another.
2020 was also the year that Jezz and I had a 20th year anniversary. We met in 2000 and have known one another and lived together since.
As we go into 2021, I'm reflecting on the dramas and sadness of not seeing my family and be able to give them hugs but comforted by the fact that we are all still here and reasonably healthy, despite 3 family members having COVID-19 and all recovered, thankfully.